Speak up!
Our Family Wedding (PG-13)
Going down the aisle sure takes a while.
Editor rating:
3/11/2010
If you were to call Rick Famuyiwa's sporadically amusing new comedy My Big Fat Mexican/African-African Wedding you wouldn't be far off the mark. The film stars Oscar winner Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland, and, yes, I wonder what he's doing in this thing, too) and comedian Carlos Mencia as fathers-in-law-to-be who meet cute (Mexican dad tows African-American dad's car) and continue an escalating game of one-upmanship while their kids (America Ferrera and Lance Gross) attempt to plan a wedding.
Famuyiwa (Brown Sugar) and his fellow screenwriters offer some amusing moments, the best of which involves the families' trying to work out a seating plan and imagining the chaos that would occur should they make a mistake. Whitaker and Mencia are actually pretty funny together, with Whitaker as the neat-freak single dad who beds women half his age and Mencia as the clueless husband who pays more attention to his car than his wife. The film even boasts a laugh-out-loud scene in which the ever-hilarious Charlie Murphy croons a Babyface song.
And with both dads ready to hurl racial and cultural slurs -- and to take offense at the slightest slight -- comic anarchy could break out at any moment.
Unfortunately, not enough breaks out, and too many of the gags -- involving, among other things, Viagra, a goat and a softball game that only stretches the film's running time -- are pedestrian and pointless and funny in the way of the worst sitcoms. And when the film shows its sensitive side, asking us to believe the wedding is really in danger of being called off, we're left frustrated. Our Family Wedding isn't bad, and it could have been worse. But while patience is a virtue in a marriage, we shouldn't need quite this much to make it through a movie.
Cast: Forest Whitaker, America Ferrera, Carlos Mencia, Regina King, Lance Gross.
Director: Rick Famuyiwa.
Screenwriters: Wayne Conley, Malcolm Spellman, Rick Famuyiwa.
Producers: Edward Saxon, Steven J. Wolfe.
A Fox Searchlight release. Running time: 101 minutes. Some sexual content, brief strong language. Playing at area theaters.
