The Wedding Planner (PG-13, 2001)

Jennifer Lopez plays Mary, a wedding planner who is so organized that she has all the essentials strapped to her belt, including smelling salts and superglue. She is also so cynical that she can predict the length of the marriage based on the song selected by the couple. Mary is supremely competent and confident at work, negotiating for a partnership in the firm if she can land an assignment for a dot-com zillionaire bride Fran (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras). Matthew McConaughey plays Steve, a pediatrician who saves Mary from an onrushing dumpster. They go out with Mary's friend for a movie and a dance under the stars, and Mary is smitten. Then she discovers that Steve is Fran's groom-to-be. Meanwhile, Mary's father (Alex Rocco) is trying to fix her up with a horrendous loser from the homeland.

THE WEDDING PLANNER is a disappointing would-be romantic comedy -- neither comic nor particularly romantic. Its biggest problem is a sitcom-style script with too much emphasis on the situation and not enough on the comedy. It fails to create a single believable or sympathetic character. What it gives us instead is a string of barely related skits about people whose behavior ranges from inconsistent to random. The result ranges from dull to annoying, with the few comic bits already overly familiar to us from the commercials. Jennifer Lopez is a talented and attractive performer, but she does not have the acting or comedy skills to transcend the limits of the script. She looks beautiful, but a little remote and unsympathetic.

There is no real narrative, only different locations for the characters to get into faux-adorable fixes. Here's one example: Mary and Steve knock over a nude male statue and his genitals break off. Much hoped-for hilarity but no actual laughs ensue as they try to glue it back on. Here's another example: Mary and Steve run into Mary's former beau and Mary hides under a table to avoid him. But they run into him (with his pregnant wife) anyway, and Mary responds by getting drunk. Two weddings have to be disrupted before it can all get straightened out and even that never-fail standard of the romantic comedy drags on until we can go home to find something better to watch on UPN.