So you may have guessed that I review movies after they come out, not prior to release like most professional reviewers. That’s just a consequence of current circumstances, however – I’ve learned there’s a benefit to doing this. A lesson that presented itself to me as I saw the ensemble, dysfunctional nuptial movie The Big Wedding. Just about everyone in this cast is famous and often that’s a bad sign. Rather than hire the best people for the roles, when an amateur script comes along, I think producers toss famous names at it to combat the lack of interest otherwise. It’s like having a barrel of sub-par fireworks and firing them all off to seem more impressive. Not that Susan Sarandon, Robert De Niro, Dianne Keaton, Robin Williams, Katherine Heigl, and Topher Grace are unimpressive but I think they all feed off of each other knowing not one is going to be the most impressive, because in a film like this it doesn’t really do to stand out. My mother called me yesterday explaining that she thinks she’s caught up on all my movie reviews and noticed that I have yet to review a movie that she’s interested in. When I told her I saw The Big Wedding and was making it my next review she said it didn’t look very good but “I like Susan Sarandon.” This is the effect studios are going for: sell the actor, not the movie.

The first joke of the film had me reeling in my chair concerned about how to describe it without my editors firing me on the spot. It involves ex-wife Ellie (Keaton) letting herself into the home of her ex-husband, Don, and his new partner Bebe (De Niro and Sarandon). We watch in horror as she watches in horror as Don starts to perform an act with Bebe that I think used to be illegal in Texas. If Cinemax and Lifetime went in together on a film, it would be The Big Wedding. It’s replete with obvious and fairly gross sexual humor interweaved with incredibly broad and way too easy family relationship schmaltz. It really belongs on some new cable channel called CineLife. The editing on a family comedy should not even be considered but one scene showing Don fall into a pool made me cringe. Even the ADR is sub-par. ADR is when the actors overdub their own voices onto the previously filmed scenes. It’s to cover up ambient noise trouble from filming it live. In this movie I was distracted by how often an actor’s or actresses’s voice felt like it was coming from the wrong mouth.

May I borrow your napkin?

This is not big screen worthy work. It’s not absolute trash either. I must admit there was a dinner scene that caused me to laugh a few times but also repulsed me when I got a full shot of the napkin, bobbing up and down, on the lap of son Jared (Grace).

Here’s Jared’s story line. He’s never had sex. He meets the foreign sister of the groom. She takes her clothes off in practically the same paragraph as introducing herself. He will have sex before the movie is done.

This movie is not particularly witty and it has so many story lines, nothing gets the full benefit of time. Huge familial problems are introduced and dispatched far too easily with nothing more than a Wilfred Brimley-esque quotation or a silly push into the lake. It makes me wonder if it was this easy to solve their troubles… why did they harbor them for all these years? The next time I get into a fight with a friend I’ll just shove them in the Puget Sound and watch our troubles wash away in the tide.

Have you ever noticed that if anyone in a movie or tv show is pregnant, before it’s done they won’t be pregnant? The Big Wedding will not change this type of pattern. If a big deal is made of someone not being able to have a baby, guess what? If a big deal is made of someone being a virgin, guess what? If a big deal is made of someone not being willing to settle down, guess what? If someone has alcoholism but has been sober for years, guess what? Oh and let’s throw in some incredibly broad, 1950’s, over the top ethno-centrism to boot.

No trouble that a diving board can’t solve.

So what’s this movie about? Well, adopted son Alejandro (Ben Barnes) is going to get married to Missy (Amanda Seyfried). She has parents who hate foreigners and he has parents that need to pretend to be married so as not to offend his Catholic, über religious birth mom. There’s Bebe, the temporarily displaced lover and two angry, non-adopted kids. Will Don make up with Bebe? Will the wedding go well? Will the barren daughter make up with her dad? Will the ex-wife finally release her anger? Will the ethno-centric parents learn a lesson in cross-cultural love? Will the…. oh you get the point.

Do I hate this movie? No. I just think it’s way below par and sometimes just dumb and gross while trying to pass itself off as meaningful. But here’s where seeing the film after its release provided me a lesson. Surrounding me were legions of women in their 70’s who giggled and tittered at all the on screen potty humor. I was surprised, thinking women of their generation would have been more offended than me. But from what I can tell they enjoyed themselves. So… what do I know?

Should you see The Big Wedding? Well, are you 70?