The Wedding Ringer

At a time when films are queuing up for cinema releases in the UK it seems incomprehensible that regurgitated rhubarb should be given preference over homemade pie-and-mash. Multiplex fodder, such as this, is aimed at shopping mall doo-waps where anything more sophisticated than a fart joke is outlawed.

The Wedding Ringer is not The Wedding Singer. It's a vehicle for Kevin Hart, a pint-sized motormouth in the tradition of early Eddie Murphy. Add the other staple of modern Hollywood comedy, the overweight nerd, and the you have the ingredients for disaster.

Weddings are expressions of vulgarity in the States. Entire industries feed off them - planners, dressmakers, caterers, designers, gays. They are more about parental status than the happy-or-not couple.

Bic (Hart) runs a business providing best men for grooms who don't have friends. It's a skill, a confidence trick. In Doug's (Josh Gad) case it goes further. He's marrying Gretchen (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting) because she's beautiful and he's not and he can't believe his luck. Trouble is he has no best man and no groomsmen (ushers). Bic has to provide the lot - i.e a bunch of wasters and ex-cons, with himself in the talky-talky role of Doug's college bud.

What sounds like potential for inspired mayhem is painfully unimaginative. To call it Hartless would be unfair because he tries to beat the banality of the script with raw energy and big teeth. Doug bumbles. That's his role, ineffectual and unattractive, a performance that puts the flab into Gad

Even Friday night revelers might have difficulties with this. It doesn't go far enough and where it does go you don't want to be