THE KNOT

by Mark'd Commode

3.5 out of 10

Release Date: 5th of October 2012

Director: Jesse Lawrence

Cast: Noel Clarke, Matthew McNulty, Talulah Riley, Susannah Fielding, Louise Dylan, Jason Maza, Davie Fairbanks, Rhoda Montemayor, Juliet Oldfield, Vincenzo Nicoli, Flaminia Cinque, Steve Furst with Brett Goldstein and Mena Suvari

Writer: Noel Clarke

Trailer: THE KNOT

 

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The Knot has the unfortunate luck of being the third wedding comedy to arrive in short succession.  Whilst all three had their moments, they all paddle around in a swamp of fetid second hand jokes.  The Knot comes off worst being the last to arrive.  Already jaded by The Wedding Video, which was solid yet unmemorable and the over-manic “laugh or die” approach of the patchy A Few Best Men from Australia, The Knot seems like the runt of the litter.

What saves The Knot from being an utter dog is the chemistry between the actors.  The boys particularly convince and their down to earth pranks on the groom are genuinely funny. They are in fact in the domain of real life.  The guys are a group of doofi and stand-out doofus is Brett Goldstein as the bearded prat of the group.  From split suits to giving a pimp a blow job, the dude steals the show.  Unfortunately, the script is littered with a string of damn poor toilet jokes, what’s funny about a woman in a wedding dress with diahorrea? Nothing, it wasn’t even funny in Bridesmaids (the current winner of the wedding comedy race).  There’s a crushing inevitability to all the gags.  Disaster is telegraphed and there are few surprises. This brand of humour works at times, I was caught laughing frequently and I enjoyed it as a time passer.  But to be truly memorable it needed to go a lot further.  I need to be howling and misquoting the jokes for decades for a comedy to be more than fast food to me. The Knot sits in the below average, like a wet chicken burger from a fake KFC in Luton’s Bury Park, a nowhere land.  This will be lucky not to get filed away with other forgotten UK comedies like The Wedding Tackle (the what?), The Wedding Guest or Imagine Me and You. I bet you don’t remember any of those.

Noel Clarke (STAR TREK 2) is busy speeding around every genre known to man before he’s no longer famous, but he needs to slow down and take some care.  He’s a very likeable presence in virtually all his films but he can’t carry on this way as he’ll become short-hand for ‘rush-job’. At least there are jokes here unlike his comedy about comedy, Huge, which is a tiny corpse of a movie.  As Clarke wrote The Knot he can be blamed for the slap dash script.  Mena Suvari (AMERICAN BEAUTY) is the token American star on a down-swing who spends much of the time wringing her hands and looking out of place.  The central couple, Matthew McNulty (LITTLE ASHES) and Talulah Riley (THE BOAT THAT ROCKED) are good but they fail to make a lasting impression like anything else in this comedy. Half-decent actors like the ubiquitous Jason Maza (VICTIM) are left with very little to do as one of the boys!  Criminal waste. I did like Noel Clarke‘s glasses in this though. The main gag that stays with me from The Knot was all the WWF arsing around. I really had to wrack my brains to remember what I was laughing about so much… Oh well.

3.5 out of 10 – Funny, but not nearly as funny enough to last in the memory.

WHAT HAVE I SEEN THAT ACTOR IN BEFORE?

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