Our family wedding Review

Nick Famuyius’s newest film Our Family Wedding may fool you.

At first it appears to be a comedy about the long and stressful journey a couple takes to get to that joyous moment of saying “ I do.” Towards the middle of the film, however, it takes an interesting and serious turn.

 And The journey is especially long and stressful for this couple because one family is Hispanic and the other is black--and they absolutely hate each other.

America Ferreira plays Lucia Ramirez, who plans on getting married to the man of her dreams Marcus Boyd (played by Lance Gross).  The problem is that Lucia hasn’t told her strict parents about him or the fact that she’s dropped out of law school. Oh boy! And Marcus has yet to tell his womanizing father.

Once everybody’s had the news broken to them, the two families are forced to spend time together to try to plan the wedding. The two dads (played by Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia) go head-to-head finding every reason to hate each other, while everybody else sits on the sidelines trying to calm them down.

The first half of this film is complete chaos. Just about every scene involving the two families starts with one father hurling insults or racial slurs about the other one, and everything escalates from there. Then it cuts to the next scene, and the conflict repeats. These confrontations were kind of funny at first but they got really annoying and repetitive.

Also there were a lot of unnecessary scenes that were obviously put in just to get some cheap laughs, like when Mencia is trying to figure out how to use Whitaker’s fancy New-Age sink but ends up making a big mess. Or later when a goat eats Viagra and creates a ruckus.

 And of course the movie had that pivotal moment in which the families turn on themselves. The bride’s-to-be parents, Miguel and Sonia, get into a fight. Then engaged couple themselves get in a fight and break up and the groom’s-to-be womanizing father loses the one woman who he actually likes, his long-time lawyer Angela (Regina King).

 However after this sequence of events, the film finally settled down and got right to the point, which was the issue of interracial relationships. This issue they addressed in a serious, not comical, way. Like when Lucia and her dad talk about whether Marcus is right for her or not and when Marcus and his dad have the same conversation. That actually made the rest of the film more enjoyable.

 The cast was the main thing that kept me watching. Both fathers, Mencia and Whitaker, were rude and selfish jerks to begin with but then turned into respectful and supportive fathers. You understood why acted the way they did in the beginning.

America Ferreira and Lance Gross (the betrothed couple) were a perfect match. Sure, they had their problems but most of the time they kept a positive attitude when they were caught in the crossfire of their parents’ bickering. They’re the heart and soul of the film and remind us why we bothered to see this movie.

After all the serious stuff and everyone makes up with one another, the film then returns to its goofy and upbeat self, a few last minute jokes are slipped in and well… you know the rest. 

Our family wedding may not have the same depth or ground-breaking effect that Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner had, but overall it’s a feel-good movie supported by a fantastic cast.