Why So Blu?

Our Family Wedding – Love, Laughs & Bad Acting

Our Family Wedding is a tongue-in-cheek romantic comedy starring Ugly Betty’s America Ferrera as Lucia Ramirez, who is certainly not ugly in this new film.  Quite the contrary as the beautiful actress sports charisma and talent on the screen.  Also headlining the film is Lance Gross (House of Payne) who plays opposite Ferrera as her husband to be, Marcus.  The two have made some drastic changes in their lives, some of which are being kept from their parents who know nothing of the inter-racial relationship. 

Playing Lucia’s father is real life standup comic Carlos Mencia who does a much better job in his aforementioned career path than he did in this movie.  Yes he has his funny moments, but boy is he unconvincing in front of the camera.  The first 30 minutes of screen time for him nearly proved that he couldn’t deliver any of his lines without smirking.  Meanwhile, the film saves face where Mencia left off as the talents of Forest Whitaker jump on board in the role of Marcus’s dad; a 50-something radio show host with money to burn and ladies to…um…hold hands with. 

Lucia and Marcus are deeply in love with one another and have treaded with much apprehension as they prepare their families for their engagement announcement.  As the movie poster shows us, there is some inevitable tension between the two families while the two kids who just want to start their lives together are stuck in the middle of a Mexican versus African-American bumping of the heads.  The sour grapes are most evident between the two dads, whose scenes are sometimes over the top and other times worthy of a few good laughs.  Unfortunately those good laughs were rather non-existent early on, courtesy of a weak script and contrived comedic action.  Director Ray Famuyiwa will hopefully give his next project a little less push as things seemed very forced here and there.  The first 30 to 40 minutes of the film were bad.  I don’t mean ‘good’ bad either.  I mean bad, as in “this stinks.”  The slapstick humor was old hat as the gags acted out on screen were nothing we haven’t seen before. 

Once the scene with the wedding’s seating arrangement started, we were good to go.  Our Family Wedding provided a light-hearted comedy that had some decent momentum from this point forward, though it still had its speed bumps of ridiculousness now and again.  The film has a great ending, however; and be sure to stick around when the credits start to role for a bit of humor that is the absolute icing on the cake for this movie.  I almost laughed as hard at the closure as I did during some of the actual film, and I don’t mean that in a cynical sense either.  For this work that is worth viewing, don’t wait for an invite to Our Family Wedding in theaters as the inevitable rental is money better spent.