What it's about:
Jenny Farrell has led an openly gay life, except with her conventional family. When she finally decides to start a family and marry the woman they thought was just her roommate, the small, safe world the Farrells inhabited changes forever. They are left with a simple and difficult choice: Either change with it or drown.
What we thought:
It’s important to have movies like these. Movies that tell the story of gay couples and the struggle that comes with simply being who you are. It’s insane to think that you can be shunned by society for simply falling in love.
It’s also important that these movies are really good. Gay couples don’t always get the opportunity to tell their side of the story. So when a mainstream film rightfully shines the spotlight on gay marriage – it better be damn good.
Sadly Jenny’s Wedding fails miserably at this.
The whole flick has a made for TV feel about it and is soaked in one cliché after another. Like when Jenny is about to tell her mom she’s gay and warns that she’s about to drop “the bomb”.
Nobody talks like that anymore. The film’s concept of gay marriage and its place in modern society is outdated and old school. To be honest it feels a bit like a movie about gay people made by straight people for straight people.
Katherine Heigl, burned into our minds as the pretty rom-com blonde, fails miserably at making this love story work. Sadly Alexis Bedel, Heigl’s love interest in the film, doesn’t do much to help either. Jenny and Kitty’s love story is a sub-plot that gets lost in an outdated Lifetime flick that doesn’t push any boundaries.
We need more mainstream movies about gay couples, but they need to be much better than what Jenny’s Wedding is offering. We don’t need to treat these films like educational instructional videos. Just tell beautiful stories and the rest will follow.