Desmond Tan and Amber An Tackle Wedding Day Blues in 'The Big Day'
It's a rom-com from the guy who did the TV show Code of Law.
The Big Day (PG)
Starring Desmond Tan, Amber Tan
Directed by Lee Thean-Jeen
The Big Day is an awful rom-com, one that’s neither very romantic nor funny. It centres on a couple (the chemistry-deficient pairing of Desmond Tan and Taiwan’s Amber An) and their quest to hold a fuss-free wedding banquet.
Good luck doing that when their oddball kin and friends — including Richard Low, Liu Lingling, and YouTube comedian Hirzi Zulkiflie — are on the guest list, engaging in all kinds of annoying buffoonery.
The newlyweds’ story is told in reverse, starting with the main event, then cutting to shenanigans that occurred a few hours prior. I wish it had gone a bit further back to, say, the day the producers decided to make this movie.
Clearly, they wanted to combine a few formulas — the Meet-Cute, Meet the Parents/In-Laws, The Wedding Movie, The Odd Couple — but what they’ve got instead is a flat, clunky, slapdash and tone-deaf slop.
Something a hack would come up with but writer/director Lee Thean-Jeen is no hack; he’s done some good stuff on TV (The Pupil and its spin-off Code of Law).
Here, it looks as if Lee was coasting and channelling Jack Neo on a bad day. And that qualifies The Big Day as a horror flick, not a rom-com. (**)