Planning a wedding is fun, but hard, yet an ultimately exciting adventure. Sustaining a healthy marriage is fun, but hard, yet an ultimately exciting adventure. The complexities of both events merge in writer/director Sherise Dorf’s new relationship comedy, The Everything Pot, a film about the ups and downs of both impending and lived-in nuptials.

The picture stars Lisa Edelstein as Rachel, a married woman who receives an invite to the wedding of old friend and co-worker, Charlie (James Wolk). Almost immediately, complications begin to snowball as Rachel becomes overly excited at the invitation and sends their gift (the titular Everything Pot) too early. While her husband Adam (Erik Griffin, in the film’s best performance) tells her she is overreacting, his warnings are ignored as Rachel becomes a bit manic with the thrill of being recognized, or maybe there is more to her excitement than meets the eye.

Trouble begins when Charlie’s fiancé, Clare (Delaney Marie Rowe) thinks that he and Rachel have something deeper going on between them. She has never heard him speak of her before and now he “needs” her to be there, even though the two haven’t communicated in years.

From here, the characters become victims of their own jealousy and obsession with getting to deeper truths that might not exist. Both couples find their civil unions on the ropes.

There are some funny moments to be found in The Everything Pot, but Dorf’s screenplay too often plays like a sitcom. The film has an uneven mix of both silly comedy and the type of smart relationship humor found in the plays and screenplays of Neil Simon. At first, Rachel is written too broadly, making it difficult to relate to her character on human levels. Edelstein does good work, but it takes too long for the screenplay to reveal Rachel’s complexities in a realistic manner. In the film’s second half, the role and performance become more interestingly grounded.

Erik Griffin’s Adam is another role that starts out clichéd, but turns out to be more well-rounded as the film goes on. Griffin’s performance is quite funny and holds the film’s best moments, especially when Adam and Rachel decide to ask for the return of the Everything Pot once the wedding is put on pause. For these two, it is not a financial issue, but an ethical one. The couple’s quest to retrieve their gift is a source of some of the film’s best laughs.

One of the film’s issues is in the portrayal of Gale. Her first moment on screen is one that immediately distances the audience from her. Gale attacks her fiancé for wanting to invite Rachel. As he explains that she is a friend who helped him start his business, for no apparent reason, this leads her down a path of accusations and bitchiness. Aren’t these two in love? Don’t they know one another inside and out, ergo, leading to marriage? For most of the picture, Gale is a ball of anger and distrust, a curse which will haunt the final act, where the audience is meant to cut her slack. The fumbling of the Gale character is a shame, as Delaney Marie Rowe gives a good performance.

The toughest problem (and one that hurts some important moments) is in the casting of Charlie. James Wolk is woefully wrong. The actor is too bland for what Charlie is meant to represent. The character has scenes where he is supposed to be seductive, but Wolk doesn’t have that kind of on-screen vibe. A scene meant to be flirtatious, with a dose of heat, falls completely flat. As for Charlie’s complexities, the screenplay doesn’t give him any. When he isn’t fumbling around Rachel or arguing with Clare, Charlie just sits around watching sports. Who is this guy and what makes him so important to Rachel? We never achieve an understanding.