Lifetime Review: 'The Wrong Wedding Planner'

Brad Curtis (Steve Richard Harris) and Ashley Williams (Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe) couldn't be more ready for their upcoming wedding. But with work being so busy for Brad, Ashley seeks out help from a wedding planner to make sure the ceremony goes off without a hitch. She decides on her friend's wedding planner Mandy Raines (Kristin Booth), who at first glance appears to be a friendly woman good at her job and ready to give Brad and Ashley their perfect wedding.

But beneath her bubbly personality, Mandy is hatching a sinister plot against the soon-to-be newlyweds. Unbeknownst to Ashley, Mandy has history with Brad--and has wormed her way into becoming their wedding planner as part of a vicious scheme. As Mandy's scheming begins to wreck their lives, Brad and Ashley grow fearful of what else Mandy has in store for them. Will there be anyone left to walk down the aisle after Mandy's done?

After the last entry in the David DeCoteau-directed "Wrong" series turned out to be so underwhelming, I was hoping that The Wrong Wedding Planner would be the series' return to form. So when the film opened on a slow pace with a side order of awkward and stiffly delivered dialogue, I began to fear the worst. But thankfully, while the pace of the film's first act leaves something to be desired, The Wrong Wedding Planner remains a solidly entertaining Lifetime thriller--thanks much in part to a midpoint pace shift and a strong cast bringing their best efforts forth.

As stated before, The Wrong Wedding Planner starts at a gradual pace. While the pace narrowly avoids becoming so slow that it slides into tedium, it does put the movie in a "not terrible, not great" position in terms of how its story takes a while to get off the ground. But once the plot hits its stride, a steady pace is well-maintained for the rest of the film: restrained enough to keep you guessing how far Mandy will go in her deranged quest, but interesting enough to keep from dragging to a stall. The film's climax is also satisfyingly intense, with much of the credit for this going to Kristin Booth throwing herself into Mandy's histrionic spiral. Overall, Booth gives an entertaining performance as the obsessed and dangerous Mandy, with her best moments being when Mandy's true nature (a delicious mix of lunacy and arrogance) is either on full display or thinly veiled by a fake smile. She also does a solid job of playing Mandy as a convincingly deceptive villainess; the moments when she does let her nuttiness show in front of Ashley are low-key enough to where it's believable that Ashley would brush them off as harmless oddities.

Brad and Ashley, meanwhile, make for likable and sympathetic protagonists, with Steve Richard Harris and Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe forming natural chemistry together. Harris and Lowe each also shine as individuals, with both throwing themselves in the emotions Brad and Ashley go through as their lives are wrecked by Mandy's schemes. Lowe brings authentic emotion to Ashley's dismay at her and Brad's situation, while Harris brings a fire to Brad's justified anger to what is happening to him and his fiancee. SPOILER ALERT The scene Harris shares with Jackée Harry (who plays Brad's boss Ms. Johnson) when Brad is unfairly put on leave as a result of Mandy's sabotage--an incident Ms. Johnson wrongfully blames Brad for--is a memorably strong scene. Spoilers Over

However, both Brad and Ashley have a flaw about them that muddies their characters' likability--with Brad's being the worse of the two. SPOILER ALERT While Brad learns fairly early into the film that "Mandy" is his obsessed ex-fiancee, he inexplicably decides not to warn Ashley about that. Given his history with her, you would think he'd be inclined to tell her immediately after finding out, and his refusal to confess the truth only becomes more confusing as he learns about and bears witness to Mandy's insanity. In one moment, Brad even becomes an uncharacteristic jerk to Ashley to continue withholding the truth, making matters more frustrating. Spoilers Over As for Ashley, she gets a healthy dose of plot-necessary naivete; not enough to become excessively hard to swallow, but enough to where some may find themselves deriding her as an idiot.

But as said before, Harris and Lowe bring enough energy and likability to their roles to offset their character's low points. Joining them and Booth in giving strong performances are a few "Wrong" familiar faces in more minor roles. Vivica A. Fox (the unofficial queen of the "Wrong" series) brings likability to Detective Jones--a character who could've fallen into the despised "Useless Cop" mold. While she spends much of the movie unable to provide help to Brad and Ashley as they deal with Mandy, the film plays it off as a legitimate inability to act. After all, Mandy is clever enough not to leave any evidence to trace everything back to her. Coupled with Fox's natural charm and her playing Detective Jones as something of a Genre Savvy character ("Weddings bring out the crazies", she quips, almost as if she's a Lifetimer herself) only strengthens Jones' likability. The film also gives Fox a much more natural Title Drop moment--a far cry from the lukewarm moment she received in The Wrong Housesitter and the baffling ones she had in The Wrong Stepmother and The Wrong Boy Next Door.

Jackée Harry brings her own brand of charm to stern boss Mrs. Johnson, and plays her scene with Harris detailed in the first Spoiler section with an appropriate amount of understated selfishness. Gina Hiraizumi brings a sympathetic edge to bakery chef Gemma, and Meredith Thomas is surprisingly fierce in her brief scene as Sherri, a minor character who is revealed to have experience with Mandy's craziness. New-to-Lifetime Nathan Kehn makes a solid first impression as eager-beaver locksmith Jake, with his scene providing a nice little comedic bit amidst The Wrong Wedding Planner's tense third act.

While the uneven pace and character botches drag things down a bit, The Wrong Wedding Planner redeems itself with its second act. The plot hits its groove when it comes to the spice of its story, Mandy Raines is a well-written villainess played with zest by Kristin Booth, and the protagonists she faces off against (barring their aforementioned stumbles) are as likable as Mandy is fun to watch in psychotic action. Throwing in a mix of surprisingly effective side characters and a climax/ending that ends the movie on a solid dramatic note easily allows for The Wrong Wedding Planner to make up for its awkward opening act. It might not reach the heights of past "Wrong" movies, but all in all, The Wrong Wedding Planner makes for an entertaining watch if you can weather out the rocky first act.

Score: 6.5 out of 10 devil's trumpets.