Lots of romantic angles. A thwarted wedding being the central theme. Groom-to-be forced into a close liaison with an island spinster. Bride to be flattered by an idolising photographer. Opportunities for terrible acting as a camp personal assistant sorts out an island castle with his attentive female assistant. The plot goes as expected. There are some strange moments such as when an enraged bride holds the wheelchair of a landlady over a cliff telling her to throw away her money earned by tipping off the press. The landlady pauses to decide whether it is better to die with the money or live without. Why that dilemma was worth 5 minutes of our time we never discover.
David Tennant stars in this clash between the American celebrity culture and the typical, if not rather rain sodden, British natives when a local Scottish girl is roped in to play a second bride to distract the locust-like paparazzi from the wedding of a Hollywood actress that’s taking place in the beautiful and remote Hebrides.
Unfortunately for Tennant, whose performance is complimented by leading lady Kelly MacDonald and a variety of both Scottish and American bit-part actors, the Decoy Bride is rather more of a rubber chicken than anything else. As romantic comedies go it is quite insincere and unimaginative; book ending all the romance scenes with predictable jokes or under whelming music scores that would be more appropriate in an episode of Hollyoaks than the movie that is set to mark Tennant as a romantic lead.
It is not the failure of the ex-Doctor or his co-stars that let this movie down at least; rather it is the combination of a predictable story, poor writing and a number of dubious accents that inevitably result in the downfall of the Decoy Bride.