‘Four Weddings’: No Bridesmaid at the Box Office : Movies: The combination of good timing and aggressive marketing have worked in favor of the independent film, which was No. 1 for the weekend.

When “Four Weddings and a Funeral” opened last month, many people who follow independent movies expected it to be this year’s “Enchanted April.” That film, also a British comedy directed by Mike Newell, was one of the art-house successes of 1992, grossing more than $13.2 million in this country and Canada.

But in just six weeks, the well-received “Four Weddings,” variously described as “fluff with an edge” and “a multitiered confection,” has already taken in more than $14 million and is expected to soar way beyond that figure.

In doing so, the movie has overcome its distributor’s fears that, as producer Duncan Kenworthy put it, “no American male will go see a film that has wedding in the title.”

It has also earned a footnote in the annals of movie history by becoming last weekend’s box-office leader--probably the first independent dramatic film to reach that benchmark, according to A.D. Murphy, box-office analyst for the Hollywood Reporter. (This is not an uncommon achievement for the type of low-budget independent product known in the industry as genre films, such as New Line Pictures’ “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III,” which last March captured the top box-office spot two weeks in a row.)

“Four Weddings,” which takes place at a series of formal occasions, as spelled out in its title, tells the story of Charles (Hugh Grant), a young man who is often a best man but never a groom, and his infatuation with Carrie (Andie MacDowell), an uninhibited but somewhat mysterious American he meets at--where else?--a wedding. The film, made for $5 million, one-sixth the cost of the average Hollywood movie, was shot in a compressed 36 days.

The film’s strong showing is attributed to several factors, including enthusiastic word of mouth, unusually aggressive marketing for a low-budget film, and, as is so often the case in the film industry, good timing.

Russell Schwartz, president of Gramercy Pictures, the film’s distributor, said the company first suspected “Four Weddings” might be a sleeper when it performed well at several movie theaters in Salt Lake City on the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival. The audience was mainly ordinary moviegoers, not festival participants. “It was sort of a middle-America situation, and (the film) played wonderfully,” Schwartz said.

When further screenings also yielded raves, Gramercy, a fledgling joint venture between MCA (the parent company of Universal Pictures) and Polygram Filmed Entertainment, decided to take the risk of spending heavily on television advertising. Schwartz acknowledged that marketing costs have far exceeded production costs, but he declined to provide a specific figure.

Schwartz said he also moved up the film’s opening date from April to March to capitalize on a vacuum in the marketplace. “We saw there was a hole in terms of similarly themed movies, and we took advantage of it,” he said. “If there was another strong romantic comedy playing at the same time, we might not be doing (the business) we’re doing right now.”

The film opened in limited release, jumping to 240 theaters after Easter--the beginning of a traditionally slow season for movies--and expanding to 721 screens last weekend. The movie is expected to be in 900 theaters this weekend, Schwartz said.

Opening the film in March also meant that Grant, who previously appeared in the James Ivory movies “Maurice” (1987) and last year’s “The Remains of the Day,” would be starring in three new films at once--Roman Polanski’s “Bitter Moon” and John Duigan’s “Sirens,” as well as “Four Weddings.” “It might have helped initially,” Schwartz conceded, “but now the movie is taking on its own life.”

Grant’s success in “Four Weddings” has apparently not been lost on Miramax, distributor of “Sirens.” Grant is now being featured in print ads for “Sirens,” along with co-star Elle MacPherson, although the two are not paired off in the movie. (A Miramax spokeswoman said any resemblance between the ads for “Four Weddings” and “Sirens” is a coincidence.)

Producer Kenworthy, in a telephone interview from London, cited Grant’s appeal as a major reason the movie works. “He has a sort of playfulness which makes you think he means more than he seems to be saying, and when he furrows his brow and looks worried, you credit him with enormous intelligence,” Kenworthy said. “People want to mother him or befriend him. He’s got a sort of boyish quality, that English charm.”

Tim Bevan, co-executive producer of the film, said the key to the film’s success stemmed from the collaboration between screenwriter Richard Curtis (“The Tall Guy”) and Newell. “Richard is a great, great comedic writer, but I think that Mike Newell, coming from a very strong dramatic background, went for the truth of every scene rather than the punch line,” he said.

From the outside, there seems to be a simpler explanation for why “Four Weddings”--much like last summer’s “Sleepless in Seattle”--is catching on. “There is a hunger for sophisticated, witty romantic comedy in the tradition of some of the Hollywood movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s,” said film historian Stephen Farber. “There’s an audience that’s starved for literate escapist entertainment.”