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Express Tribune
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
TikTok stars crash the wedding in raunchy new comedy with Outlander actor
TikTok sensations Adam Rose and Leah Kirkup are taking their viral charm to the big screen, co-starring alongside Outlander actor David Berry in the upcoming R-rated romantic comedy Perfect Wedding Days. The film, directed by Hapless creator Gary Sinyor, promises irreverent laughs, unresolved crushes, and wedding-day mayhem in a tropical setting. Previously titled Something Blue, the film centres on a second-time groom (Berry), his spirited bride (Kirkup), and a best man (Rose) who is secretly harbouring feelings for the bride. Set against the backdrop of a casual, non-religious beach ceremony, the movie spirals into romantic chaos with loop-style storytelling reminiscent of Four Weddings and a Funeral, according to Sinyor. Sinyor called Rose a mix of Peter Sellers and Rowan Atkinson, praising his comedic instincts after a try-out with Berry left the crew in hysterics. With nearly 7 million followers on TikTok, Rose became a viral sensation with his absurdist life-hack sketches. Kirkup, also a rising TikTok star known for her 'Your Girlfriend Who Hates You' videos, was discovered by Sinyor during a late-night scroll. 'She's hilariously courageous and audiences will fall for her as much as Dan does in the film,' he said. The film will also feature Hapless alums Jeany Spark and Adwoa Akoto, and production is set to begin in January after relocating from Los Angeles to Panama, with local outfit Apertura Films stepping in as co-producers. While casting news has sparked excitement online, fans are already speculating about the potential for on-screen chemistry between the TikTok stars. With a tropical setting, wedding mishaps, and unrequited love, Perfect Wedding Days is shaping up to be a chaotic romcom for the digital age.
Atlantic
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
This Is Love for Precarious Times
The first time I watched Too Much, Lena Dunham's return to scripted television after a seven-year hiatus, it felt impossibly disappointing—visually flat, almost defiantly unfunny, more cringeworthy in its reliance on Anglo-American culture clashes for charm than Mary-Kate and Ashley trying to get a royal guard to crack a smile. The premise: Jess (played by Hacks ' Megan Stalter) is a New Yorker working in advertising production who's offered the chance to move to London when her relationship catastrophically implodes. (Dunham, as ever daring us to try to like her characters, has Jess, in the first episode, breaking into her ex's apartment and terrorizing his new influencer girlfriend while brandishing a garden gnome.) Arriving in London, Jess has a chance encounter with Felix (Will Sharpe), a broke musician, in a particularly vile pub toilet. Both are hapless in different but complementary ways—Jess tells Felix how to wash his hands, Felix helps Jess get home when she accidentally orders her Uber to Heathrow. These are hard times to be a romantic, especially on Netflix. Two years ago, on a New Yorker podcast lamenting the modern state of the rom-com, Alexandra Schwartz noted that the most crucial quality for any romance is this: 'You have to believe that these two people want to be together, and you have to buy in.' On this front, Too Much barely even tries. Stalter is wackily endearing as Jess, and Sharpe adds brooding complexity to Felix's offhand charm. But as screen lovers, the pair have almost negative chemistry, coming together with a shrug and staying together out of what feels like inertia. Initially, this set my teeth on edge—two characters with seemingly little interest in each other being paired off with the chaotic insistence of a child making her soft toys kiss. But the more I've come back to the show, the more its slack, unromantic approach to love looks intentional. Jess and Felix couple up not because they're giddy with feeling, drunk on proximity and intimacy and connection, but because each offers something specific that the other person needs. Too Much is co-produced by Working Title, and the names of its episodes nod to some gooier rom-coms served up by the company in bygone days: Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill. But in the place where the show's heart should be is instead pure pragmatism: This is love for a cold climate. If you compare Too Much with Celine Song's recent film, Materialists, in which every character sizes up romantic prospects with the agenda of a hiring manager, you can sense a theme. Can we afford to actually fall in love now? In this economy? Dunham presents infatuation as nonsensical, or even destructive: The best episode of Too Much is one that details the breakdown of Jess's seven-year relationship with Zev (Michael Zegen), a wannabe music writer who appears like a white knight in a bar one night when she's lost her friends and her pizza (nobly, he secures another slice) and immediately dazzles Jess into submission, charming her family, devising kissing rituals scored to songs, even massaging her grandmother's feet. Quickly, though, he sours. When she moves in with him, he's outraged by the fact that so much of her stuff is pink. He sneers at her love for Miley Cyrus power ballads and mocks her need for affection. 