2theadvocate.com | Movie Reviews | Confetti
By Brett Troxler - Web Producer
September 26, 2006

Let’s be blunt: “Confetti” is truly a movie of an odd sort. From its opening moments it definitely doesn’t feel like a movie, with its documentary style and frenetic pace. In actuality, this British (attempt at) comedy is a mockumentary bent on poking fun at reality television shows and the like. It just doesn’t poke very well.

The plot centers around a bridal magazine that decides to put on a contest in the wake of rising divorce rates. A couple of media executives interview a wide variety of couples wishing to put on the most original wedding of the year. Three couples are eventually chosen and given two months to plan their own unique ceremony.

The choices, you ask? The lucky contestants are two rather snooty and desperate professional tennis players, two free-spirited naturists (a politically correct way to say nudists) and one couple that is really quite normal, and includes Martin Freeman of “The Office” and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” fame. The latter couple’s only real quirk is the husband-to-be having to deal with the input and interruptions of in-laws. Like I said, practically normal.

Following the selections, two flamboyant wedding planners – one more so than the other – are recruited to put their heart and soul into helping plan all three ceremonies. After all the bickering, decision-making, lampoons and mostly uncomfortable laughter, the three couples face off on the grand stage in front of a panel of judges in a finale that is actually worthy of such a competition, complete with all the flair, drama, jealousy, accusations and elation you might expect.

So you have the tennis-themed wedding with its introductory ball boy dance and vows that mimic a volley between soon-to-be husband and wife. Then there is the naturist wedding, set in a constructed forest grove with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” feel to it and rhyming vows supposedly worthy of Shakespeare’s pen. Oh, and not a lot of clothes. And finally there is the Hollywood musical ceremony, mimicking the popular American films of the 30s and 40s and, of course, allowing the two lovers to sing their vows, duet style.

For a spoof, I expected more satire, or better satire, at least. When it comes down to it “Confetti” is nothing to celebrate or cheer about at all, because it’s simply not terribly funny. Sure, it’s outrageous, moderately enjoyable at times, and dare I say pleasant now and then, but I would have needed to have had plenty more laughs before making an honest recommendation to anyone. Anyone over the age of 17, that is. Did I mention the naturists?

Don't toss `Confetti'; it's a late bloomer
By Robert W. Butler - McClatchy Newspapers
Beacon Journal
September 24, 2006

It's not how you feel going in, but how you feel going out of a film that matters.

By that criterion, Confetti scores one of the biggest turnarounds in recent movie history.

Starting out slowly and flailing about ineffectually for a couple of reels, this largely improvised British comedy gradually finds its comic voice and concludes on a very satisfying note.

Which is just the opposite of most of today's Hollywood comedies, which front-load all the good laughs and run out of steam long before the lights come up.

Director Debbie Isitt and her cast of largely unknown (to American audiences) English actors have created a Christopher Guest-ish situation in which a popular magazine called Confetti holds a contest for the year's most original wedding.

The winners get a million-dollar home.

The competition boils down to three couples:

The uber-competitive tennis pro Josef (Stephen Mangan) and his fiancee Isabelle (Meredith MacNeill), propose a tennis-themed wedding. He's a creep with a domineering ego; she's got nostrils so big, they dominate photographs.

Matt (Martin Freeman) and Sam (Jessica Stevenson) propose a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical comedy ceremony. Only problem is Sam has no musical talent.

``If I wasn't tone deaf, I'd have a very good voice,'' she says. Later she claims to be ``physically dyslexic'' -- i.e., hopelessly clumsy.

Finally, there are Michael (Robert Webb) and Joanna (Olivia Colman), who are what Brits call ``naturalists.'' They propose getting married in the buff.

``We're all naked under our clothes... only when we take them off, it's more obvious,'' Michael argues with unassailable (if obvious) logic.

(For the record, Confetti has more full frontal nudity than any film since Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books. But here's the thing -- one naked person may be salacious, but a dozen naked people hardly register. Go figure.)

Attempting to coach these couples are wedding planners Archibald (Vincent Franklin) and Gregory (Jason Watkins). They're gay (check out the matching lilac shirts and ties) and, as it turns out, share the film's healthiest relationship.

