Weddings are supposed to be joyous occasions celebrating the new union of two people who are committed to and pledge to remain with each other until death do them part. Of course, less than fifty percent make it that far nowadays, but at least most start out with the right intentions.
Sadly, many such events -- or at least the days, weeks, months and sometimes years leading up to them -- end up being something less than fun. Much of that often stems not only from all of the planning, choices and related money that goes along with the big day, but also the ancillary characters who want their say in how things will be done.
And by those I mean family members who seem to think the event is as much (and sometimes more) about them than the main participants. As is stated in the latest cinematic example of that, "It's the bride and groom's marriage, but their families' wedding." That's the underlying theme of "Our Family Wedding," an increasingly irritating and broadly played "comedy" that gives a bad name to bad wedding related movies.
Trotting out one relationship and wedding cliché after another and then throwing in unimaginative ethnic comedy -- presumably designed to generate laughs but likely to offend everyone in how lamely and unimaginatively said material is handled by those in front of and behind the camera -- the film wants to be something of a modern day "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." Sadly, it feels quite late to this particular game.
All of which is too bad since America Ferrera and Lance Gross make something of a cute if somewhat bland couple who might have been fun to watch had they appeared in another and obviously better movie. Considering she's Hispanic and he's African-American, one immediately expects -- even in today's supposedly more liberated and accepting times -- that a culture clash is pending. We're not talking anything along the lines of the Montagues and Capulets -- after all, this is supposed to be a comedy -- but there's little doubt ethnic based humor is just around the bend.
Sadly, it's neither subtle nor smart (and certainly isn't funny), although at least it generally avoids grossly exaggerated caricatures sometimes found in "whacky" comedies or "Saturday Night Live" skits that quickly overextend their stay and wear out their welcome. Those latter qualities, however, certainly apply to the father figures played by Forrest Whitaker (as a divorced deejay who dates women half his age) and Carlos Mencia (playing the married, Hispanic auto shop owner who's all about tradition).
The two don't hit it off from the get-go (what with one towing the other's car), and that's even before they're made aware that they're about to be future in-laws. Once that happens, they battle over who sits last between them (which isn't funny the first, protracted time and even less so the second), who will pay for the wedding, what color tux jacket they get to wear, and so on and so forth. All of that, of course, is enhanced by their racist views of the other and their culture's traditions.
None of that's new -- TV's "All in the Family" covered the same ground so much better decades ago when it was far more controversial -- but one would hope that writer/director Rick Famuyiwa and co-scribes Wayne Conley and Malcolm Spellman would manage to put some sort of twist on the familiar material, or at least elicit even meager sitcom-style laughs from it.
Alas, the ordeal is simply painful to endure, especially since we know the adversarial relationship will eventually soften to the point that the two men will become comrades of sorts in the "fathers who can't believe their kids" fashion. What may have worked as a black comedy -- had the filmmakers had the courage to really push the boundaries of racism as well as how nasty weddings can become -- this might have been something worth noting, but just about everything is played far too safely, leaving the comedy essentially fangless.
As a supplement to the young love storyline, we get two supplemental ones, both featuring those dads as they come to realize what they've had in front of them all along (Regina King as the deejay's longtime friend and lawyer and Diana-Maria Riva as the auto shop owner's long-suffering wife who's tired of playing second eye candy fiddle to the cars he restores). These subplots thankfully exchange the exaggerated adversarial comedy for some straight drama, but they're really only mediocre at best.
Perhaps sensing that, the filmmakers don't take long to return to the goofy stuff, including not one but two Viagra based sequences, the second of which -- get ready for it, 'cuz it's really gonna be hilarious -- features a goat (yes) that downs the blue pills and then gets randy with Mr. Whitaker. While that might surprise some, it's about the only thing that isn't predictable here, all of the way down to the concluding dancing sequence that typically populates films of this ilk.
Making anyone with a semblance of good taste desirous of fleeing the theater (or TV just a few months after that) in terror and leaving everyone involved with this unfunny mess jilted at the cinematic altar, "Our Family Wedding" tries too hard to be funny and misses more than it hits with the supposedly more poignant moments. It rates as a 3 out of 10.
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