The Chocolate Review: Our Family Wedding

(*Sigh of frustration) Where do we begin? Our Family Wedding is at best a sweet slapstick comedy about what happens when two minority families get together and throw race jokes (and cake) at one another.

We went in expecting an exciting new twist on the Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner genre. The idea of two minority families going at one another would bring a fresh take on the unusual white vs. minority culture clash and we welcomed that. Instead we ended up getting a mediocre, over the top narrative that fell short in areas that held true potential to be funny or even touching.

Even though you’ve seen this story a million times, we’ll fill you in on the details. Lucia (America Ferrera) is a beautiful Latina who’s engaged to doctor to be Marcus (Lance Gross). When Lucia and Marcus return home to tell their proud parents about their engagement everything hits the fan. Why? (The suspense is killing me) Because Marcus is black. To add to the mix Lucia hasn’t told her family that she’s dropped out of law school, a confession that’ll undoubtedly break her parent’s heart.

Before the couple has a chance to spill the beans their fathers, Miguel and Brad (Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia), meet haphazardly during an altercation that almost brings them to blows. Needless to say, when both men discover that their children are planning to tie the knot all racially charged hell brakes loose.

The events seemed rushed and it honestly felt like the filmmakers put together a check list of every wedding related family comedy cliché and started shooting. Insult throwing. Check! Family against family softball game. Check! Viagra eating goat scene…well, okay that was something we’d never seen before but even that was more asinine than it was amusing.

It was difficult to pin point a main character because there were close to six different storylines fighting for equal screen time. The detached set of events might have something to do with the three writers responsible for bringing Our Family Wedding to the big screen. A classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen. And whether they’re making quesadillas or collard greens: it still stunk like a bad idea.

After an hour of people passing out when they saw that Marcus was black we must admit that keeping up with the emotional aspect of the film became daunting. This premise can hold the length of a movie for anyone who isn’t African American because we don’t inherently understand or relate to the general public’s trepidation and resistance of accepting us. Other races may be able to understand that fear and therefore will be able to observe the underlying humor in the “I’m Marrying a black person! Everyone freak out!” moments. Moreover, they’ll be able to sustain their amusement. It’s a little harder for the black folk to play along when we don’t share that same feeling or reaction to ourselves. But we digress.

It was nice to see Forest Whitaker playing a much lighter role than his usual, more serious characters. Regina King did an amazing job and to be honest, we wish we saw more of her. Lucia’s grandmother (Lupe Ontiveros) was by far our favorite character in the film. She spoke English but only used Spanish as a means to insult people in secret. Her one-liners were priceless and she represented that universal grandmother who talks trash and is set in her ways. Izzy (Anjelah Johnson) was a delight to see and her comedy was timely and natural. Look out for that girl, she’s going places!

Overall, Our Family Wedding was a below par movie that truly had potential to be a stand out comedy. It was cute. It was sweet and it made you laugh. But the truth is, you’ve seen this movie before and you’ve seen it done better. If you’re in the mood for an over done, farcical comedy with mildly motivated characters then by all means, go check it out. Otherwise take our strong suggestion and do what we wish we would have done in the first place: RED BOX IT!

The Chocolate Review gives Our Family Wedding 2 out of 5 stars for the following reasons:

• Zero chemistry between America Ferrera and Lance Gross
• Silly slapstick comedy
• Passive, unrealistic managing of the subject matter
• A rushed, re-hashed story
• Use of subtitles. There were several moments when characters said jokes in Spanish but they weren’t subtitled so only the Spanish speaking audience members could react and laugh. Everyone else felt like they were being left out of the fun =(