Confetti is rarely bust-a-gut funny. Its humor is light and whimsical.

But a marvelous thing happens. We start caring about these characters.

Yes, they're superficial and contrived, but as they near the big day -- when the three couples will take their vows in back-to-back-to-back ceremonies beneath the critical eyes of a panel of judges -- they rise to the occasion.

At the last minute, all the hassles and fears are set aside and, against all odds, everybody gets a dream wedding.

And we get to leave the theater feeling pretty darn good.

Review: Confetti - Cinematical
Posted by Christopher Campbell
September 15, 2006

No matter how much planning and money goes into them, wedding ceremonies are generally all the same. Sure, there are slight variations depending on religious denomination and little personal touches, but they basically lack any sort of originality due to their overall adherence to traditions, which keep them from breaking new ground. For those not involved in the actual wedding party, and even for some who are involved, the ceremony is just a boring obstacle that must be endured before getting to the fun part, the reception. Yet, weddings continue to be, for the most part, under the guise of entertainment, as they typically have an audience.

Therein lays the basis for Confetti, a comic mockumentary that tries to spice up the idea of weddings as enjoyment for all in attendance. It follows three engaged couples as they compete in a contest for most original wedding, sponsored by a wedding magazine that's tired of showcasing, "just another woman in a white dress," on its cover. The contest seems like a great concept at first, but as the magazine's publisher (Jimmy Carr) and editor-in-chief (Felicity Montagu) discover, there is a reason why ceremonies don't often open up to new ideas.

The film, which was conceived and directed by Debbie Isitt, at times has a similar problem of being great in theory but having little success with the execution. There is only so much that can be played around with here, and while sustaining a modestly funny premise and delivering a few gut-bursting moments, it often relies on the stretching of its main jokes and gags. The first sign of trouble with the concept as a whole, for both contest and film, occurs early on during the process of selecting the three couples who will face off for the big prize. Isitt fails to present much in the way of other couples' ideas for an original wedding. So when it comes down to those who are chosen, it feels more like the only three ideas rather than the best three ideas. Even showing some entries that aren't funny would have helped, and any parody of so-called "geek weddings" (Star Wars; LOTR, etc.) would have been easy, as well as very much appreciated.

The chosen couples include Matt (Martin Freeman) and Sam (Jessica Stevenson), who want their wedding in the style of a Busby Berkeley musical, Joseph (Stephen Mangan) and Isabelle (Meredith MacNeil), who are going with a tennis motif, and Michael (Robert Webb) and Joanna (Olivia Colman), who are naturists that simply wish to get married in the nude. Each idea is different enough to provide for separate sources of humor, all stemming from a lot of simple, obvious drama. The musical couple are pretty much tone deaf, the tennis players are too competitive and the naturists aren't permitted to actually be nude. There are other storylines that supply some soapy scenes, including Matt and Sam's issues with her over-involved mother and sister (Alison Steadman and Sarah Hadland, respectively), but there really isn't much added to the thickness of the plot as the film progresses.

Rounding out the main cast and contributing the most comedic brilliance are Jason Watkins and Vincent Franklin as a pair of wedding planners, who also happen to be partners romantically. It is with this duo's hilarious interaction with and interconnecting of the contestants that Confetti ends up a real treat to watch. They ham up their scenes with riotous energy and flair, but not too distractingly goofy that they rise too far above the film's verity.

The main problem may have to do with expectations for greater goofiness. Confetti is a picture that immediately calls to mind the silliness of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries, which advance the jokes with each new scene, while often faltering in their need to try too hard. But films like Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show garner more laughs, so they are easily perceived as the better examples of the genre. Yet some recent films that technically fall under the format of mockumentary, such as Brothers of the Head and Death of a President, may confuse audiences with their absence of drollery. I would almost group Confetti in with Brothers, which did have a more subtle, underlying dry wit about it, but it really falls somewhere in between that film and Guest's.

