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| Tookey's Review |
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| Cast |
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| Released: |
2013 |
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| Genre: |
COMEDY
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
89 |
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Tear up the invitation.
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Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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The Big Wedding is almost as dreary as The Hangover Part III, and even more wasteful of talent. Writer-director Justin Zackham’s first produced screenplay was The Bucket List, which comprehensively squandered the talents of Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.
His second involves four Academy Award winners, all cruelly wasted on roles unworthy of them.
Robert De Niro (pictured centre) effs and blinds his way through the picture as a wealthy sculptor throwing a wedding for his adopted son Alejandro (Ben Barnes, bland as ever) and his simpering inamorata (Amanda Seyfried), presided over by a leering Catholic priest - Robin Williams, inexplicably encouraged to reprise the obnoxious performance he gave in Licence to Wed.
Unfortunately, Alejandro has neglected to tell his austerely reactionary Colombian birth mother (Patricia Rae) that his adoptive father and mother (Diane Keaton, pictured right) have divorced, and dad is now shacked up with his ex-wife’s best friend (Susan Sarandon, pictured left). So dad and his ex-wife pretend still to be married.
It is left unclear as to why they think this is going to fool the rest of the guests, who presumably all know their real situation. Oddly enough, no one brings this point up, or thinks there’s anything peculiar about Ms Sarandon showing up and pretending to be the wedding caterer.
Blissfully unaware of its own racism, misogyny and homophobia, the movie preaches a bland tolerance of sexual peccadilloes and uses a lot of smutty language that feels wildly inappropriate coming out of the mouths of the elderly.
This is yet another of those movies that panders to the worst elements of youth by making the old seem, at best, half-witted. At one point, Diane Keaton – the former star of Annie Hall, Manhattan and The Godfather - delivers the line “It’s humiliating”. Too right, it is.
As if all this isn’t painful enough, the beautiful but dependably atrocious Katherine Heigl turns up as De Niro’s lawyer daughter and vomits all over him. It’s a fitting metaphor for the state of modern Hollywood comedy.
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, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon