Kiss The Bride (2002)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Best movie ever!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I discovered this movie because one of my friends' last name is Sposato, and upon entering his name into Wikipedia he found this movie about a Sposato family set in Westerly, coincidentally our home town. I saw that Sean Patrick Flanery, one of my favorite actors, was in it, and I decided to rent this movie from Netflix. Altogether, I was not impressed. First of all, Sean Patrick Flanery is one hundred percent Irish, in case you couldn't tell, and he simply cannot pull off a character named Terranova. It just can't be done. While the movie was allegedly filmed in Westerly, Rhode Island, my friends and I recognized only one setting, and that was a brief three-second drive through down town. The portrayal of an Italian-American family was poorly done. No self respecting Italian with grandparents that came from Italy would call said grandparents "Grandma" and "Grandpa." The behavior of three of the four sisters would not be acceptable in an Italian-American home. Also, the general characterization and plot were poorly developed. Most of the characters were lifeless and flat, and the climax was so obvious it was like the script said, "Insert horribly cliché climax here." While the movie had some funny bits, some romantic bits, and some clever Italian bits, all in all it was not very impressive.

I rented three DVDs the other night and saw "Kiss the Bride" sitting on the shelf with plenty of available copies. I grabbed one because it was there. I thought it would be a funny wedding movie my wife would like to see. I put off watching it until I had seen the other two "great works of art" I had rented."Kiss the Bride" is one of the best movies I have ever seen. It is perfection. Anyone that has ever had a Mom or a Dad, sister, brother, or came from a "family" will find themselves somewhere in this movie. The cast is outstanding. The "well-known" and the "unknown" together. Vanessa Parise should be, or will be, a very powerful voice in the film industry. I hope she has the same budget for her next film. Lack of funds makes creativity the only means to a great film. She is very creative. Don't give any more money. She doesn't need it. There isn't one wasted moment in the entire movie. It's great, start to finish.

I found Kiss the Bride to be an edgy, enjoyable, movie ride with some superbly timed dramatic and comedic surprises along the way.The pace of the movie was good and the score was great - it really complemented the goings-on on screen. The characters all showed varying degrees of insight into familial relationships, making choices about life, and then reevaluating those life choices. Some questions got resolved and answered, to some degree, during the course of the movie, others remained open-ended and unresolved - a lot like life. The characters also showed some pretty human flaws like insensitivity, self absorption, ingratitude. Put all together, it made for a very good movie. Sit back and enjoy!

I had the unfortunate experience of watching a screener version of this movie. Not that long into an already bad film, I was so distracted by the performance of one the sisters, that it made everything else fade into insignificance. The "actress" who plays one of the leads -- a have-it-all high powered exec, who comes home for her sister's wedding -- does such a terrible job that it literally makes you wonder how this woman was cast in the first place. However, If you keep watching there is an answer (which is the only satisfying conclusion to watching this film until the end): in the credits, you realize that the actress is also the writer/director, and all of a sudden Vanessa Parise's unwatchable performance makes sense (it doesn't bode well for the people who worked on this film that no one told her the nasal valley girl thing just doesn't work for this role).Too bad -- the rest of cast is decent; Alyssa Milano, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Jonathan Schaechter, Brooke Langton -- though you can see that they don't know what to do with the clichéd script (let's not get started on the script). And what's with the soundtrack? Like Parise's acting, it's just amateur and self conscious. I would almost recommend this film just as a lesson in what-not-to-do-in-your-first-film Guide.