Confetti could even be more comparable to the highly improvised films of Mike Leigh, who relates to this film by having cast many of its actors at one time or another. Like Leigh, Isitt worked without a preliminary script, developing the characters and their actions with her performers along the way. So little was known, in fact, about the direction of the film's plot that the contest's winner was not even pre-arranged, and members of the cast were constantly surprised by what was happening in storylines not featuring them. So, in some ways Confetti can be appreciated for its ambition and for having favored a more realistic succession of events over cheap bits and giggles. However, this appreciation doesn't make up for the fact that it doesn't come close to Leigh's mastering of the process, and is therefore slighted by the comparison.

The fact that the banality of wedding ceremonies hasn't kept them out of the movies -- in fact they may be more featured on film than any other of life's events -- shows that people are familiar enough with them to be satisfied, rather than bored, with the lack of originality involved. Certainly there is a reason that most couples don't attempt more creativity in the planning of their weddings, and Confetti gives this reason early on and then keeps giving it more and more. Unfortunately, anyone who's been married will know before the film even begins, and without a large supply of humor to be entertained with while the characters continue figuring it out on screen, the audience would probably rather just sit through a traditional ceremony than see how the original ones turn out.

CNS Movie Review: Confetti
By Harry Forbes
Catholic News Service
September 15, 2006

NEW YORK (CNS) -- "You gotta have a gimmick," sing the burlesque queens in the musical "Gypsy." But at a wedding?

The reasonably amusing "Confetti" (Fox Searchlight/BBC) chronicles three couples vying for the title of "most original wedding in Britain" in a competition dreamed up by the executives -- editor Vivien Kaye-Wiley (Felicity Montagu) and the magazine's owner, Antoni Clarke (Jimmy Carr) -- of the titular British bridal magazine.

The finalists are Hollywood-musical fans Matt (Martin Freeman) and Sam (Jessica Stevenson); supercompetitive tennis buffs Josef (Stephen Mangan) and Isabelle (Meredith MacNeill); and, ahem, nudists Michael (Robert Webb) and Joanna (Olivia Colman).

Their ceremonies will be executed along the lines of their respective interests, under the guidance of campy wedding planners Archibald (Vincent Franklin) and Gregory (Jason Watkins).

Director Debbie Isitt's largely improvised satire -- her target being contemporary society's penchant for ostentatious weddings -- generates some laughs and contains a good many truths about human relationships. But it contains a fair amount of expletives, and some also may be put off by the uninhibited -- though it's nonsexual and not in the least titillating -- nudity of the naturalist pair.

The jealousies and infighting among the contestants and even between the brides and grooms and their families, are, alas, true to life and will strike a responsive chord, but ultimately nearly everyone shows support for one another, with one sour-grapes exception.

The improvisational method used in the filming works surprisingly well, and gives the film its intended documentary feel. Some might have preferred a more focused, traditional script, but there's no denying the film's quirky charm.

Some of England's best comic talent does a commendable job of improvising. Supporting players like director-Mike-Leigh-favorite Alison Steadman, who has a good turn as Sam's interfering mother, are equally adept.

The inevitable competitions at the end are mostly fun, especially the Busby Berkeley-like musical extravaganza.

The film contains conversational rough language and profanity, full male and female nudity, some innuendo, a brief hint of a gay marriage at the end of the film, and a couple of rough brawls. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. More reviews are available online at www.usccb.org/movies.

LA Daily News - "Confetti" falls flat without wit and lively writing
By Bob Strauss - Film Critic
September 14, 2006

It's not stupid. The performers give it their all (in at least two cases, their altogether, too). It doesn't get too cutesy like so many British comedies. And heaven knows, the subject is worthy of satire.

All good things. So I'm not really sure why the improvised British mockumentary "Confetti" hardly ever made me laugh. This is a case where it really could be me; throughout the screening, my brain was telling me that someone else may quite legitimately bust a gut at this thing.

What it is about is a competition to stage the most original wedding in Britain. "Not everyone wants their wedding ruined by a gimmick ... but some do," reckons the publisher of Confetti magazine, a slick publication devoted to all things nuptial. He sponsors a contest in which three couples vie for a million-dollar dream house. And as you can probably tell from the quoted line, this movie has parallels to Christopher Guest's films ("Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show") and whiffs of "The Office" (both versions) all over it.

