Review of The Big Wedding (2013) by Adam P — 03 Apr 2014

Yikes! I just now realized I watched this film 4 days ago before reviewing it. That must tell you how important the film was to me. Not a bit. This film definitely takes a spot on my ever changing Top 10 Worst films of 2013 list. And not even at the bottom, it's got one of the top five spots. Nothing about this movie was good. But I should have guessed this would have been the case from two warnings I received. First off we have the large change of release dates from October 2012 to April 2013. I would normally shrug this off, as post production trouble, or marketing strategy, but the film was already receiving ads on television marking the October date when it was moved. I then began to fear that the study was trying to rid the film, as they were worried it was going to fail. The next warning was the ensemble cast tag that spread across the trailers and posters. I hate ensembles. I wanna like them, but I usually don't. Some work (Expendables, at least for the most part) and most don't (Valentine's Day, Movie 43, New Years Eve, etc). The point is, from the beginning I knew the film wasn't going to be good, or evening ok. But I never thought once that it would be this bad. But it was. Onto my review of The Big Wedding.

In 'The Big Wedding' long divorced couple Don and Ellie Griffin (Robert De Niro and Diana Keaton) are once again forced to play the happy couple for the sake of their adopted son's wedding after his biological mother comes to attend the wedding.

Let me talk about the script. The script is complete garbage. The script reads like a how-to manual, but just the first draft of that how-to manual. The writers swung out with supposed jokes, but each missed the impact and fell helplessly into the dark abyssal of which this film is. The film try's to be funny, and act as a romantic dramedy but the drama and the comedy is stale and tasteless and nothing seems to work here. Of course there isn't much materiel to work with. The script basically reads as follows 'Please insert 10 stars and have them do all sorts of random things, oh and also end the film with a wedding'. Yes, that is how the film acts. The script, makes little sense, and is very brainless as to what would really go on in those situations. I know they make the things different to be funny, but it's not, it isn't. The script just isn't funny whatsoever.

And ofcourse we get those weird lines, as if the script wasn't already hard enough to swallow, we have to gauge down those completely ridicules lines. The dialogue is cheesy, weird, awkward, and self-centered at times. Not to mention the lines laid out by the priest, that come out offensive.

The characters are beyond unlikable, it's unbelievable. What I'm saying is that you'd think with such a solid ensemble of a cast that the characters would at least be likable and relatable, but they're not. Best examples of this are Topher Grace's and Robert De Niro's characters. What's wrong with these guys is that they were probably meant to be nice guys, but they aren't. Grace's character is a weird, stalker like, sex obsesser, not to mention acts like he's going to rape the girl he wants to have at it with. De Niro's character on the other hand is just a clean old jerk. He is supposed to love Susan Sarandon's character a lot, but sleeps with his ex? And then when confronted about it shrugs it off and acts like it was no biggy. And all this time the viewer is left thinking 'That schmock'. I mean how bad can you character's be? Not to mention Seyfried's parents in the film. Those to have some major issues, but it's not so bad, because they were written out as jerks, but De Niro and Grace's characters weren't. That's what makes them bad.

The film is highly lazy. When it gets a chance to take a wildcard, it doesn't. That's what makes the film so predictable. Nothing we watch in this film is anything but what we saw already before in the last rom-com Katherine Heigl starred in. Plot twists or so they call them, are predicted well before we are informed on film of their existence. Not that it would have made any difference if we weren't aware of them; they aren't of any spectacular mind blowing 'I did not see that coming' ness. Stale, stale, stale, stale, stale.

It's a shame how bad this film was. It spoiled the overly talented cast. Well all except for, say Katherine Heigl, and Robin Williams whose careers are already in the bag by now. Actually Heigl's career never even got out of the bag, and that's not very good. But who I'm saying was spoiled here were Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Diana Keaton, and Topher Grace. Actors and Actresses who still had a career. Well, they've all just about lost it, with this.

The film's pace is pretty quick, with the films runtime being an hour and 40 minutes, the film breezes by and when we get to the film's ending it feels like a half an hour special. It helps make this film somewhat easier to sit through, but I felt it doesn't work with plot movie, it just skips around really, and it doesn't help but it doesn't exactly hurt the film.

All and All the film is overly predictable, and spoils the talented cast with a script that is unfunny, and whose characters are unlikable. F 3/15/14.