Hulu's Four Weddings and a Funeral is missing the cruical ingredient that made the film a success: a sense of charm

Vulture

Mindy Kaling has assembled the equivalent of a romcom "dream team" with her Hulu TV series remake of the classic 1994 Hugh Grant-Andie MacDowell film. Kaling created Four Weddings with her Mindy Project collaborator Matt Warburton, Mindy Project alum and Great News creator Tracey Wigfield serves as showrunner and the romcom genius and Four Weddings screenwriter Richard Curtis serves as an executive producer. "And yet somehow, especially in the initial three episodes, what they’ve managed to build together comes across mostly as hackneyed, predictable, and more interested in tipping its hat to rom-coms of the past (particularly Curtis’s) than building a unique love story of its own," says Jen Chaney. She adds: "The problems that stymie this series are the same issues that gum up every less-than-inspired romantic comedy: unrealistic plot twists that happen too suddenly, a lack of rich character development, and dialogue that a real human would never say to another real human in a hundred years...One can argue that in a movie that’s two hours or less, certain liberties and shortcuts have to be taken in order to get to the inevitably happy ending as quickly as possible. But a television series doesn’t have that problem. If Four Weddings and a Funeral — which very easily could have been five episodes centered on each of those events — is going to stretch itself into ten roughly 45-minute segments, it should take advantage of all that time to flesh out things that most motion-picture rom-coms don’t have the luxury to explore. A longer run time should allow more space for things to breathe and more room for nuance. Instead, Four Weddings keeps leaning hard into clichés as if those tropes should be celebrated and not met with rolling eyeballs."

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• Four Weddings and a Funeral is dreary and predictable: "If the audience isn’t having any fun, and the characters don’t seem to be having any fun, what’s the point?" says Margaret Lyons, adding: "The show is a strange misfire at every level. The self-conscious references to other rom-coms make it seem even worse in comparison, and Andie McDowell’s appearance as Ainsley’s mother — not as her character from the original Four Weddings — is just a reminder of how far the show has strayed from the light. Even the funeral isn’t very sad."
• Four Weddings doesn't do right by Nathalie Emmanuel: "Emmanuel, best known as Daenerys’s deputy Missandei on Game of Thrones, is asked to lead an entire show while also shouldering an American accent she can’t quite sell," says Alison Herman. "The result is harmful to Four Weddings’ realism, but absolutely devastating to its comedy. Emmanuel struggles to deliver the zippy banter that’s essential to the rom-com’s comforting vibe. And her castmates don’t rise up to fill the vacuum."
• Four Weddings is a witty, old-fashioned love letter to romcoms, featuring a delightful cast
• The show fails to create the the witty, propulsive feel of the movie with its rough dialogue and broad London stereotypes
• Four Wedding struggles to sell the camaraderie and fiercely loyal bond between the characters -- the glue that's supposed to keep the show together
• Four Weddings is able to shine with its subversion of romcom conventions
• How Mindy Kaling found her Four Weddings stars
• Why Nathalie Emmanuel chose Four Weddings as her first post-Game of Thrones series: "It’s so good and so funny! And I was already into it because I heard the name Mindy Kaling and I went, ‘Well duh of course I’m going to read that'"