But "Confetti" comes off more like a reality TV show, in which the participants just don't express their obsessive cluelessness as exquisitely as sharp writers can through trained actors.

Make no mistake: "Confetti's" ensemble cast is all pro. But director Debbie Isitt left them to their own improvisational devices to a greater extent than even Guest does his well-oiled rep group. There's no story credit on this film, let alone one for even a rudimentary scenario. The actors did an impressive job of filling in and fleshing out. But you can sense the strain in some scenes, while others don't seem developed enough.

And that's probably why I didn't chuckle much. But if any of the following ideas tickle your funnybone, by all means go and have a ball.

The three finalists are:

Matt ("Love Actually" and English "Office's" Martin Freeman) and Sam (Jessica Stevenson), who want a Broadway musical-themed ceremony but can't sing or dance.

Josef (Stephen Mangan) and Isabelle (Meredith MacNeill), super-competitive and, by extension, obnoxious, tennis players.

And the naturists Michael and Joanna (Robert Webb and Olivia Colman, both of whom hail from television's appropriately titled "Peep Show"). They want a nude wedding, of course, which is the last thing that Confetti's editor wants.

There is also a gay pair of wedding planners, Archibald (Vincent Franklin) and Gregory (Jason Watkins), whose every suggestion is violently rejected by each couple.

Potential disaster threatens every step to the three-way happy day. I don't want to spoil any surprises — especially for a film that thinks naked people are so hilarious, it inevitably shows us one when nothing else is working — but let's just say that "Confetti's" big climax is satisfyingly over the top.

Wish I would have had more fun on the way to the altar.

Confetti's improvised wedding
Improv ruled the set of Confetti, a sendup of the British wedding industry.
By Susan King, LA Times Staff Writer
September 14, 2006

There are not many filmmakers who would strip down to their birthday suit to direct, but that's exactly what Debbie Isitt did for her new comedy, "Confetti," which opens Friday.

The reason she frequently worked in the nude was because two characters in the improvised mockumentary about three couples planning their dream weddings are naturists.

"We shared the humility," the British director said. "I got naked during the shoot for their bit to help them. That was hideously embarrassing for me. I'm not that kind of person. I still get undressed with the light off at home, so that was really hard. But when they asked if I would…. And it was absolutely freezing. It was October and November and we were pretending it was summer."

"Confetti" is an affectionate sendup of the wedding industry in England. It follows what happens when the country's leading glamour wedding magazine — the aptly titled and completely fictional Confetti — announces a competition in which three engaged couples are given six weeks to plan elaborate weddings for a chance to win a dream house.

Martin Freeman, of the British version of "The Office," and Jessica Stevenson play couple No. 1 — hard-working, middle-class lovebirds who want their wedding to be fashioned after a Busby Berkeley musical of the 1930s.

Stephen Mangan and Meredith MacNeill play couple No. 2 — obnoxious, competitive tennis players who want their Wimbledon-theme wedding to feature dancing ball boys.

Robert Webb and Olivia Colman are couple No. 3 — the naturists who want to shed their clothes for their ceremony, much to the chagrin of the magazine's editor (Felicity Montagu).

Planning all three weddings with the couples is a flamboyant team, life partners Heron (Vincent Franklin) and Hough (Jason Watkins).

Isitt started playing with the idea of doing an improvisational movie when she directed her first feature, "Nasty Neighbours," which she adapted from her own play. She found herself frequently throwing out the script and letting the actors expand on what she had written.

She then experimented with a completely improvised short film, "Tribute," about a tribute act to a 1960s rock duo. "There is a big show in England called 'Stars in Their Eyes,' where you go on and impersonate your favorite idol," she said. "So I said, 'Let's try and get you on the show for real, passing you off as a real act.' I filmed the endeavor for three months and the material was so fantastic. Nobody knew they were real actors. It was just a joy to work like that."

It took her a while to find the right cast for "Confetti."

"Some actors just freeze when they have to say their own lines," she said. "I tried to cast to type as much as possible because with this kind of work when you are in character all day, every day, you end up drawing on yourself. There is a limit to how much you can invent. We found actors who are a bit like these characters so they can develop into fully fledged characters."

