Wedding Bell Blues

Illeana Douglas, one of the most consistently interesting actresses working in film, deserves better than this. Wedding Bell Blues, a lurching chick-flick with delusions of high-concept comedy, finds Douglas, Paulina Porizkova and Julie Warner as unmarried roommates who head to Las Vegas to get married and divorced in the space of a weekend, the idea being that it's less pathetic to be a divorced 30-year-old woman than it is to be a single 30-year-old woman. Assuming you can get past that depressing premise--you've come a long way baby, indeed--you might find a few laughs while the three protagonists are husband-hunting in Vegas. While Warner and Porizkova wade through situations alternately sit-com precious and sit-com maudlin, Douglas manages to find some emotional honesty as a cynical free spirit finding an unexpected soul mate. In fact, it's almost worth sitting through Wedding Bell Blues just to watch Douglas and Jonathan Penner bond on a hotel rooftop. Optional. (S. Renshaw)