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.
Matthew McConaughey is a pretty big name actor if you think about it. If you think of romantic comedies then his name will be one of the first few you associate with the genre, along with Jennifer Aniston and Katherine Heigl. Funnily enough, if you also think of plain bad films (and I’m talking really bad, not bad but enjoyable, just bad) then Matthew McConaughey must also be synonymous with that too! He does however, have a huge legion of fans, mainly of the female gender and probably because of his looks rather than his acting ability, but you would be hard pressed to find a man who counts Matthew McConaughey among their favourite actors. Now it looks as though that may be set to change as McConaughey opts for more dramatic roles than we are used to seeing him in.
Ant-Man: I’m talking the Henry Pym Ant-Man, not any of the reincarnations. An Ant-Man movie seems to have been in the works for as long as Marvel Studios have been making films but things are finally moving forward and you would expect this film to tie Ant-Man in to the already existing Marvel Universe seeing as though he is one of the original Avengers in the comic books. I know that Nathan Fillion’s name has been banded around for the part and with Joss Whedon now having a little input in casting maybe Fillion has a chance of getting the role; I would be in support of this.
Wasp: You can’t really have Ant-Man without having Wasp, the two are married in the comics and go hand in hand. She was one of the founding members of the comic book world Avengers and is likely to be introduced in the Ant-Man film. Combine this with the fact that the Avengers is lacking some serious female representatives then I think it is highly likely that Wasp will feature sooner rather than later. When Wasp was first being rumoured Eva Longoria was linked with the part and I would definitely back this casting choice. She is a wonderful actress and although her success in acting has been on television I think that she could hold her own in an ensemble cast.
Black Panther: Black Panther is one of my favourite comic book characters from Marvel and he was the first black superhero in mainstream American comics; he is African royalty and ruler of his own country with a long running association with the Avengers. I don’t know if Marvel would be able to afford this actor because he is absolute true quality but if he was to star in the role the movie would no doubt be a huge hit! My pick for this role would be Djimon Hounsou of Blood Diamond fame, I think he is the stand out candidate for this role out of the already known actors.
Vision: So the likelihood of Vision being included in the next Avengers film seemed less and less likely with the likelihood of Ultron appearing diminishing (you won’t understand that if you do not follow the comics but don’t worry). Anyway, as you will know if you have seen The Avengers Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD died at the hands of Loki, yet he is still contracted to several more Marvel films and is remaining coy about his involvement with Iron Man 3. What’s more, people thought this was the work of Joss Whedon (a man known for killing off popular characters) but this was actually planned by Marvel’s man in charge Kevin Feige. Clearly Marvel have plans for Agent Coulson and in one interview they even said “I believe the letters L, M and D were mentioned somewhere’. L.M.D = Life Model Decoy. So will Agent Coulson come back as The Vision? There is no doubt that Clark Gregg has become a favourite of fans of the Marvel Universe as it is his appearance that helped to tie all the films together and make The Avengers possible. If Agent Coulson was reborn as The Vision I would think this was an absolute stroke of genius on Marvel’s part.
The Movie Universe 