Isitt had only the actors playing the couples meet briefly before cameras began to roll.

"The whole point is that the activity of what you are engaging in the only important thing," she said. "This is all about getting something done. They had to get on and plan their weddings for real. I said, 'A wedding day is set, people will be coming, the ceremony has to be good and get on it with. You only have six weeks.'"

As the wedding planners, Watkins and Franklin believe they had the most fun of all the actors in the film.

"Me, Vince and the couples invented, shaped, planned and decided what those weddings would be," Watkins said. Working within a set budget for each wedding, they visited florists, dress designers and wedding cake makers in order to create the ceremonies with the six actors playing the would-be brides and grooms. Once the themes were selected, the film's production and costume designers began to work on the ceremonies.

Before filming started, Watkins and Franklin created an elaborate back story for their characters.

"We worked out who we were and who their families were," Watkins said. "We figured out that Vince's brother married my sister and that's how we met. He had a kind of background in event management and I had a background in fashion. It was very important for us to believe we were a couple. Because my character is a lot more camp than Vince's — and we are both straight playing a gay couple — we wanted to do it properly and accurate and loving."

Because the entire film was improvised, the actors never really knew what was going to happen around the corner — especially in a scene in which Hough and Heron are demonstrating their ideas for dancing ball boys on a tennis court to the competitive couple. During the sequence, Mangan and Jesus de Miguel, a real-life tennis pro who plays their coach in the movie, get into a fight.

"I assumed, as most actors, that when I would step into the improvisation and say [as my character], 'Come on, lads, break it up,' they would back off," Franklin said.

But they didn't.

"They were really going for it. So I really did have to pin [Mangan] to the ground. My glasses really did get broken."

Watkins and Franklin also decided their characters should go the Full Monty themselves to participate in the naturists' wedding.

"It felt right," Watkins said.

Franklin believes that the wedding planners are the most solid couple in the movie.

"When we shot the film, in this country, gay people couldn't get married," he said. "So it was quite ironic that these two men, who lived weddings completely, couldn't get married themselves. But now the law has changed over here."

Since the film's release in England, Franklin is often approached on the street by women in their late 20s.

"I say [to myself], 'Great, a woman is coming on to me.' Then I realize all she wants is for me to give advice about her wedding."

Most of the performers - including Martin Freeman and Jessica Stevenson - come from the more experimental end of British comedy.
Photo: Supplied

My big geek wedding
By Stephanie Bunbury
Film - Entertainment - theage.com.au
July 30, 2006

To capture the chaos of the modern wedding, director Debbie Isitt threw out the script and let the actors improvise their way through the big day.

What a business it is to get married. The fabulous expenses of venue, food, music, frock; the burden of meaning invested in the ceremony of one's choosing or, very often, composition; the clamouring of family and friends with barrows to push; the terrible injunction to have the best day of your life.

When British director Debbie Isitt's sister woke up on her big day, she decided to spark up her eyes with some drops. Immediately she put them in, her face began to swell up. "She looked terrible, she felt terrible and she was blind," says Isitt bluntly. "She really couldn't see anything and, also, she was in agony." She left for her honeymoon with a stick to feel her way out of the door, red and swollen. That certainly wasn't the best day of her life, despite the best-laid catering plans, the frock and everything else.

The disaster of it all, however, set Isitt thinking about those nuptial expectations. For two years, she trawled websites, marvelling at the money that could be spent on the big day's trappings and swapping notes with people planning a day to remember.

"I didn't get out of that world for two years," she says. "I just completely fell in love with the industry, got into chatrooms with the brides and had such a good time." Isitt was a theatrical writer and director, but she could see that this was the sort of idea that belonged on film, even if it was likely to be a conventional film.

Confetti, the result of these ponderings, follows three couples who win a bridal magazine's competition for "original" ideas. In return for being able to use each couple's special moment for promotional purposes, the magazine will pay all expenses. The winners, moreover, will get a dream home in the country, although, rather suspiciously, that house is currently only available as an artist's impression. "I wasn't particularly interested in people just having an odd wedding," she says. "It was the nature of the competition that really appealed to me. I had to create a situation where the stakes were very high for everyone so that things would happen."

