Lifetime Review: 'The Perfect Wedding'

For travel agent Lindsay Williams (Tenika Davis), one night is all it takes to turn her life upside down. Days away from marrying the love of her life, Lindsay goes out with her friends Catherine and Dana (Lydia Zadel and Julia Borsellino) for her bachelorette party. After a night of drinking and dancing, Lindsay is horrified to wake up the next morning to a disheveled hotel room and a condom wrapper on the bedside table. After seeing this and some incriminating photos from the previous night, Lindsay's fiancé Brandon (Eric Hicks) becomes convinced Lindsay cheated on him and furiously cancels the wedding.

Devastated and having no memory of what happened after the party, Lindsay works with her friends to prove her innocence to Brandon. What she doesn't realize is that the person responsible for ruining her wedding is right under her nose: Catherine. Having been working with Brandon at the same advertising agency, Catherine's crush on Lindsay's fiancé has spiraled into an obsession. Now that she's successfully stopped the wedding, Catherine is ready to do anything--even kill--to ensure that Brandon is hers. Will Lindsay uncover the truth before she loses the man she loves to a treacherous friend?

If nothing else, it can't be said that The Perfect Wedding wastes time getting its story off the ground. Within the first 15 minutes, Lindsay and Brandon's relationship has been obliterated and Catherine is definitively revealed as the obliterator. It's a classic howcatchem mystery setup as we watch Lindsay fight for her reputation while Catherine schemes to cover her tracks and make the vulnerable Brandon fall for her. Unfortunately, this quick start means the audience is immediately thrown into this movie's uninspired and dully-paced story. Lindsay's sleuthing is as basic as it gets and the drama between her and Brandon is too infrequently explored and lacking in emotional weight to keep the viewer engaged. If it weren't for the deliciously demented Catherine, the middle stretch of The Perfect Wedding would be unbearably monotonous.

As her quest to win Brandon's heart progresses, Catherine becomes increasingly more deranged and Lydia Zadel visibly enjoys digging into her character's psychotic mind. In between sabotaging Lindsay and seducing Brandon, all while making snarky comments to herself, Catherine occasionally drops any pretense of being sane to show the madwoman lurking behind her innocuous face. With crazed eyes and gutturally snarled threats, Catherine lets you know in these moments that she's not one to be messed with. Zadel makes it fun to watch Catherine in action, though she gets a (presumably) unintentional assist from how hard it is to care about Lindsay and Brandon's relationship. Tenika Davis and Eric Hicks give decent enough performances individually, but their characters spend so much of the movie estranged that they hardly get the chance to develop any chemistry. As such, it's easy to be apathetic as to whether or not Lindsay and Brandon reconcile and even easier to revel in Catherine's devious plan to tear them apart.

Another actress hamming it up in The Perfect Wedding is Barbara Gordon as Brandon's mother Nancy. From her snobbish accent to her passive-aggressive remarks about Lindsay and Brandon's falling out, Nancy is the epitome of the archetypal stuffy rich lady/romantically meddling mother. In a cast of characters who are mostly pretty serious, Nancy stands out as an almost comedic figure. Often appearing alongside Nancy is her yoga instructor Brooke, as played by Killer Prom's Erica Anderson. As opposed to the pretentious Nancy, Brooke is as sweet as can be and takes Nancy's unsolicited matchmaking with level-headed grace. With the limited time she's given, Anderson quickly endears you to the film's most sympathetic character. SPOILER ALERT That makes it all the sadder when Brooke winds up dead because of Nancy's inconsiderate efforts to set her up with Brandon. Personally, I would've preferred Nancy being on the bad end of Catherine's potassium chloride-filled needle. It would've been a fitting end for a self-entitled woman poking her nose where it didn't belong. But instead, Nancy is easily forgiven for all her misbehavior and gets to walk Lindsay down the aisle. Spoilers Over

As for the main players, they're all good performers stuck with some less-than-stellar characters. Davis and Hicks do particularly well at conveying Lindsay's anguished desperation to clear her name and Brandon's heartbroken devastation over his fiancée's perceived betrayal. But neither is given a character devoid of irritating behavior, with Hicks suffering the worst because of this. Brandon's rapid willingness to believe the worst about Lindsay and his refusal to talk to her (even after the initial shock wears off) don't speak highly of him or the stability of their relationship. Even when Lindsay starts to piece together what happened and goes to Brandon to tell him, he still doesn't hear her out and yells at her enough to send her running off in tears.

As for Lindsay, she briefly becomes a naïve idiot when she shrewdly dismisses Dana's suspicions about Catherine. While Catherine is relatively good at putting on a show of being a loyal friend, there are still a few signs of her duplicity that you'd think Lindsay would've noticed a lot sooner. Julia Borsellino's Dana and Drew Moss's Billy stand out among the side characters. Borsellino does a good job playing Lindsay's likable but bland Genre Savvy BFF while Moss gives a similarly fine performance as an inconsistent character. After an introduction where Catherine's roommate comes across as a bitter jerk, Billy later transforms into a fearful but kind person just in time to be of use to Lindsay.

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW

Then there's the matter of The Perfect Wedding's finale and how ridiculously anticlimactic it is. Having lured Brandon into her home to share a drink while the police close in, you might be thinking a crazed confrontation is about to go down. Does Catherine finally make her move and attack Brandon for rejecting her? Does she hold Brandon hostage when the cops arrive for her? Nope. Instead, Brandon chit-chats with Catherine long enough for the police to show up and arrest her without major incident. The worst we get is Catherine pathetically crying out for Brandon while throwing out the usual "I did all of this for you!" lines. A villainess like Catherine deserves a much fiercer swan song, just like Lindsay deserves a better husband than the distrustful Brandon. Despite how awful he was to her throughout the movie, Lindsay all too easily accepts Brandon's apology and the two have their wedding as if the film's events didn't expose how little faith Brandon has in his soon-to-be wife.

Spoilers Over

Even with the presence of an entertainingly twisted villain, The Perfect Wedding struggles to rise above its mediocre story and wearisome pacing. The actors all put their best efforts forward, but some fall shorter than others thanks to the uneven characters they're given to play. It's the kind of Lifetime movie best reserved for when you need something to watch while doing some house cleaning or folding laundry. Otherwise, the film may put you to sleep faster than a roofied martini.

Score: 4 out of 10 Zaxton cappuccino makers.