Decoy Bride: Devoted to Convention

If you’re looking for a decent Romantic Comedy, then Decoy Bride is it. It’s an extremely middle of the road film, which is a good thing. So many times I have seen a Rom-Com stretch itself in an attempt to be different or fresh, but because of this stretching wild departure from the standard Rom-Com template, it loses itself and becomes mediocre. Only a very select and excellently written few manage to escape the clutches of this fate of mediocrity.

Now, the opinion of the previous paragraph is a sort of paradox. While this film does feel as if it’s calmer and more realistic than some of the other counterparts that share its genre, the plot runs to the outer extremes of probability and stays teetering atop “the cliffs of suspension of disbelief” throughout most of, if not all of, the film.

I think that this weird split between the calm tone and the zany plot has a lot to do with where the writers decided to place “reality.” This story features crazy Hollywood people, but they are two-dimensional and make irrational, over-the-top choices that really sap away any sort of true connection we might have experienced with them. Then there are the Scottish locals who are also stereotyped, but this time as small town caricatures. While these characters are fun, they do not enable a deep audience connection. The only characters who are real throughout the whole of this film are our protagonist Katie NicAoidh (Kelly Macdonald) and her ailing mother Iseabail NicAoidh (Maureen Beattie).

Please note that a large chunk of spoilers follow so that I may explain my position of the above described narrative paradox.

At the start of this film photographers line the streets in front of a church in order to catch a shot of the world-famous actress Lara Tyler (Alice Eve). She’s going to marry the one-hit-wonder novelist James Arber (David Tennant) and photographs of the event are an extremely sought after commodity. But this particular wedding is a diversion. The real wedding is being held in a secret location that nobody knows about—except for Marco Balani (Federico Castelluccio), the best paparazzi in the world. He has found the location and takes secret snapshots of the bridal procession from inside an organ! Lara Tyler is furious and decides that the wedding is off until they can find a suitable place to get married that won’t be disturbed by even the craftiest of photographers.

Do you see what I mean about the zany plot? All of this craziness is set up within the first five minutes of the film.

Meanwhile, Katie NicAoidh returns to her home on the tiny, super-remote island of Hegg after her fiancé has dumped her. She moves back in with her ailing mother who runs the only B&B on the island, and she returns to her old job as the clerk at the one bookstore in town. Katie is the only single person on the island and she is destined to grow into a bitter old maid—and as far as her attitude’s concerned, she’s already there. Katie’s mother is excited because some marketing people are coming to town for a convention, and that means money. Of course, the marketing people are actually wedding scouts for Lara Tyler, but they’re not letting anyone in on the secret. It seems that the future Mr. Lara Tyler, James Arber, chose Hegg as the setting for his one and only hit novel—The Ornithologist’s Wife. Lara’s agent Steve Korbitz (Michael Urie) has decided to give his client her dream wedding. She fell in love with James Arber after reading his book, so she’s going to get a wedding themed in the style of that very same unending tome.

Despite the fact that Steve discovers that everything that James wrote about the island is fiction (the castle is decrepit and moldering, the people are Scottish hicks, etc), things go along without a hitch. Steve spares no expense to renovate the castle, James and Lara arrive successfully, and there’s no press to be found. But when Lara spies the notorious Marco Ballani sneaking around the island, her wedding plans are threatened once more. She goes into hiding to avoid being photographed, and Steve must scramble to fix yet another marriage debacle. He decides to cast the bitter Katie as a decoy bride so that he can fool the pesky Marco Ballani, and get him off the island before the real wedding takes place.

And here is where our lonely protagonist meets the so-called illustrious author that got everything wrong about her life-long home. Will these two be able to convince Ballani? More importantly, will James’ ego be able to withstand the withering criticism of this aimless native? And will she survive his criticisms of her empty life? The repartee between the two is biting and wonderful as we watch to see how all of this madness will turn out.

As things progress, we find the fake narcissistic quality of James fading away; and we see that beneath Katie’s cold exterior there lies a lonely girl, scared to love again. Of course, once we finally get down to the brass tacks of the story, we see that it fits quite cleanly into the Rom-Com archetype. But as any die hard Rom-Com fan knows, this is exactly how we like it. Is James falling for Katie? What about Lara? Who is he going to choose? Is Katie willing to try again at this painful thing called love? Will these two manage to unravel the tangled events they find themselves in? Or is this just a random series of accidents that will be long forgotten once the hubbub dies down? It’s these types of dorkily burning questions that make predictable films such as this one so enjoyable to watch.

So definitely throw some of your hard earned cash at this one. You’ll like it if you’re a Rom-Com fan, and your Rom-Com-loving partner will appreciate it if you suffer through it. At the very least, this film deserves kudos for making David Tennant (the one and only Dr. Who—or Harry Potter’s Bartimus “Barty” Crouch Junior for the non-sci-fi set) into a sex symbol. Who knew?