Crucially, she could see that while she did not want to make a documentary, anything she made up could never be as weird and wacky as the workings of chance - there was no way, for example, she could ever have come up with the idea of a wedding ruined by eye drops. So she thought about ways to make her fictional marriages between actors acquire their own sort of reality, something that would allow the worst to happen naturally.

Her solution was to improvise everything. The three weddings - a ceremony like a tennis match for two grimly ambitious tennis pros, a wedding at one with nature for a couple of nudists, and a festive Hollywood musical spectacular for a couple of suburban Fred-and-Ginger fans - were her ideas. She nutted out the characters. From there on, however, the actors were on their own.

"The actors had no rehearsals and nothing written down," Isitt explains. "They couldn't plan to come up with a clever or funny idea because they didn't know what I was going to ask them to do. On a given day, they'd know what aspect of planning their wedding they were engaged in, but everything that happened between them was up to them, just as if it were a real documentary."

So Jason Watkins and Vincent Franklin, the actors playing the wedding planners, had to go out into the world and find a venue for the event, staying in character as they did it. The three couples were left to think up their own ideas about their weddings, fight the planners and develop their own tensions, reined in only when Isitt thought the improvisations had drifted into being about the actors rather than their characters or if they had begun to stagnate.

Most of the performers come from the more experimental end of British television comedy, shows such as Spaced, Green Wing and The Office; clearly, they relished the opportunity to push another envelope. "I think actors often improvise in character anyway," says Jessica Stevenson. She plays mousy Sam, one half of the Busby Berkeley couple. "When the camera stops rolling and you're not on the script, but you are still in character - it's something actors do a lot.

"This was extreme in some ways, but in the workshops and the lead-up Debbie led us to it quite gently. It didn't feel perilous or terrifying. And we were all in the same boat." She snickers. "There were times when we told Debbie we were in character, but we were really just sitting down and having a cup of tea as ourselves. She would never know! Although we did need to break our characters sometimes to talk about what we were doing, you know."

Isitt found other ways to create verisimilitude. Some smaller roles - the magazine's editorial assistant, a plastic surgeon, a tennis coach, the lawyer who tells the couples there is no way out of their competition commitments - are played by the genuine articles as variations on themselves. Because again, who could possibly think up a consultation with a surgeon about a nose job that would be funnier than the real McCoy?

It is her own brand of funny, though. Isitt did not want to construct a comedy or count off joke lines. As long as she included enough tensely divorced parents, jealous exes, overbearing families and, crucially, the pull between the various couples' ideals and the less idealistic aspirations of their commercial sponsors, the comedy should take care of itself.

"I don't want to make work that is just about laughing every five seconds, then walking out and forgetting about it," she says. "For lots of people, the memory of the film is Jessica (Stevenson's) little tear when she talks about her dad, or the wedding planner bursting into tears when he's had enough - moments that are about exhaustion, despair or whatever."

The exhaustion was probably real enough. There was nothing fictional about the competition as an event - and an event with a very tight planning deadline, given that the whole shoot was a set-in-stone six weeks. "I think what I trusted," says Isitt, "was that if we kept pushing forward, if we kept moving on the task, then all the stuff I wanted would happen accidentally." The construction crew, meanwhile, sat in on these improvised arguments, waiting until perilously close to the scheduled multiple wedding day to find out what they would have to do in the all-too-real world of set-making and lighting.

"I told them that what we were about to do was, I believe, unprecedented," says Isitt. "A lot of people have worked with improvisation, but it's not just dialogue we're improvising here but everything else. There were moments when the production designer, Chris Roope, was saying, you know, 'We've got three weeks and I haven't got a rig and I don't know what is going on!' and I would say 'Would you mind me filming you saying that to the planners?' And we did film them doing some of that stuff, which made everyone feel they were in a game. I guess most of them thought 'never again', you know. But they did it."

