Hollywood Wedded to The Formula

Kate Hudson, left, and Anne Hathaway play best friends mutated into selfish harridans, each fighting to have her perfect wedding, in "Bride Wars." (By Claire Folger -- Twentieth Century Fox)

Viewers know what's at stake (eternal happiness), and they also know what to expect. "It's a highly qualified setting for a movie because everyone has these sentimental expectations," Horwitz says. "You can either punch holes in them or live up to them."

In the movies, planning the wedding becomes the ultimate test in the couple's relationship, and the catalyst that prompts the bride to "find herself." She gets plastered ("Bride Wars"), she spins insane lies ("Sweet Home Alabama"), she throws punches ("My Best Friend's Wedding").

If the groom can embrace the bride's edgy behavior ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding," "Runaway Bride"), that means that he can embrace her. But if the groom doesn't embrace her newfound spunk ("The Wedding Singer," "Wedding Crashers"), then she'll end up with a different, more awesome guy who does.

Either way, the wedding movie provides "cultural comfort food," Horwitz says, because everyone ends up happily ever after one way or another, like that tiny couple atop the cake.

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It's all so different from the wedding in "Rachel Getting Married," which was released in October.

Coincidentally, that movie also stars Hathaway. In "Rachel," she played Kym, a drug addict on leave from rehab to perform maid-of-honor duties at her sister's wedding. Hathaway's performance has generated Oscar buzz, but anyone who saw the movie knows the real star (besides pain) was the wedding. Its preparations, from tent erection to desiccated cake, served as the backdrop to the action.

What a wedding it was: The wedding march was played on electric guitar, the (non-Indian) bride and bridesmaids wore saris, the guests participated in an atonal chant during the processional. And this was all before the Carnival dancers showed up for the reception.

The effect was jarring. Well, the whole movie was jarring -- but it was made even more jarring by the fact that all our wedding expectations were AWOL. Where was the catfight? Where was the Chicken Dance? Where was the bridezilla, forcing her 27 bridesmaids into mutton-sleeved chartreuse?

Of course, "Rachel Getting Married," despite its title and its rehearsal dinner, was not a wedding movie. Not by any stretch. Not because of the saris (Hello, "Monsoon Wedding"!), but because there was never any doubt that Rachel and Sidney would get married. The torment in that movie was family trauma, and not the madcap kind, but the kind that really can capsize happily ever after.

In other words, it was like real life.

Which is so not what we want from a wedding movie.