10 Movies About Weddings That Are Actually Good
You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll sigh wistfully.
Stock-Asso/shutterstock.com The wedding movie genre contains multitudes. Unfortunately, many of those multitudes are awful and make you never want to see another puffy white dress or botched set of vows. Luckily, this month's lady friendship comedy Bridesmaids is a shining example of the wedding genre done right. 'Bridesmaids' & The Secret Women Hate To Admit
Here are 10 more wedding movies that are worth sitting through the Chicken Dance for. First up: Mamma Mia!
Mamma Mia!
This 2008 musical comedy is an embarrassment of cheesy riches. Like the best weddings, it has everything you could want for a ludicrously entertaining, possibly intoxicated evening: Abba songs, a winsome heroine, cute boys, and Meryl Streep (well, she should be invited to all weddings, no?).
High Society
Blasphemy! This 1956 musical version of The Philadelphia Story, starring Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Grace Kelly, was the last film Kelly made before she married Prince Rainier of Monaco and retired from acting. (That skating rink on her left hand is the engagement ring he gave her.) The story, of a woman torn between her working-class fiancé, her rich ex-husband, and the gossip reporter who's writing up her wedding, is as tart and brisk as the day they made it, and the addition of Louis Armstrong and his band make this one a keeper. It's like Mad Men, in that everyone is drunk all the time, only super fun and with songs. And have you ever seen anything as ethereally gorgeous as Tracy's wedding dress?
The Wedding Singer
The best movie Adam Sandler's ever made is also a movie that makes you believe weddings can be sweet and lovely and not the consumerist nightmare of, say, Bride Wars. Sandler's lovelorn balladeer, Robbie, falls in love with Drew Barrymore's adorable-but-engaged waitress Julia and, despite the fact that he's wearing the worst wig since baby toupees, she falls for him right back. The climactic scene in which Robbie takes down Julia's horrible fiancé with a little assist from Billy Idol is one of our favorites.
Bend It Like Beckham
Gurinder Chadha's glorious coming-of-age story about a young Indian soccer fanatic draws most of its dramatic conflict from the struggle between Jess's on-field ambitions and her traditional family’s desires. It all comes to a head when Jess's championship game and her sister Pinky's wedding fall on the same day. Like many of the other movies on this list, we are compelled to watch Bend It Like Beckham whenever it's on TV, and not only because nine years later we are still unable to decide who is more beautiful, Jonathan Rhys Meyers or Keira Knightley.
Steel Magnolias
Unlike a number of other wedding movies, Steel Magnolias begins with a wedding rather than ending with one, and these are among the most memorable movie nuptials, if only because whenever anyone asks what someone's wedding colors are, we are compelled to reply "blush…and bashful." And if you've ever been in a wedding where the bride has a signature color, it's helpful to keep this scene in mind.
The Wedding Date
Hear us out. This Debra Messing–Dermot Mulroney romantic comedy seems like a terrible idea: a woman hires a male prostitute to accompany her to her sister's wedding, at which her former fiancé is the best man. But then the movie, which also stars Amy Adams (doing her best to make a reprehensible character almost likeable), becomes something funny and acerbic and actually really charming. Or maybe it's just Mulroney in his undercrackers that saves the sinking ship. And Messing's smashing wardrobe. Honestly, this movie is so fun and sexy and seriously, just look at that dress Kat is wearing in the dance lessons scene!
Father of the Bride
The 1950 original, starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor, is a gem, but we prefer the 1991 remake with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, mostly because it captures the brain-melting mania particular to wedding planning without veering into the stunts of cruelty that make movies like The Wedding Planner and 27 Dresses so unrealistic and painful.
The Birdcage
If only gay marriage were legal in Florida, just think of the sequel to this movie we could expect! The marriage in the 1996 American adaptation of the French play La Cage Aux Folles is between Val, whose parents are a nightclub owner and his drag queen partner, and Barbara, whose father is a conservative senator. Basically it's Meet the Parents, except not terrible and embarrassing for everyone involved, and with Hank Azaria as the scene-stealing, shoe-averse houseboy Agador.
The Princess Bride
There have never been funnier wedding vows committed to film than those intoned by Peter Cook in the classic pirates-giant-rats-six-fingered-men-and-Spaniards romantic epic. Seriously, do not think about this scene during the next wedding you attend, because you will laugh out loud in church and the bride's mom will have you killed before the cake is cut.
Four Weddings and a Funeral
The movie that gave us Hugh Grant has just one tiny flaw. Unfortunately that flaw is Andie MacDowell, and she is in a whole lot of scenes. But the rest of the cast, including Rowan Atkinson, John Hannah, a delightfully acidic Kristen Scott Thomas, and, yes, a woman named Duckface, make up for how wooden MacDowell is. Mostly.