Deja Vu All Over Again

Every once in a while, a movie comes along so bereft of original thought that you're sure you've seen it before. Is this you wonder, just a re-release in the mode of By The Book being rebranded as Renaissance Man? Or some Frankenstein's monster constructed of choice elements from previous films (and starring Tara Reid)?

Such a film is The Wedding Date, starring Deborah Messing and Dermot Mulroney (alarm bells are ringing). From the trailers I feel as though I can already see the entire film unspooling before my eyes, right up to the tearful reunion on a trans-Atlantic flight. It's about time to come up with cinematic shorthand for this type of romantic comedy, allowing us to manuever through the permutations of boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back in roughly fifteen minutes or so. Let's face it, we've got places to go and people to see.