'I swear you dress as a fuck you to people sometimes, Jess,' he tells her, when she puts on a sailor smock to go out. The longer she loves him, the more contemptuous he becomes. Felix, by contrast, is cool from the start. No one is better than Dunham at writing sympathetic fuckboys, men in varying stages of arrested development who are unpleasant in uniquely beguiling ways. At the pub, Felix treats Jess like a kind of curiosity (she is, in fact, wearing the very same sailor smock that we later learn Zev had been so cruel about). It isn't until he sees the coziness of Jess's rental apartment that something seems to click in his mind in an enticing way, like a modern-day Elizabeth Bennet reconsidering her feelings for Mr. Darcy after she first visits Pemberley. Jess, somewhat randomly, tries to kiss Felix; Felix, perturbed, admits that he has a girlfriend and leaves. He walks around for a bit listening to Fiona Apple and smoking, then goes back to Jess's place, where he finds her being hosed down in the shower by a baby-faced paramedic after having accidentally set her nightgown on fire. Somewhat incredibly, he stays. Too Much gestures at the rom-com, but it seems more enamored with the sitcom, particularly the low-fi, edgy, slightly manic mode of British comedies on BBC Three: Fleabag, Pulling, Coupling. Compared with Dunham's Girls, whose direction and cinematography specifically emulated Woody Allen and Mike Mills, it's a strangely unprepossessing show, the kind that more typically gets pulled together cheaply on the British taxpayer's dime. In a bottle-ish episode early on, Jess and Felix stay up all night in her apartment, having sex, eating takeout pho, and ignoring each other's emotional cues. (He tells her about being grossed out by an ex when he once saw her eating cold Chinese food with a look of blank desperation; later, in secret, Jess shovels cold noodles into her mouth with the same vacancy.) The characters do antic, no-stakes things that require little explanation and often defy logic. Felix goes to claim unemployment, telling the officer assessing him that if he gets a job, he won't have time to write music. Jess goes location scouting with a hotshot director, almost has sex with him in a firelit four-poster bed, then shows up outside Felix's window, begging him to move in with her. Late in the series, Jennifer Saunders appears playing a character identical to Absolutely Fabulous 's Edina, down to the selfsame styling and vocal delivery. But with help from flashback episodes, the show also starts to lay out why Felix and Jess might be drawn to each other. Jess, still devastated from her breakup and friendless in London, finds instant stability in Felix as someone who'll care for her, even if, subliminally at least, she seems to see through him. Like so many Dunham heroines, Jess is a perplexing mix of intuition and delusion; she offers Felix a joint bank account after they've been together barely a week, but also correctly identifies that his total lack of ambition fits awkwardly with her pride in her work. If, as an actor, Stalter sometimes seems less convincing than Dunham was at pulling the combination off, it's because it's an exceedingly difficult register to play in. Walking up to a guest at a wedding, Jess introduces herself by saying, 'Wearing neutrals is like a way of saying you've given up, right?'—a line so thoughtlessly rude that even Hannah Horvath might blanch. Felix, whose childhood is revealed to have been unloving and unstable, seems to see in Jess something like instant security: not just a warm person with a home that's much more welcoming than his chaotic squat full of eco-warriors, but an insta-family. If their relationship skips the heady, obsessive crush phase to get straight into a comfortable, stolid, domestic mode, maybe it's because that's what both of them are really yearning for. Initially, something about Too Much 's insistence on citing rom-coms in its episode titles while so stubbornly resisting romance felt galling to me. The quality that draws us to, say, the tortured off-on dynamic of Connell and Marianne on Normal People or the unbreakable bond between Nora and Hae Sung in Past Lives is the idea that love is somehow transcendent, that it elevates humans above the level of mere existence. But realistically, what is love if not care and attention? And what are care and attention if not expressions of tenderness and regard? Dunham buries clues throughout Too Much that seem to suggest what she thinks about men and women: Matrimony, Felix's father tells his wife late in the show, comes from the Latin words mater, meaning 'mother,' and monia, meaning 'activity'—it's about preparing a girl to be a mother, and in many ways, a maternal dynamic is exactly what both Felix and Jess are craving. 'You're like this alien,' Jess tells him in the final episode, 'but you also feel like home.'
