Ah Niu, Elanne Kong Yeuk-Lam, Kara Hui Ying-Hung, Shaun Chen, Marcus Chin, Jack Choo, Maggie Theng, Chris Tong, Rosa Chong

Likable Singapore-Malaysia comedy that works despite an alarming third act detour into melodrama. It shouldn't win any awards, but as a populist comedy, The Wedding Diary entertains handily.

The Wedding Diary hits all the right sitcom notes before sinking alarmingly into melodrama. Director Adrian Teh helms this hit Singapore-Malaysia co-production uniting talent from both territories plus Hong Kong. Keat (Malaysian singer Ah Niu) is a poor engineer from a Penang fishing family who meets and wins his dream girl Sze-Xin (Hong Kong’s Elanne Kong). The problem: she’s super-rich, and her parents (Singapore’s Jack Choo and Hong Kong’s Kara Hui) demand a sizable wedding banquet in Singapore if he’s to marry their one-and-only girl. Originally her parents are opposed to the union, but Sze-Xin lies that she’s pregnant. The lies don’t stop there, because the wedding banquet and assorted expenses are far beyond Keat’s means. However, Keat is determined to pay for the wedding and prove his worth to his in-laws, and pretends that he can take the financial slings and arrows. As expected, this predicament leads to a deepening thicket of lies and also opportunities for comedy. Bankruptcy because of family — it’s funny!

Despite the sitcom set-up, Wedding Diary manages good laughs thanks to the lead actors and Teh’s unpretentious direction. Situations are , for the most part, not overplayed, with gags mining common emotions and cultural issues. Keat faces a gauntlet of wedding obstacles, from friction between the in-laws (Sze-Xin’s and Keat’s families are mismatched in more than one way) to first-night sex jitters (Keat is a virgin, and Sze-Xin knows it) to disappearing cash (the bride’s side rips Keat off frequently). A voiceover from Keat walks the viewer through the details of a traditional Chinese wedding, setting up Keat’s spending woes clearly and humorously. Ah Niu makes a fine everyman, and easily earns sympathy because he’s believably decent and not that handsome. Elanne Kong is sweet as his lady love, though it beggars belief that she would be this clueless about her fiancé’s inability to pay for their 100-table banquet. Still, the film sets up their relationship efficiently and it becomes easy to care about what happens to them.

It’s not as easy to care about the rest of the characters but the film asks us to anyway. Besides Sze-Xin’s parents, there’s Keat’s dad (veteran Singapore actor Marcus Chin), who has an intricately mapped-out backstory involving Keat’s departed mom and the ladies watch he always wears. Relations between all the principals become understandably strained, but instead of a clever resolution, we get a melodrama trope followed by endless scenes of contrition, forgiveness and reconciliation. Wedding Diary is only 98-minutes long but the last 30 minutes packs in the contents of a 40-hour drama. If you also consider the hammy music cues and long-winded conciliatory dialogue, the film wears out its welcome pretty fast. However, despite the melodrama overload, Wedding Diary earns a positive nod because it’s good-natured, unpretentious and likable for what it is. This is a commercial film with understandable mass appeal, and if you do the math on the good versus the bad, the good side wins. Yay! Let’s do this again next year when the sequel comes out. (Kozo, 2012)