Sunday, August 05, 2012

I watched The Decoy Bride so you don't have to.

A few weeks ago, I had a random afternoon off of work and so I decided to spend my free time doing the obvious thing: watching The Decoy Bride on Netflix Instant.

The Decoy Bride, for those of you who may not know (um, most of you?), is a terribly terrible movie starring one David Tennant, also known as the 10th Doctor on Doctor Who, also known as PLEASE HAVE MY BABIES DAVID TENNANT.

But that's not all! Kelly Macdonald is also in it, of Trainspotting and Gosford Park and Harry Potter and Brave fame, which gave me plenty of opportunities to shout, "Uuuugh, MUM," and later that evening, ask Joe, "if you had the chance to change your fate...wouldja?" He loves that.

But AGAIN I say that's not all! No! Mark from Ugly Betty is in it! And Shazzer from Bridget Jones's Diary! And the annoying guy from Shaun of the Dead! And a blonde lady! And some other people! But mostly Mark St. James!

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Don't get me wrong, though. This is not a great movie. No way. And yet, I'd sit through it again for the same reason I've seen Never Been Kissed and Only You multiple times: BEAUTIFUL CHARMING MENS. But you might not have that same weakness and so I'm here to tell you what The Decoy Bride is all about, in great detail, probably definitely greater detail than is warranted, so if you decide that you WANT to watch it, maybe you can just fast-forward to the David Tennant parts. Like this one:

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You guys, it took me like 40 minutes to make this and you know what? TOTALLY WORTH IT.

The premise of this movie is ridiculous, even by romantic comedy standards. David Tennant plays a man named James Arber, according to imdb, only it's more fun if we call him The Doctor, so let's do that. The Doctor is getting ready to marry an actress named Lara Tyler (OMG YOU GUYS AND SHE'S TOTALLY BLONDE, TOO, THE DOCTOR IS MARRYING ROSE TYLER FINALLY WHOOO) but this annoying paparazzi guy keeps finding out about the secret wedding locations and RUINING EVERYTHING. This will be important later. Well. "Important." 

MEANWHILE, our heroine Kelly Macdonald Katie, unhappy and unlucky in love, is headed back to the small Scottish town of Hegg to take care of her mother. Her mother owns the local B&B and is dying. DOWNER. Anyway. Someone gives Katie the idea to write a travel book about Hegg and so she does so, because writing a book (and getting it published) is totally easy, you guys. I mean, The Doctor did it, too, and that's two people in the same movie, so what are you complaining about, writers? Huh? The Doctor ALSO wrote a book about Hegg, despite never having been there, but the people in Hegg hate it so much they use it as toilet paper. Naturally.

Lara Tyler gets the idea that they should get married in Hegg, since no one will EVER EVER find them there, and also have a themed wedding based off of The Doctor's terrible book because that's not the worst idea ever in the history of the world and all other worlds and also parallel worlds to which you might send your clingy companion and murdery doppelganger. So anyway, they go about doing just that (the wedding thing, not the parallel world thing), but the paparazzi guy shows up! Dressed as a monk!
Not this Monk.

Naturally, at this point, Lara's handlers (Mark and Shazzer: see way, way above) decide they need someone to pretend to be the bride to throw the paparazzi off of Lara's trail. You might call this person a...camouflage bride. Or an imitation bride. Or something else, I don't know. Mark and Shazzer decide that Katie can totally be the fake bride, despite the fact that she looks absolutely nothing like Lara Tyler. Whatever, it's not like The Doctor will notice. Oh, because did I mention? They're not going to tell The Doctor that he's marrying the wrong woman. This is all just to fool the media.

At this point, The Doctor and Katie have already had the most ridiculous meet-cute in the history of meet-cutes, in a bathroom (outhouse?) THAT IS HAUNTED BY A COW. You'll be surprised to know that, though WE know they are perfect for each other, they don't really hit it off at first. Later, they'll discover that they pretty much hate each other. So don't get your hopes up about them getting together or anything.


Yeah, so then The Doctor and Katie-fake-Lara get FOR REAL married (I don't remember how this happened, exactly) and real-Lara is missing and I think falling in love with the paparazzi guy? This is the part of the movie where I stopped paying that much attention. The Doctor and Katie fight for a while, then come to a mutual understanding and respect for one another, and then Katie decides they should get divorced and he should go marry Lara, even though you can tell neither of them wants that to happen. So that's what he does. OR DOES HE? (Nope.)

In the end, there's the completely tragic misunderstanding that is a rom-com requirement and you might worry that our two heroes are destined to spend their lives apart but SPOILER ALERT they don't. And it's actually kind of adorable but that might just be because the combined adorableness of Kelly Macdonald and David Tennant could power a town full of puppies.

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Or kittens.

A million stars! says Roger Ebert no one ME.

7 comments:

  1. I actually did the same thing a few weeks ago too, and watched for roughly the same reasons. And the bathroom haunted by the cow scene might have been my favorite part. That, along with the completely unrealistic moment when the Italian paparazzo realizes he's been in love with Lara all along.

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  2. This review is a thing of true beauty. Particularly that last gif.

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  3. This literally popped up on my Netflix Instant last night, and I was like, HMMM, I AM INTRIGUED. And now I officially have to watch it.

    P.S. Never Been Kissed is not a bad movie. It is the BEST MOVIE EVER.

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  4. S, I think I legitimately love this movie. Like for real. I'm not sure what that says about me.

    kat, whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about David Tennant holding a kitten and everything is JUST FINE.

    Ashley, please watch this movie immediately.

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  5. I'M NOT JOSIE GROSSIE ANYMORE!!!!

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  6. What happened to Michael Vartan? Why isn't his beautiful face more famous?

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  7. Jennifer Garner dumped him :(

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