Confessions of an American Bride -- 2005

Guess who decided he had too many movies lined up that he coudln't watch and consequently got lots of chick flick time instead? Yeah, that'd be me.

This was a made for TV Lifetime movie about a bride and her finding Mr. Right and then reaching the all important wedding day. The story was mostly told through voiceover that linked the variety of events from meeting the "him" to wedding jitters to conflict to even finding an old "Mr. Right" and entertaining the possibility (oh horror!).

The chick flick formula was still there for the most part with the climax being a wedding instead of just ending up together, but the voiceover narration helped to speed us through the plot and get us into everything as quickly as possible, which worked to its advantage since there was a lot to get through in this 90 minute time slot. The peopl behind the film wisely decided to have a little more interaction from our heroine, so instead of just voiceover, we got almost a newscast sort of format where she would actually take center screen for awhile and just chat.

So what didn't work? Well, the arrival of the old flame was kind of pointless. If this guy is Mr. Right, then her being all over this other guy is in question unless she has commitment issues, and given her overall character, that didn't seem to be the case. Sure, he served the purpose of ushering us into Act Three, but characters need more than that. The kitchen flood was absolutely no surprise. As soon as I saw her stuff spread out, I knew it was destined for ruin. That is the fate of all things spread out over large areas in films. 

We had the overused, "I have to talk to you" and then "No, let me talk first and completely derail all the good things you're about to say." Some of the plot points were a little shady on getting from the previous point. Yes, it worked, but it sometimes seemed a bit out of place to do so.

The long and short is that the film did ok for what it was. It was simple and gave you the warm and fuzzy feeling these films are supposed to do, and the leads were fairly well developed thanks to the voiceover.