It was so nice to end Outfest 2007 with a comedy and "Kiss the Bride" certainly provided some laughs. The two handsome and talented male leads were very appealing and Tori Spelling got to sink her teeth into a role far more challenging than her reality show gigs. But the biggest challenge was keeping the actresses' growing tummy covered since she was pregnant during filming and her character was NOT. She clutched a pillow over her stomach in one scene, was wrapped in a feather boa in another and then, of course, there was the bouquet covering her in the wedding rehearsal and actual wedding scene. Still, there were a few times when she just looked pregnant! In her early scenes, I wasn't so sure Tori was the best casting choice but she pulls off some terrifically touching scenes later in the movie even if the ending is a bit absurd.
Spelling plays Alex, a bride to be whose fiancee Ryan (James O'Shea) is stunned to see his high school best friend and former love Matt (Phillipp Karner) show up for the wedding. They've been apart for 10 years but old feelings surface in the nights before the wedding with Matt trying to derail thing a la Julia Roberts in "My Best Friends Wedding." Ryan dismisses their old romance as just a high school thing, but Matt realizes Ryan may still be the love of his life.

The movie was directed by C. Jay Cox ("Latter Days") and written by 25-year-old Tyler Lieberman. The young screenwriter provides veteran performers Robert Foxworth, Tess Harper and Joanna Cassidy with some good material with Harper escpecially touching as the groom's mom. Spelling gets some great comic lines such as when she makes out with gay Matt. Ryan catches them in the compromising position and asks: "If you're so gay then what's your submarine doing fully surfaced?" In the same scene, Alex says to her fiancee: "There's a gay man in the next room with a hard on with my name on it!" After Alex catched Matt and Ryan in a kiss, she says: "You know what the worst part is? You guys make a really cute couple." Wanting Ryan to be sure she wants to marry her and not be gay, she says to the two - the night before her wedding: "You have to F**k! ...If there's any possibility that you're gonna leave me for a man, I'd want it to be now and I'd want it to be [Matt]."
This is where the movie loses all crediblity but you just allow your suspension of disbelief to kick in and ride it through to the end. I mean, how's this for a line from Ryan...AT the alter: "I don't love men, I just love Matt."
Sure pal.

Things to look for: Some hot love scenes between Karner and O'Sheah that you will very much enjoy. O'Shea is shirtless a lot in the movie and it's a good thing. Then there is Matt's friend back home, Stephanie (Jane Cho) who keeps for updates and Cho makes this role a comic delight.
"You are SO Julia Roberts in 'My Best Friends Wedding...have you been making coffee out of the bong water?"
and...
"Are you at the part yet where you try and run Cameron Diaz down with a delivery truck?"
Charlie David ("Dante's Cove") has a few two-brief scenes as Matt's soon-to-be ex-boyfriend back in San Francisco and drag queen Momma is seen out of wig and dress playing a waiter in a scene that really is a hoot.