Our Family Wedding Review

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 03.12.2010

Can a movie starring Carlos Mencia actually be funny?

Directed by Rick Famuyiwa
Written by Wayne Conley, Malcolm Spellman and Rick Famuyiwa based on the story by Wayne Conley
Cinematography by Julio Macat
Music Composed by Transcenders

Cast
Forest Whitaker ... Brad Boyd
America Ferrera ... Lucia Ramirez
Carlos Mencia ... Miguel Ramirez
Regina King ... Angela
Lance Gross ... Marcus Boyd
Diana-Maria Riva ... Sonia Ramirez
Lupe Ontiveros ... Momma Cecilia
Anjelah Johnson ... Isabella Ramirez
Charlie Murphy ... T.J.
Shannyn Sossamon ... Ashley McPhee
Tonita Castro ... Aunt Rosita
Anna Maria Horsford ... Diane Boyd
Warren Sapp ... Wendell Boyd


Runtime: 90 min
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some sexual content and brief strong language.
Official Website




I have to admit, I went into Our Family Wedding with very low expectations. The movie had a lot going against it in my mind. It looked like a basic chick flick with no original qualities. There is a couple who wants to get married. They decide to introduce their families on the day they announce their engagement. One family is Latino and the other is African American. Racial tensions arise, hijinks occur, everyone learns to live together and we end with a wedding. Haven’t we seen this all before?

Something strange happened in the theater that day. I watched, I laughed, and I left the theater with a smile on my face. I enjoyed this movie? How the heck did that happen?

The setup is pretty basic as Lucia (America Ferrera from Ugly Betty) and her boyfriend Marcus have been living away from home and have decided to get married. They make the decision to return home and announce the engagement to their parents separately. From the start Lucia is the character who screws everything up. She has never told her father she dropped out of law school to become a volunteer teacher. She speaks to him weekly but has never once mentioned she has a boyfriend, much less that they live together. And when they arrive home, she decides to break the plans and set up a joint dinner for both families that night.

What she doesn’t know is that her father, the owner of a tow truck company had Marcus’ dad’s car towed earlier that day. She also doesn’t seem to realize that her father is not willing to accept an African American man for his daughter and Marcus’ dad is not that hot for a Latino family to join his. As I said, hijinks occur, and it is the racial problems that provide the weakest link in this movie. Between racial insults and customs misunderstood by both parties, the only funny part is the Latino grandmother who faints the minute she meets Marcus and brings an old school mentality to the entire proceedings.

So, with those complaints, what is there left to like about this movie? The script is solid and, unlike other romantic comedies that focus only on the couple and allows all other characters to become set pieces, this one pays respect to all the major characters. Everyone has a character arc and everyone is allowed a chance to see their journey end in a satisfying manner.

I am not a Carlos Mencia fan but he was very good in this movie as Miguel, the father of the bride. With the exception of two annoying scenes he is very laid back and calm through the movie, never grating on my nerves as he did in his televised sketch comedy show. Those scenes, one in a bar and the other at the wedding, are insignificant to the overall arc his character travels and he is, amazingly enough, interesting to watch. His character is a loving father of two girls who only wants the best for them. He has been working hard to restore his old car as a graduation present for Lucia, unaware she is not going to graduate. He has been married for many years though and has begun to pay less attention to his wife, Sonia. Sonia sees young love in her older daughter’s life and after overhearing her two children make fun of her marriage, understands that something irreparable might have occurred in her once blossoming love life. It is a sweet story of rekindling an old flame many years later and has one of the sweetest endings of the movie’s intertwining plots.

However, the true superstar of the movie is Forest Whitaker as Brad Boyd, Marcus’ dad. Brad is a celebrity radio dee-jay. He has been divorced for many years and when he fought for custody of Marcus, his ex-wife chose not to fight back and disappeared. He was lucky to have his entertainment lawyer Angela (Regina King) stand by him through all the years as a surrogate mother for Marcus and the two watched him grow into a man. But Brad is, as Lucia refers to him at one point, not a great role model. He sleeps with girls closer to his son’s age than his own. On the first dinner date, when he meets Lucia and her family, he brings a date that went to school with Lucia’s little sister. And throughout the story, he fails to see the one woman who truly loves him for who he is, the woman who laughs at his jokes even when they aren’t funny. If you have seen a romantic comedy, you know who this woman is from the start.

The two main actors, Gross and Ferrera, are solid in their roles and Gross is a star in waiting, but it is the stories floating around their relationship that lead this movie from generic rom-com to a quality night out at the movies. It is a story of a couple who must learn to trust one another, a couple who must learn to love again and a couple who must discover what it is they truly want in their lives. It looks like a shallow movie, but it is so much more than that.

The 411: Our Family Wedding is not a perfect movie. It has its problems when it tries too hard to be funny at times. A bar scene with Brad and Miguel and a scene later in the movie with a goat and a bottle of Viagra could have been excised for the better but when the movie settles into a touching love story, it is at its best. The acting is great, with Forest Whitaker, Lance Gross, Regina King and Carlos Mencia leading the way. Don’t avoid this movie because it looks generic. There is just enough here to leave you satisfied with the resolution. If you are looking for a date movie this weekend, you could do much worse than this.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]