The Big Day (PG)

Starring Desmond Tan, Amber Tan

Directed by Lee Thean-Jeen

The Big Day is an awful rom-com, one that’s neither very romantic nor funny. It centres on a couple (the chemistry-deficient pairing of Desmond Tan and Taiwan’s Amber An) and their quest to hold a fuss-free wedding banquet.

Good luck doing that when their oddball kin and friends — including Richard Low, Liu Lingling, and YouTube comedian Hirzi Zulkiflie — are on the guest list, engaging in all kinds of annoying buffoonery.

The newlyweds’ story is told in reverse, starting with the main event, then cutting to shenanigans that occurred a few hours prior. I wish it had gone a bit further back to, say, the day the producers decided to make this movie.

Clearly, they wanted to combine a few formulas — the Meet-Cute, Meet the Parents/In-Laws, The Wedding Movie, The Odd Couple — but what they’ve got instead is a flat, clunky, slapdash and tone-deaf slop.

Something a hack would come up with but writer/director Lee Thean-Jeen is no hack; he’s done some good stuff on TV (The Pupil and its spin-off Code of Law).

Here, it looks as if Lee was coasting and channelling Jack Neo on a bad day. And that qualifies The Big Day as a horror flick, not a rom-com. (**)