South Wales Argus
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- South Wales Argus
Omid Djalili and Simon Callow filming in Newport City Centre
Cameras were spotted in John Frost square for what seems like the umpteenth time as the production of 'About a Bell' resumed. About a Bell is an independent film about Sami, a Syrian refugee, and Bryony, a young librarian, who embark on a highly personal quest to preserve a bell from a demolished church. Th brains behind the operation Welsh production company Hello Deer have been in the city for around four weeks. With big stars like Christopher Eccleston partaking, they've been attracting a bit of a name for themselves! Film crews in John Frost Square outside Newport Library for the filming of About a Bell (Image: NQ) John Frost Square was swamped from 2pm onwards by clip boards, boom mics and cameras. Alongside this were crowds of intrigued locals. Today's famous faces included a famous comedian and an actor who's starred in productions alongside English heartthrob Hugh Grant. Four Weddings and a Funeral star Simon Callow reading his lines for About a Bell (Image: NQ) Present on set was Simon Callow known for his role as 'Gareth' in Four Weddings and a Funeral and as Tilney, Master of the Revels in the 1998 production of Shakespeare in Love. Callow was seen flicking through his script whilst shaded under a canopy. He was described by one local as 'friendly' but 'busy.' Chelsea comedian Omid Djalili having his makeup touched up on set (Image: NQ) He was joined by Chelsea born comedian Omid Djalili. Djalili a huge name is comedy has done stand up at the Royal Variety. Today (July 14) he was seen outside Newport library walking along what appeared to be 'train tracks.' He was wearing a boiler suite and had his face touched out by a makeup crew now and again. Have you seen anyone famous recently??
Irish Examiner
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Lena Dunham on her new Netflix series Too Much, and her favourite Irish actor
Lena Dunham was just 26 when her drama series Girls became a global sensation, heralding her as one of the most exciting new onscreen voices. Its frank and funny account of sex and sexuality in New York City was an audience and critical hit. Now Dunham is swapping the Big Apple for London in her new series Too Much, a tale partly inspired by finding love in her own life. After meeting and marrying British musician Luis Felber, Dunham has spent much of her time in Britain - and love, sex and culture clashes form the backbone of the Netflix series, which she co-created with her husband. Aiding and abetting her in the new series is Irish actor Andrew Scott, who has a starring role Too Much and put lead actress Megan Stalter on the radar of Dunham. Scott, who had become a fan of Stalter's social-media postings, showed them to his pal and told her: she is your soul twin. 'I love Andrew,' says Dunham. 'He's a really close friend. He's a brilliant collaborator - we'd worked together on Catherine Called Birdy. He's actually the person who showed me Meg's videos originally, and made me want to work with her.' Along with high-profile guest stars including Naomi Watts, Richard E Grant, Rhea Perlman and Stephen Fry, the Irish actor appears as a successful but cranky writer-director whose ego needs stoking. Andrew Scott in a scene from Too Much. 'I wrote this role for Andrew, and just it felt as though he would do an amazing job playing this guy who's self important and sort of tragic,' says Dunham. 'He does an amazing job of being melancholy and hilarious and a total sexist, but also being kind of tender and delicate, and I love him in the show, he just kills me.' Too Much centres on Jessica (Stalter), a twentysomething reeling following a painful break up with her boyfriend, who's now dating a stunning influencer (Emily Ratajkowski). Working in TV production, she decides to swap the Big Apple for a job in London, where she meets Felix (Will Sharpe) a musician who may or may not be her Mr Darcy. While the series is a work of fiction, there are many nods to Dunham's own experiences - she now spends much of her time in the UK after meeting Felber, who is her co-creator on the series. 'Honestly, when we started working on it, we hadn't been dating for very long,' says Dunham. 'I just thought he was so funny. I said: 'I'm gonna write this show. Will you create the characters with me? Will you be my British eyes that let me know if I'm hitting the notes right?' 'I loved working on it with him. I loved having his voice in it. Most of the characters are not based on people in our lives. But the grain of it, the nucleus of it, did come from our experience of meeting and trying to navigate each other's unique programming.' Meg Stalter in Too Much. Dunham, who had long had an interest in British comedy and culture - she's a huge fan of Bridget Jones and rom-coms like Four Weddings and a Funeral - felt the culture clash could form the basis of a comedy. 'I was just thinking about the idea of a kind of noisy, intense American woman. I actually think an American woman would probably feel much more at home in Ireland,' she observes, on hearing this writer's Irish accent. 'There's an openness and a willingness to play in Irish culture. You're not shocking anyone in Ireland - that's already a part of the sense of humour and the banter. I do have the experience of Irish people as being very playful, very warm, very energetic. 'English people are too when you get there, but it can take a little while to crack the facade. There are a lot of unspoken rules in certain areas of British culture that I just did not have access to. I would do something that I thought was completely normal, like I once said: 'I have to go pee'. Someone I worked with was like: 'You know, you don't have to say what you're going to do. You can just say you're going to the ladies room'. I was like, if the image of a woman peeing is this alarming, you don't want to know what's going through my head all day,' she laughs. 