BEFORE: Wow, so much happened last night, and I'm not sure I can even talk about it here. I'm occasionally under restrictions when there are certain events at the theater, and it's often requested that I not post details on social media of things that happen there. BUT I just checked, this information appeared in press releases on Friday, that a coalition of non-vaccinated actors was scheduled to gather at the NYC viewing party of the SAG Awards in NYC to protest the film industry's resistance to lifting the vaccination mandates for film productions, which do not grant exemptions for religious or medical reasons. So let's just say that I was working at this event, and there was a contingency of actors outside leading a "peaceful" protest, as if that's not an oxymoron.
I'll say no more details about what went down, BUT afterwards I still had to get home, and the subway line I live on in Brooklyn was shut down - it took a car ride and two subways for me to get to work yesterday, and it was even tougher to get home. Three different trains to get home, and even then I had to walk about 20 minutes from the train, in freezing weather, at 1:00 am. And THEN I had to stay up and watch this movie, so I wasn't exactly in a peaceful state of mind.
Luke Kirby carries over from "Touched With Fire".
THE PLOT: A fractured family is forced by the eldest son's wedding to confront what tore them apart.
AFTER: Look, I've seen a lot of "crazy wedding" movies, including this year's "Love Wedding Repeat" and last year's "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters". It would be boring, sure, if somebody made a movie about a wedding where everything goes perfect and according to plan, so instead they tend to swing completely the other way, where nearly everything goes wrong. But then the result is often SO crazy, how are we supposed to enjoy that? It's a form of schadenfreude if we're all supposed to take comfort in the pain of someone else's wedding disasters, because thank GOD that isn't us, I guess.
But it's so manic that I spent the first half of the film just figuring out who everybody is and how they're all related, it seems maybe they could have clarified all that much sooner and then the story would have been clearer, but then I guess maybe the whole film would only have been about 37 minutes long. Eventually I figured it out, I think - there's a love triangle at the basis of the story because there are two brothers, Matthew and Kurt (are they brothers? put a pin in this, I'll come back to it...) and Matthew, the DJ, is getting married to Louisa, who used to date Kurt, the actor. Yeah, so there's some tension. The other sibling is their sister Carrie, who comes to the wedding with her husband (boyfriend?) Misha. But they don't really develop Carrie as an important character, the only thing she does in the whole movie is make out with some other guy while she's in town for the wedding, umm, I think.
The parents of the groom are two women, Barbara and Tammy, played by Kathleen Turner and Frances Fisher. They're no longer together as a couple, but apparently they raised three kids together, or did they? There are many flashbacks to two years ago or four years ago - so many flashbacks that it's often very confusing to tell when they end, because there's no title card that lets us know we're back in the present day. But the fact that the kids have two mommies, while it's very progressive, is what makes the issue of their children very confusing. Do the kids have the same biological mother, or different ones? Who are their fathers, were the women married to different men and then they got together after divorces? So, this is why I'm not sure if Matthew and Kurt are really brothers or step-brothers or if they share any parents at all, because the whole timeline has not been revealed. If the women became a couple later in life then the kids might not be blood-related at all, and this does have a bearing on the story.
Barbara brings a date to the wedding, but it's an older man. So is she dating him or is he just a good friend? Is she trying to make Tammy jealous, or trying to win her back? There's a fair amount of tension between the two women because of whatever happened two years ago or four years ago, but as the film progresses it looks like they may find some common ground again, at least as co-parents.
However, questions still remain - who is this mysterious Roy character that seems interested in Barbara, but settles for making out with her daughter instead? For that matter, who is this hot Italian woman, Mareva, is she a member of the family or just somebody staying at the same hotel? Barbara's date, Albert, seems very interested in her, but like everything else in this film, it's not very well explained how she fits into the bigger picture.
I just read a few extra reviews - outside of IMDB - because it feels like maybe I missed something. No, I think I picked up on all that there was, other reviewers seem just as confused as I was about the WHY of it all. It's just a comic wedding story with a central love triangle and two lesbian parents. Sure, that's another kind of wedding, but it's just not a very interesting one. Still, today's "Love Tip" therefore, is - sometimes you have to watch your brother marry your ex-girlfriend, and that sucks, sure, but don't make it worse by disrupting their wedding with your horrible white-guy rap.
Also starring Kathleen Turner (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Kevin Zegers (last seen in "Aftermath"), Jessica Paré (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Frances Fisher (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Jacob Tierney, Jessica Parker Kennedy (last seen in "In Time"), Wallace Shawn (last heard in "The Addams Family 2"), David La Haye (last seen in "The Red Violin"), Cristina Rosato (last seen in "Little Italy"), Albert Kwan, Kalinka Petrie, Arthur Holden, Johnny Griffin, Meaghan Rath, Greta Papageorgiu, Pat Kiely.
RATING: 3 out of 10 whole-grain bagels (Montreal is apparently famous for them...)
No comments:
Post a Comment