All the shenanigans were filmed on high-definition digital by Dewald Aukema, whose experience includes a lot of documentary. The result, of course, was a daunting wealth of variations on every theme - 150 hours of rushes that, Isitt says, she could have put together in any number of different ways. She had deliberately shot three different endings, allowing each couple to win and investigating the aftermath accordingly. An independent - and real - panel of judges made a decision on the day, although she did not abide by it.

Fortunately the film's editor, Nicky Ager, is also her partner in real life; only true love, she says, could have borne them through the tumult of cutting a story from so much material. "It was so hard," says Isitt. "There were so many lovely moments. Sometimes the actors went off on all kinds of tangents that were very amusing; the hard thing was to give them as much equal screen time as I could and to keep the concept clear and simple and the lines clear." Stevenson says Isitt "created" her performance by carving it out. "There was so much extraneous guff I wondered how they could make a story out of it. But I loved watching it, including mine and Martin (Freeman's) story."

Which would Isitt have chosen for herself, if she were the marrying kind? "I kept changing my mind all the time," she says. "I thought the tennis wedding was the most original. The most barmy. The naturist one was really moving. But I think my personal favourite was the singing and dancing one, because I was brought up on those musicals and it's more romantic, somehow."

After 18 months in the editing suite she and Ager wondered if perhaps they would change their minds about having a wedding themselves. "But we probably never will," she says. "Planning weddings is like making films, anyway. It's the same thing. Just another pre-production."

Martin Freeman at the premiere of his latest film Confetti.
Picture by PA

Hilarious wedding mockumentary richly deserves a good reception
By Damon Smith
Scotsman.com Living
May 4, 2006

CONFETTI (15)**** - UK rating for language and nudity

FOLLOWING the lead of Christopher Guest and his improvisatory style of film-making (Best In Show, A Mighty Wind), British film-maker Debbie Isitt uncorks the creative juices of her ensemble cast for this hilarious mockumentary of pre-marital jitters and strife.

Isitt gave her actors scope to embellish and enrich their characters, ad-libbing with gusto to create a memorable menagerie of oddballs and misfits.

The cast nurtured their alter egos in improvisational workshops, remaining in character for the entire production period to ensure spontaneity and sustain the "reality" of the set-up. More than 150 hours of footage was then meticulously pruned and polished into a compact 99 minutes.

The result is a hugely entertaining confection, which, like the very best weddings, has tantrums, tears and blushing brides in abundance, not to mention flashes of nudity.

Confetti conceals its disjointed narrative behind the dramatic conceit of a reality TV game show, which also provides the film with its underlying tension, even though Isitt skews our affections heavily towards the likely winners.

When Confetti bridal magazine announces a competition to find Most Original Wedding Of The Year, with a £500,000 dream home as first prize, couples from across the UK excitedly apply.

Egotistical publisher Antoni Clarke (Jimmy Carr) and editor Vivienne Kay-Wylie (Felicity Montagu) choose their three favourites: hopeless romantics Matt (Martin Freeman) and Sam (Jessica Stevenson) with their Busby Berkeley musical theme; professional tennis partners Josef (Stephen Mangan) and Isabelle (Meredith MacNeill) and their courtside ceremony complete with giant bouncing balls; and nudists Michael (Robert Webb) and Joanne (Olivia Colman), who want to tie the knot in their au naturel.

Working with flamboyant gay wedding planners Heron & Hough (Vincent Franklin, Jason Watkins), the three couples make preparations for their big days, aware that the judges will be watching their every "I do".

Confetti mines some wonderful moments of comedy and pathos. Sam's rivalry with her attention-seeking sister Jen (Sarah Hadland), a cruise ship dancer who knows a thing or two about jazz hands, reaches a crescendo when Jen tries to hijack the wedding and turn it into a showcase for her performance skills.

When the bickering finally becomes too much, Sam snaps and the emotional dam bursts, affording Stevenson the film's best dramatic scene, sobbing that she just wanted to feel like a princess for one day in her life.

Another priceless moment is Josef's inept attempts to compose a love song for his fiancée, side-stepping a lyrical minefield by clumsily rhyming Maria Sharapova with the creatively misnamed Bosnia-Herzegova.

