MOVIE REVIEW - THE BIG WEDDING

MY BIG FAT SEEN IT BEFORE WEDDING

The Big Wedding

**

Review by Steve “WhiskeySour” Brown

My relationship with action films has turned rocky these last few weeks, and I don’t mean rocky as in the awesome Balboa kind, but rocky as in the Sylvester-Stallone-is-a-meat-head-and-I-can’t-remember-what-I-saw-in-him-in-the-first-place kind. It was last week, when I went to see the G.I. Joe sequel, I realized that action films just weren’t doing it for me anymore.

It’s not action films’ fault really, it’s me.

So I decided some space was needed for the good of the relationship and called a temporary break. Feeling oddly liberated and slightly promiscuous, I set out on the town’s movie theatre where I bumped into an old but sympethetic friend: comedy.

That Friday night, comedy was dressed to the nines in formal romance attire. Dressed up as comedy was, little has changed since our first time meeting those many years ago. Comedy on the surface was witty, insightful and, of course, made me laugh when I needed to laugh. As always, comedy was the perfect companion, in that I was thrilled to be in the presence of more then just macho attitudes and brilliant, short-lived explosions.

In that regard, “The Big Wedding”, directed by Justin Zackham, was exactly the right movie for me to see. I found myself smiling or even laughing at the antics of its characters, its situational humour, and I was reminded that we mere mortals are flawed individuals, banding together to turn what little we have into beautful masterpieces. That the power of family and friendship can overcome all our past and present mistakes. That forgiveness is what a crazy family is made for.

None of it was real of course, but that is just who comedy is. A sweet-talking, good-for-nothing muse, who is sometimes cynical, sometimes optimistic but always has something different to say about life and everything in it. Which is the problem inherited by “The Big Wedding”. No real complexity. The characters were well-defined with the quirks needed to keep things interesting, but were not given anything more then they absoultely needed to maintain form in the minds of their audience. In no way can there be any argument to why a character acted the way they did, because every thing about the character was spelled out to the audience in the first twenty minutes of the movie. Only one character seemed slightly determined to maintain some of her mystery, but it wasn’t very long before she caved under peer pressure and became open like everyone else.

This lack of character depth makes watching this movie a second time un-rewarding because there’s little more to be understood that wasn’t spoon-fed to you the first time. It’s like having an orange popcicle, the mild orange taste is pleasing enough, but no one ever spends much time thinking about it afterwards, its banished from our thoughts because while the taste is good, it’s also unremarkable.

Of course, not much thought was put into the main line of tension ether. If your mother, who puts you up for adoption and is ultra-catholic is willing to travel to another continent to be at your wedding, one might assume she is capable of handling a surprise or two. Yes, getting her to meet your divorced foster parents would be a cause for concern but convincing said adoptive parents to actually pretend to be married again is a bit of an over-reaction. I realize the whole movie kind of hinges on that gimmick, but the characters could have at least argued a little harder before diving into that bandwagon head first with tongues wagging. To put it mildly, “The Big Wedding” is the epitomy of a First World problem being met with a First World solution: lie through your teeth at the first opportunity. Amusing, but not exactly a well-thought-out plot development.

As arrogant as shoot ’em up and blow ’em down action films can be in comparison to romantic comedies, they certainly have much more replay value. All those epic fight scenes and the frenzy pacing do have a tendency to stick with a person. A great deal of effort has to go into a romantic comedy to even come close to having replay value, while people tend to look the other way with action films if they have great explosions.

God I miss action films already. Why am I so weak?