'Of course, I've met some really hilarious, bawdy, ballsy British people. A lot of the British people I thought kind of stiff turned out to be hilarious, bawdy and ballsy. It just again took a second, and I felt like there was a lot of code I had to crack. When the idea of it happening via a romantic relationship came in, that's when I really thought: 'Ok, we've got something here'.' The many hilarious episodes that follow indicate that Dunham has another major hit on her hands. There is heart, too - with Too Much, the writer and director leans into the rom-com, a genre she says she loves because its about hope. 'I loved Bridget Jones so much. It was so influential for me. As a teenager, my favourite book was Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, which was like a teenage Bridget Jones. 'Bridget Jones came out at a moment where I was just looking for examples of what adulthood was going to look like - Sex and the City was that for me, and Bridget Jones was that for me. Obviously Sex and the City is very aspirational, although there is so much realism in the female friendship and in the complexity of dating. Lena Dunham on set during the making of Too Much. 'What I loved about Bridget Jones as a teenager was that she felt like a real woman. I didn't know what stones were, so I didn't understand that she was actually quite thin, quite young, and not eating too many calories. What I think it captures so well is that's not a defect. What it captures so well is when you're a woman in your early 30s, and you don't realise how beautiful you are. You don't realise how special you are. All you see is the candy bar you ate, or the skirt that was too tight, or the person who looked at you strangely at work. 'Nora Ephron has this quote where she says: 'If I'd known what I looked like in a bikini when I was younger, I would not have taken it off until I turned 36'. I feel the exact same way. I'm 39 and I should have been in a bikini full time till three years ago.' Ephron's observation leans into, Dunham says, the core element she loves most about rom-coms. 'For me, romantic comedies are not about the idea that you need to be in a couple to be a fully formed person. They're really about the idea of self-acceptance and finding someone who accepts you and mirrors you in a way that makes you feel appreciated and lovely. 'It's really important to me that people know Too Much is not about couplehood being an ideal that somehow turns you into a self-actualised and complete person. It's about the idea of self acceptance, wherever you find it, and having people who allow you to be yourself in your life. The best rom-coms, whether it's When Harry Met Sally, or Four Weddings and a Funeral, that's really what they're offering, a sense that there is a place in the world for you, and that's really what we wanted to do.' Too Much is on Netflix now
Daily Record
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
BBC fans have days to stream 'one of the best British films' starring Hugh Grant
The romantic comedy is leaving BBC iPlayer in just a few days BBC viewers have a limited window to stream a much-loved Hugh Grant comedy hailed as 'laugh out loud funny.' The 1994 classic, Four Weddings and a Funeral, is available for streaming on iPlayer until Tuesday, July 8. This Oscar-nominated dramedy was a career milestone for both Grant and scriptwriter Richard Curtis. The pair would later team up again for other celebrated rom-coms such as Love Actually, Bridget Jones's Diary and Notting Hill. Featuring Andie MacDowell as Carrie, the love interest of Grant's character, the story centres around Charles, a charming British bachelor grappling with matters of the heart. His luck seems to turn when he encounters Carrie, but she is about to return to America. The drama unfolds over several occasions where their paths intersect, and they try to figure out if they are meant for each other, reports the Manchester Evening News. With an impressive 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, this romantic comedy received nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture at the 1995 Academy Awards. Not only did audiences fall in love with Grant's performance, with clips from the film still circulating on TikTok today, but critics also honoured him with the Best Actor award at the 1995 BAFTAs. Even three decades after its release, the comedy continues to garner praise from casual viewers and critics alike. "This is one of the funniest, wittiest, cleverest comedy/romances to come out of Great Britain," enthused one IMDb user. A fan echoed the commendations, posting: "I am viewing the movie for [the] fifth time since its release. I just love this movie and laugh almost endless throughout the movie." Google Reviews was abuzz with admirers lauding the film's exceptional cast, starring the likes of James Fleet, Rowan Atkinson, David Haig, and Anna Chancellor. One cinema enthusiast couldn't contain their excitement. "I've seen this 1994 British comedy film about twice and it's hilarious especially Rowan Atkinson himself. I'd say it's probably one of the funniest films I have ever seen and it's probably one of the best British films I have ever seen as well," they proclaimed. Another chimed in, balancing critique with praise: "This movie has its shortcomings, but is laugh out loud funny and moving throughout with some incredible early performances from people who are now household names. It is worth watching for this alone." Four Weddings and a Funeral is streaming now on BBC iPlayer