Watkins and Franklin are hysterical, playing arguably the most blissfully happy twosome in the entire film.

Telegraph | Arts | Little love and not many laughs
May 5, 2006

Confetti (15 cert, 100 min)

Constant misanthropy is depressing and tiresome in something that calls itself a romantic comedy, finds Tim Robey

Confetti gives us not four weddings but three, and no Hugh Grant or snogs in the rain. Nor is there a funeral, though it sometimes feels like one.

Debbie Isitt's film features stars from everyone's favourite depressive sitcoms - The Office, Nighty Night, Peep Show. Imagine any two characters from any one of those shows getting married and you get the rough idea. A bridal magazine called Confetti is offering the prize of a dream home (cue snapshot of a soul-crushingly drab two-up, two-down) to whichever of three couples devises the most original wedding concept.

In the normal and likeable corner are Matt (Martin Freeman) and Samantha (Jessica Stevenson), who propose a homage to Busby Berkeley musicals. In the strange-but-endearing corner are naturists Michael (Robert Webb, a brave man) and Joanna (Olivia Colman), who simply suggest not wearing anything. And in the weird and unfunny corner are tennis freaks Josef (Stephen Mangan) and Isabelle (Meredith MacNeill), who want to win at all costs, even if it means giving Isabelle a drastic nose-job and coming across as complete lunatics.

It's a shame Isitt didn't apply the originality brief to her movie itself, which borrows far too liberally from Christopher Guest's "mockumentaries", particularly Best in Show (2000). We get the gay wedding planners (Vincent Franklin and Jason Watkins, both very good) whose weepy/queeny rapport looks like a direct lift from Guest's homosexual dog-lovers. And we get the competition tying it all up neatly at the end.

Confetti does have its scattered sharp moments. Freeman, born to be ordinary in a dressing gown, rescues it almost single-handedly whenever he's just smiling up at Stevenson, and the idea of Nighty Night's Julia Davis as a marriage guidance counsellor would give anyone cold feet. But however much feelgood icing it sticks on the cake, snide misanthropy is this film's stock-in-trade. It leaves you feeling jilted.

Funniest weddings of the year
Romford Recorder
May 4, 2006

MOST of Britain's bright young TV comedy things come together for one of the funniest Brit films for some years.

CONFETTI (15) pits three couples against each other in a competition to find the most original wedding of the year. The prize is a £500,000 house.

Told in the less-than-original spoof documentary style, the film follows the preparations and the big day itself. It is silly and hilarious.

Martin Freeman (Tim in The Office), Jessica Stevenson (Spaced and The Royle Family), Stephen Mangan (Green Wing), Robert Webb (The Smoking Room), Felicity Montagu (Suburban Shootout) and stand-up comic and TV presenter Jimmy Carr are among the stars.

Webb and Olivia Colman (The Office and Green Wing) are the bravest actors, spending much of their time on screen starkers as the couple planning a naturist wedding.

Rarely, if ever, can a mainstream film have featured so much full frontal nudity.

Vincent Franklin and Jason Watkins ham it up wonderfully as the gay wedding planners given the task of organising all three nuptials for the competition, being staged by Confetti magazine.

Mangan's ultra-competitive Josef is almost a carbon copy of his Green Wing character as he and fiancee Isabelle plan a tennis-themed wedding.

Freeman and Stevenson are Matt and Samantha, dreaming of a wedding styled on a Busby Berkeley musical and planning to sing their vows despite Samantha being tone deaf and "physically dyslexic", as her sister puts it.

And Alison Steadman is marvellous as the worst of interfering brides' mothers.

The whole film was improvised. There were no rehearsals and nothing written down. Director Debbie Isitt, who came up with the idea for the film, says: "I decided to ask the actors if they would pretend to be their characters and plan their weddings over the course of about two months. I would observe them and try to interfere as little as possible.

"They couldn't plan to come up with a clever or funny idea because they didn't know what I was going to ask them to do.

"On a given day, they'd know what aspect of planning their wedding they were engaged in but everything that happened between them was up to them, just as if it were a real documentary."

The result will keep you cheerfully laughing throughout.