Four Weddings and a Funeral.

The great strength of Richard Curtis's script for the comedy, Four Weddings and a Funeral, isn't its dialogue (though there are many funny lines), nor its characterizations (which keep the plot humming but are rarely interesting in themselves), nor the passages of physical humor (only a cut above the better TV sitcoms). Curtis's special triumph here is in the sheer arrangement of the action, the crafting of a plot in which events and character quirks rhyme, contrast with, reverse, and echo one another as the hero, Charles, a young man who despairs of ever finding true love, staggers through the five ceremonies of the title.

Observe the way people from one gathering reappear at a later one in a very different light simply because they are performing different functions. A seminarian who's just a shy guest at the first wedding becomes the presiding priest at the second and nearly capsizes the wedding vows with his spectacular ineptitude. (A masterful cameo by the genius of discomfort, Rowan Atkinson.) An unassuming gay man, usually overshadowed by his rambunctious companion at weddings, becomes eloquent in his pain when eulogizing that same companion at the funeral. A young woman notices an attractive deaf man at the first marriage and courts him at a later one with her new skill in sign language. The same deaf man (Charles's brother) signs his enthusiasm for a woman's bust but Charles deliberately mistranslates ("Ah, Scotland! Beautiful mountains!") in order to spare the young lady embarrassment. But several scenes later, Charles mistranslates some verbal remarks into sign language for the precise purpose of embarrassing his brother who's just done Charles an ill turn.

Curtis's marvelous crossword puzzle of a plot has been deftly filled in by director Mike Newell with an economy that is sometimes funny in itself, as when a rapid succession of closeups of ringless fingers tells hapless best man Charles that no one has a substitute for the wedding ring he has forgotten. And Newell has cast a lot of talented actors, led by Hugh Grant as Charles, and drawn sterling work from them.

Yet there's a dead flower in this wedding bouquet and it's right in the center of the cluster. The basic action of this comedy is as time-honored (or time-worn) as they come: a young person's search for true love. When Charles, near the fade-out, catches up with Andic MacDowell in the rain and asks her to consider "not being married to me for the rest of your life," it's just a hip way of popping the traditional question. We are meant to envision them enjoying a marriage of true minds to which no man should admit impediment.

Alas, the impediment is already there, courtesy of scriptwriter Curtis. In his effort to portray the MacDowell character as a socially and sexually liberated woman, Curtis has gone off the deep end and created instead an emotionally manipulative and sexually feckless predator. I have no problem with the fact that she goes to bed with Charles right away, for this may be just a modern instance of love at first sight. But, when they reencounter after the second wedding, she is firmly engaged to another--older, richer--man. She goes to bed with Charles again with no apparent hesitation. What are we to make of this? Just a physical attraction? If you believe that, just listen to the throbbing of strings on the sound track whenever these two clinch. And later MacDowell has Grant review her choices of wedding dresses (this woman isn't callous?) and ticks off a lightning-fast appraisal of the thirty-three lovers in her past. Just the highlights, mind you, but with a lot less thoughtfulness than she brought to the inspection of her bridal ensemble. At her wedding reception she makes a little speech that put my teeth on edge with its fatuousness and airhead self-satisfaction (I think it was the quote from John Lennon that killed it for me), and there's nowhere in the film a single indication that she has any feeling at all for her groom. Since his most salient feature is his wealth, are we to consider her a mere gold-digger? It's clear that neither director nor scriptwriter thinks so. Those strings on the sound track are singing. But why does Charles seem so sure that his lady love's list of bedmates is going to stop at number thirty-three?

I wouldn't be complaining about any of this if Four weddings were an ironic black comedy or a satire or a cynical farce a la Feydeau. But it's not. It's an attempt at wholehearted humane comedy, the sort that needs a wholehearted happy ending, a conclusion that settles all doubts and gives the viewer a taste of heaven. The filmmakers seem to think they have provided one. But I was left with a taste in my mouth much too sour to be celestial.

Everything in this movie is wonderful except its core.