The Big Wedding (15, 89 mins)

Director: Justin Zackham

1 star

 

IT is difficult to gauge if the most dispiriting thing about this anti-comedy is its sheer unpleasantness or how, given the talent involved it could be so thoroughly wasted and mistreated.

In the end this does not really matter, because you will be wanting to leave this party long before the last dance.

Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton play Don and Ellie, who have been divorced for years. Don is now in a relationship with Bebe (Susan Sarandon), something we (and Ellie) are thrust straight into, as the film's penchant for crudity and unabashed intimacy demonstrates in its opening moments.

Ellie is at the home of her former husband because her and Don's adopted son Alejandro (Ben Barnes) is getting married.

But, in a development that should have been nipped in the bud very early on, his birth mother has also been invited to the wedding. The problem is she is deeply religious and would not be able to accept the fact Don and Ellie are divorced.

So, in the sort of thing that would have looked hackneyed as a Terry and June storyline, they are forced for her benefit to pretend they are still together. Just to complicate things further, Bebe is catering the wedding.

The already low bar set by wedding-themed comedies of recent times is hammered into audience hearts like a stake thanks to the efforts of this abhorrent entry, a sour, nasty piece of work, populated by loathsome characters. The Borgias should be this vicious.

De Niro, in particular, gets saddled with some embarrassingly crude lines and Robin Williams grates as an interfering priest.

It's a red letter day when Katherine Heigl is not the most irritating presence in a romantic comedy, and she shows up with Topher Grace as De Niro and Keaton's other kids, the better to provide useless subplots.

But the problem is not just that there is not a single laugh to be had nor a moment to care about, but that we hate them even more than they hate each other.

It is a ridiculous charade, packed with all sorts of daft contrivances, where scenes can't end until someone has fallen over or a stupid pratfall takes place.

And then when we have endured their bickering and hatefulness for what at least is a mercifully short run time, it descends into forced sentiment and asks us to side with them while they get their relationships back in order.

But such a thing is an impossibility, given that The Big Wedding is unrelenting garbage from first to last.

 

See it if you liked: Meet the Parents, It's Complicated, Our Family Wedding

Byzantium (15, 118 mins)

Director: Neil Jordan

3 stars