The Big Wedding Review

In a comedy film titled The Big Wedding you wouldn’t be thought of as crazy to expect at least one of two things: a big wedding and/or some good jokes. If this is what you’re expecting then you are in for a major shock by the time the end credits begin to roll.

At the centre of The Big Wedding is Alejandro’s (Ben Barnes) marriage to Missy (Amanda Seyfried). Alejandro is adopted and his biological mother is a devout Catholic, therefore when it is announced that the biological mother is to attend the wedding Alejandro’s adopted parents, Don (Robert De Niro) and Ellie (Diane Keaton), are forced to pretend that they are still married, despite the fact they have been divorced for over ten years. Oh the fun that could come from this, right? Wrong!

The film opens with a quite misguided attempt at humour as we are introduced to the three main(?) characters, Don, Ellie and Don’s new girlfriend/Ellie’s best friend, Bebe (Susan Sarandon). The majority of backstory is thrown out of the window early on as the film focusses on introducing the main characters, trying to use humour to get the audience on side: there are no funny moments in this opening sequence, nor in Alejandro and Missy’s meeting with the vicar (Robin Williams), nor in Lyla’s (Katherine Heigl) introduction. You can just about force a laugh when Alejandro’s virgin brother (Topher Grace) is introduced.

The Big Wedding seems to be an experiment as to how much recycled comedy you can put into one film: the storyline seems to be very 80s style humour, the characters have all been seen before and offer nothing new to the storyline, and almost every story beat is predictable, despite how unpredictable the writer/director thinks he is being. Add all of this to the fact that almost none of the characters are really likeable then you know what you’re in for: an hour and a half of wishing the movie is going to take one almighty twist in which the wedding gets attacked by a nuclear weapon. This, unfortunately, never happens.

Early on there seem to be some promising aspects with Heigl and Grace’s interaction being the main source of genuine laughs but this soon fades away and is forgotten about as they have very little interaction at all after the first twenty minutes. A lot of the time, even in a bad comedy you can see what the film is attempting to do, you can see the potential. There isn’t even any real smidge of potential here, however.

The characters are, on the whole, very unlikeable; the plot is completely predictable for the most part; the acting is very poor, in particular Ben Barnes, while Amanda Seyfried is completely wasted in a nothing role; and the dialogue feels horribly forced and back to front.

The Big Wedding tries so hard to load in multiple story lines and in a last ten minutes that feels so rushed, these story lines are given very little time to come to natural solution and the films seems to jerk awkwardly towards the finishing line: this makes The Big Wedding, in actuality, seem more like a big waste of money.

My Rating: 3/10.

The Return of the British Rom-Com: ‘I Give It a Year’ Trailer

UK Release Date: 8th February 2013

Stars: Dan Mazer (director), Anna Faris, Rose Byrne, Simon Baker, Rafe Spall, Minnie Driver, Jason Flemyng, Olivia Colman, Stephen Merchant.

Plot: A look at the trials and tribulations of a pair of newlyweds during their first year as a married couple.

There aren’t many good British rom-coms. That’s the truth of the matter; the majority of them follow the same formula and recycle the same jokes over and over again. So it is great that I Give It a Year seems to be something fresh and, even better, it actually has a funny trailer. And a funny trailer is something that a lot of rom-coms lack.

The cast looks exciting, although there aren’t many high profile names they are taken from some great television shows: The Mentalist, Peep Show, Extras. It’s great to see Jason Flemyng here too! From the trailer it looks like every single character is going to inject some humour into the story which is fantastic.

A lot of good jokes are in the trailer and hopefully there will be more in the film. I don’t think British cinema can take another romantic comedy flop.

‘The Campaign’ Trailer and Why Comedies are so Hard to Market.

UK Release Date: 28th September 2012.

Stars: Jay Roach (director), Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, Dylan McDermott, Brian Cox, John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd.

Plot: In order to gain influence over their North Carolina district, two CEOs seize an opportunity to oust long-term congressman Cam Brady by putting up a rival candidate. Their man: naive Marty Huggins, director of the local Tourism Centre.

Will Ferrell is a pretty bankable name in comedy, everybody knows who he is thanks to his films like Anchorman, Step Brothers or Talladega Nights. Ferrell is seen as someone who has a real talent for acting in comedies and will, nine out of ten times, grant success to a film. Zach Galifianakis has pretty much guaranteed himself success by always playing an idiot (see The Hangover, Due Date) and here he seems to be doing the same thing once again.

Comedy films aren’t something that usually excite me and The Campaign does nothing to change my opinion of that. There are a few jokes in this trailer but this trailer serves mainly to introduce the audience to the main characters. What jokes are there, minus one or two, feel like they have been recycled so many times they are no longer funny and because of this they have to resort to toilet humour which is always guaranteed to pick up a laugh here and there, who doesn’t enjoy toilet humour?

With a pretty good cast it’s hard to see The Campaign failing and it will no doubt find an audience among teenage boys especially but there is a problem with marketing comedies that a lot of audience members have grown wise to now these days I think. Everybody knows that trailers are composed of the best bits of the movie, that’s the studio’s intention to bring in the crowds. However, I, and a lot of other people for sure, are sceptical more of comedy trailers than any other genre. This is because so many comedy films in recent years have put all the funny parts and good jokes into the trailer and when you go see the film you can’t help but be disappointed by the lack of jokes elsewhere in the film, but if the trailers aren’t full of funny moments why would you go and see the film in the first place? It’s a catch 22, a no-win situation and this does seem to happen in comedy films. I don’t think anyone who sees a trailer for an action film say “but what if all the fight scenes are in the trailer?” yet when the comedy trailer airs it’s always “they put all the funny parts in the trailer though”. Comedy is looked down upon in the genre hierarchy and this could be one of the reasons that makes them so hard to market but audiences will always go, even if they are disappointed it still looks good for the studio.