Invitation To The Wedding Details

Incredibly inept and unfunny romantic comedy, one of several in the eighties that exploited American obsession with British aristocracy. A senile bishop (Ralph Richardson, indulging his real-life passion for motorbikes) mistakenly weds the daughter of an impoverished earl to a visiting American. The dullconfusion is compounded by the arrival of a Texan evangelist played, astoundingly, by John Gielgud, whose self-confessed inability with accents is well demonstrated. The celebration, without a trace of irony, of class prejudice and blood sports, passé in 1983, is now positively shocking. Notsurprisingly, both American director Joseph Brooks and his wife, Susan, who plays the daughter, were never heard of again.

A situation which could have been mildly amusing in the Quiet Wedding vein is botched by an unfunny script and wildly eccentric casting, including Gielgud as an American evangelist.