The Donald Rice film suffers most from an excessively blunt approach.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The film may help "Downton Abbey" fanatics looking to kill a little time in that era but holds little cinematic appeal for the rest of us.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
With costumes taking precedence over character, the movie ultimately seems more concerned with atmosphere than action.
The costumes are gorgeous, and the settings are plush, but the acting is merely serviceable, and the film lacks either the wit or the energy of its predecessors. Long before it ends, you find yourself indifferent to the fate of the mismatched lovebirds or anyone else in the tale.
The comic relief, an attempt to buoy the sinking feeling of Dolly and Joseph's difficulties, steals away the emotional weight of their story. The dominance of the madcap side of the film's split personality lays an airy veneer over Dolly and Joseph's woes, making them seem inconsequential - as unsubstantial as an observation about wedding-day weather.
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
A sustained balancing act between dry upper-crust cynicism and pent-up passions, Donald Rice's Cheerful Weather for the Wedding maintains its uneasy stasis long enough to frustrate some romance-hungry viewers while tantalizing those for whom withheld pleasure is the whole point.
A costumer that's well named for being pleasant and conventional but little more.
Without a source as rich as Jane Austen to draw on, Cheerful Weather feels incomplete, caroming off previous stories without forging its own way.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
If the movie had more courage, it would lay waste these people as hilariously as Robert Altman's film "A Wedding." But as its bad vibes accumulate, Cheerful Weather exhibits all the energy of a disgruntled wedding guest muttering complaints under his breath.