adminFilm: The Big Wedding
Cast: Robert De Niro, Katherine Heigl, Diane Keaton, Amanda Seyfried, Topher Grace, Ben Barnes, Susan Saradom, Christine Ebersole, David Rasche, Patricia Rae, Ana Ayora.
Director: Justine Zackham
Cinema: Rainbow town
Running time: 95 minutes
Type of film: extended family/comedy
Age restriction: adults only
Prof Joel White.
In this case it will be helpful, and possibly essential, that the viewer take one piece of information along with him as he watches this film.
The director of the film, Justin Zackham, was also the writer of the film, as well as the producer the one who puts up the money to make the film.
It means there was no one with the clout or the authority to say: “Hold it: you’re going too far.”
And very far indeed he has gone.
Essentially a wedding film, it labours the point that in this highly, and increasingly, liberal age, weddings are little more than somewhat formal arrangements wherein couples who have been living together possibly with her kids and his kids invite their former spouses to witness what evolves into the next stage of the marriage game.
The entire film takes place on the day of the wedding and the two days prior. Robert De Niro, New York born, accent and all, has a daughter by his current wife, and invites his first wife to the ceremony.
This sets the stage for disaster in that he refused the pleading of the first wife Diane Keaton to have a child, but gave in to the second.
The two wives, formerly kept apart, now become the best of friends (perhaps allies is the better word) and plot the downfall of the one whom they plighted to love, honour and obey.
To give an out of town appeal, the intended young groom is a Mexican, who naturally invites his old fashioned, and very critical, mum to the wedding.
(It should be noted that Hollywood, in southern California, is cheek by jowl neighbours to Mexico, and benefits both in films and in real life from the cheap labour this provides.)
This Mexican Mum not allowed to get off clean, any more than anyone else in the film, ultimately discloses that the brother and sister are in fact only half brother and sister.
At age 70, and with more than 100 films to his name, De Niro superbly juggles the script, and all the characters, to do his bidding. At least until he runs into the priest who is going to conduct the at home ceremony.
This in the person of Robin Williams, as Father Moinigham, the Catholic priest called upon to formalise the hilarity.
Highly recommended.
Online Reporter