by salon.com
Dermot Mulroney single-handedly scoops up this movie-- in which Debra Messing plays a woman who hires an escort to take her to her sister's wedding ---- and carries it across the threshold.
Strictly speakin, Dermot Mulroney is the movie's only genuinely romatic lead. He is so good that he nearly carries
"The Wedding Date" singlehandedly.
The first glimpse we get of him is not of his face but of his shoes--
we see him from the legs down, zipping into a taxicab, clad in black trouses and hip-looking neat black loafers.
(We know were in trouble when his shoes makes a bigger impression than Messing's do). Later, when we finally see Mulroney's face, we get what we're waiting for: His features are handsome in a way
that's neither to soft or rugged. He represents the perfect intersection
of civilization and wilderness--untamed
Alaska and urbane Paris in just one guy.
Mulroney is a stealth actor: Whenever you see him in a picture, you're not just reminded of how good he almost always is--
you have the sense of discovering it for the first time.
But he's the kind of actor who warms up as you watch him--he has a gift of drawing secrets out ofhis characters gradually,
instead of giving the game away in the first few scenes.
Early on, Kat annouces to Nick that she finds the idea of having sex for money "morally repugnant."
Nick fixes her with a stare that stops her cold, a look that says not
"Don't insult me" but "Don't condenscend to me".
In another scene, she marvels at how easily he can charm every woman (of any age) in a room, just by being himself.
"Who say's I'm being myself"
he asks her leaving the question hovering in the air like smoke.
Mulroney has no use for little-boy hurt feelings in this performance; he's complicated in a way that Messing can't come close to matching.
But he's so believable as a romantic lead that he almost manages
to sweep Messing along, too.
He looks at her face with so much unflinching certainty
that we find ourselves peering at it too:
if he can see that special something, then surely it must be there.
We find ourselves taking his word for it; in the end,
he steals away with our better judgement
tucked safely in his breast pocket.
Now that's acting!