The Wedding Chapel (2013) Emmanuelle Vaugier, Shelley Long, Mark Deklin, Barclay Hope, Cindy Busby, Brett Dier, Chris Gauthier, Malcolm Stewart, Kwesi Ameyaw, Brent Stait Movie Review

The Wedding Chapel (2013)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Emmanuelle Vaugier in The Wedding Chapel (2013)

The Chapel of Secrets

Sarah's (Emmanuelle Vaugier - Clara's Deadly Secret) day goes from bad to worse when an exhibition of her paintings is panned and then her boyfriend dumps her. In need of comfort she goes to her mum, Jeanie's (Shelley Long - Holiday Road Trip), who since being widowed flits from one hobby to another and lives in what to Sarah is chaos. To Sarah's horror she discovers that her grandmother's home is being sold to make way for a development which will also lead to the nearby chapel being torn down. Refusing to let the one consistent thing in her life be taken Sarah and Jeanie head back to the village to see if they can find some way to prevent it. It brings Sarah in to contact with Roger (Mark Devlin), a lawyer, whilst Jeanie uncovers something from her past which changes her outlook on life.

First things first and "The Wedding Chapel" is not a Hallmark movie but it certainly features a storyline which would be right at home in a Hallmark romantic comedy as we have a city woman heading to a small town and ending up falling for a local as they end up fighting the development. Yes there are some minor variations to this as it is a home and a chapel under threat rather than a business or landmark but the basics are familiar along with the mum happy to meddle in her daughter's love life, hoping she will settle down.

Mark Deklin in The Wedding Chapel (2013)

But "The Wedding Chapel" has another side as the return to the village leads to Jeanie talking about her childhood to Sarah and how the chapel use to be the centre of the town where people got to know each other, especially teenagers. It also leads to Sarah learning about Jeanie's first love who she was going to marry before he went off to Vietnam to fight. I will leave it there but you can probably predict how this side of the story evolves and it is the same with Sarah trying to find some way of preventing the development.

Now that makes "The Wedding Chapel" this entertaining mix of the familiar and the new but where the new is not so earth shattering that it makes you have to over concentrate on things to follow it. And that is an important thing as whilst it won't be everyone's cup of tea "The Wedding Chapel" is just as much about being charming and easy to watch as it is on what actually happens.

What this all boils down to is that "The Wedding Chapel" is familiar and easy to watch whilst a bit cheesy in places. But do you know what it works for that specific audience who enjoy the familiarity of a movie and how easy it is to watch rather than for how much a movie makes them think.


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