My First Wedding

Nick (Kenny Doughty) is fixing the inside of a confessional, in a Church and suddenly hears a woman confessing to him. His attempts to tell her he is just a carpenter fails, especially when he finds Vanessa (Rachael Leigh Cook) to be a very attractive young woman and he falls for her. He takes on the role of a priest, attentively listens to her, and determines to gain her confidence and wins her for himself even if she tells him she is getting married in three days. They appear to be on different wave lengths: she thinks that he is helping her to curb her sensual feelings, actually he is doing everything to make her succumb to his own urges.

The story centers on three unbelievably witless characters in unlikely situations that bring about exaggerated effects. Leigh Cook as Vanessa, Doughty as Nick and Paul Hopkins as Andre, the boyfriend/fiance of Vanessa, lack the capacity to enliven their roles; most of the time they seem to be looking at or reading from the prompter. Thus the rare comic moments misfire. Nick and Vanessa's characters are not pleasant to watch. Neither are they funny.

Nick is a character who succeeds in convincing Vanessa that he is a priest willing to listen to and guide her, even to the extent of having after-hours counseling sessions with her. Vanessa is willingly led; her trust in him is absolute, so much so that he is invited to her wedding rehearsal and to marry her and Andre when the assigned priest celebrant gets sick. Before the last happens, Nick manages to get the bride-to-be in a "bed session" with him. Nick is shown as one capable of convincing everyone, throughout the film that he is a priest in his black soutane, except his parish priest who comes in at the end of the story. He appears with no sense of wrong doing, no regret for all the lies and deceptions he has committed. Vanessa appears to be too much of a simpleton to be real. She is not a Catholic, yet she decides to go to confession in a Catholic Church to a Catholic priest. She says her Andre is a Catholic and believes in being chaste before marriage. But she's finding difficulty in controlling herself. Andre happens to be shown having a tryst with Nick's sister, despite what Vanessa thinks. Nick dupes him into believing that he (Nick) is devil-possessed and he (Andre) must watch over him (Nick) all night long. Andre does not suspect anything and keeps watch over Nick who is actually preventing the bride and groom to-be from being together. He does not show regret when he loses Vanessa.