Tv review: Don't Tell The Bride

Someone get Owen Wilson's agent on the phone. I've found him his next big movie. It's an adaptation of a true story — well, sort of. True in the reality show sense, which means that most of it was created by the production crew who probably nudged and manipulated the participants into the pre-determined storyline, but that seems to be enough to pass for truth now that we all happily suspend disbelief even about the silliest stories.

Owen will play Matt, the best friend of Ryan – I'm thinking Ryan Reynolds or possibly John Krasinski, someone unthreateningly B-list – who is roped into helping out when his pal volunteers for a TV show in which the groom organises the wedding behind the bride's back. Don't Tell The Bride would still work as the title for the movie.

Reese Witherspoon will play Fern, a pretty, uptight beautician who wants things her own way and has trouble letting her groom take over while she's packed off to her mum's. "I'll have to remember the real reasons why I'm marrying Ryan, but it's going to be hard," she says – that's not the script, this is the real Fern talking.

But hilarious consequences will ensue when Wilson moves into the marital caravan (trailer for the Hollywood version), even into their bed, and the movie becomes a touching bromance as the two pals get carried away arranging the big day. The comical bit where they both try on crystal-bedecked wedding gowns and are mistaken for a couple by the dress-shop owner will be in the trailer, along with the scenes from the stag night showing them running around the streets of Prague in matching skin-tight bodysuits, then having to perform in a pole-dancing club. Add a couple of cameos by Steve Carell as a neurotic hotel manager and Chevy Chase as a wacky vicar and, bish bosh, next summer's surefire date movie smash. Warner Brothers, I have the copyright, OK?

I know, it sounds terrible – yet plausible, don't you think? – but that seems to have been the thinking behind this instalment of the surprise wedding series. The production company paid the 12,000 for Ryan and Fern's luxurious big day, but he paid, all right, by agreeing to be portrayed as a sweet man-child engaged in a quasi-gay love affair with his pal. No, not really, I'm sure, but the programme gleefully exploited every suggestive moment between Ryan and Matt, clearly two men confident enough in their own heterosexuality to flirt madly, though claiming the obligatory "hurr hurr, just a laugh" defence.

They insisted on hiring gold-painted men in gold hotpants for the reception — well, it's what every boy grows up dreaming about, isn't it? "I've known that I would be Ryan's best man since I was ten years old," sighed Matt, who dubbed himself "Fernando – gay Fern". "That boy can work the pole," he gushed, after the stag night. They even got matching buttock tattoos to mark their love, er, friendship.

But there was pathos too: "End of the day he loves Fern to bits, I love him to bits, he loves me … but this is his time, innit?" said Matt, sadly. Owen Wilson will have to pull out the acting stops for this scene and the one where he sobs, quietly, at the reception.