REVIEWED - CONFETTI: I DARE say that the people behind Confetti, a decent British comedy following the contestants in a competition to find the most outrageous wedding, will get very tired of reading reviews that mention the films of Christopher Guest.
Well, if you will ask coach-loads of the nation's comedians to improvise a mock documentary focusing on the preparation for some camp extravaganza, then you must expect people to mutter about Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman.
To be fair, Guest might not be ashamed of Confetti. Debbie Isitt's romp is notably funnier than most recent British film comedies. It is, however, not up to the high standards set by the best contemporary humour from the BBC and Channel 4. A glance at the cast list will demonstrate why that comparison is hard to avoid.
Confetti features contributions from graduates of (deep breath) Green Wing, The Office, Nighty Night, Spaced, Peep Show and I'm Alan Partridge. Throw Alison Steadman and Jimmy Carr into the mix and you have enough top funny folk to launch an invasion of a small continent.
It would take a perverse genius to put these people before a camera without generating some laughs. Sure enough, there are plenty of comic exchanges throughout. Olivia Colman and Robert Webb are particularly amusing - he smug, she wary - as a pair of naturists preparing to go down the aisle without dress or tails. Martin Freeman and Jessica Stevenson, playing a couple obsessed with MGM musicals, are charmingly restrained. And Julia Davis's cameo as an icy marriage counsellor is characteristically rewarding.
That said, Confetti, even given the slackness allowed by the genre, suffers from a distinct lack of narrative arcs. The couples do whatever it is they do for an hour or so. Then one of them - why this one, we wonder? - performs a little better than the others at the competition and triumphs. It all seems a tad perfunctory.
Still, the picture will do well enough until Guest's latest, For Your Consideration, opens later in the year.
