our family wedding movie review

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Our family wedding.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 2 Reviews
• Kids Say 9 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Too many stereotypes in this otherwise OK, if bland romcom.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this imperfect, but heartfelt family-friendly film attempts to address a challenging subject: interracial marriage. In doing so, it doesn't quite steer clear of clichés, but does entertain while at least partly moving the discussion forward. Stereotyping (including making jokes about Latinos'…

Why Age 14+?

Some brands are name-checked or displayed: Hallmark, Viagra, Forbes.

Social drinking, plus one scene has two main characters getting completely waste

Not too much cussing, although the words "puta," "piss," and "s--t" come up. A f

A couple makes out on a couch and in a car. No nudity, just kissing and groping.

Two fathers one-up each other and hurl insults, some of which are racist. A figh

Any Positive Content?

Although characters are prejudiced, the movie's message seems to be one of unity

What really stands out in this film is the prejudiced behavior of the fathers, b

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Social drinking, plus one scene has two main characters getting completely wasted at a nightclub.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Not too much cussing, although the words "puta," "piss," and "s--t" come up. A few "Oh, my God"s as exclamations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A couple makes out on a couch and in a car. No nudity, just kissing and groping. A character jokes about a vibrator. Some innuendos and heavy flirting. An older man enjoys dating and seducing younger women. A goat humps a man.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Two fathers one-up each other and hurl insults, some of which are racist. A fight breaks out in a bar because a drunk character makes fun of a patron. A man hits a guy with a baseball, on purpose.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Although characters are prejudiced, the movie's message seems to be one of unity and understanding. Love does conquer all, including, in this case, preconceptions and ethnic stereotypes.

Positive Role Models

What really stands out in this film is the prejudiced behavior of the fathers, both of whom make racist remarks about the other and his family (though all is played for humor). Though in the end, they see the error of their ways, teens might be tempted to imitate some of their behavior in the name of comedy. Also, Lucia is not forthcoming with her parents, and actively shields them from the truth, but her decisions are place into proper context later on. Marcus, meanwhile, is committed to Lucia, but allows himself to be swayed by others' doubts.

Parents need to know that this imperfect, but heartfelt family-friendly film attempts to address a challenging subject: interracial marriage. In doing so, it doesn't quite steer clear of clichés, but does entertain while at least partly moving the discussion forward. Stereotyping (including making jokes about Latinos' ability to speak English) dilutes what could've made this into a thought-provoking comedy about race. There's some swearing (including "s--t"), social drinking (and one scene of drunkeness), and a bit of kissing and groping between adults. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (9)

Based on 2 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Lucia ( America Ferrera ) and Marcus ( Lance Gross ) arrive in Los Angeles brimming with excitement: They want to get married right away and better the world overseas as a couple (he with Doctors Without Borders, she by teaching). But snafus pile up immediately, notably an argument that erupts between Lucia's father, Miguel Ramirez ( Carlos Mencia ), the owner of a towing company that hauls off a car owned by Marcus' dad, radio personality Brad Boyd ( Forest Whitaker ). What's more, the two families can't quite get over the fact that each side is a different race and culture. (Lucia is Latina; Marcus is African American.) Can they get to the church without the wedding planning and culture clashes getting in the way?

Is It Any Good?

OUR FAMILY WEDDING is a film you want to like; the actors, notably Mencia and Anjelah Johnson as Lucia's younger sister, Isabella, bring their A-game, and the plot's got loads of potential. And it lives up to some of its promise with moments steeped in authenticity, as when Lucia's mother laments how she's become nearly invisible to her well-meaning husband. The movie, in fact, deals with marital ennui with welcome compassion.

But its potential to offer more wit and insight is squelched by its reliance on stereotypes to get its point across. A typical exchange: Miguel and Brad get under each other's skins by saying "bro" and "hombre" with disdain. And yes, there are jokes about whether Lucia's relatives understand English. Everyone behaves badly, and in broad, intolerant strokes. Surely, there must've been a subtler way to depict the anxieties that arise when two very different families are joined by marriage. Plus, are wayward animals a must now in comedies? A sexed-up goat makes an appearance to add some much-needed zaniness to the proceedings, but it's no competition for The Hangover ' s tiger.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about stereotypes . Do you think the film went over the top in its depiction of the culture clash that ensues between Lucia's and Marcus' relatives? Were some of the stereotypical jokes offensive?

Talk about the couple's decision to marry, and how they spring it on their respective families. Are their reactions understandable? Why, or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 12, 2010
• On DVD or streaming : July 13, 2010
• Cast : America Ferrera , Carlos Mencia , Forest Whitaker , Lance Gross , Regina King
• Director : Rick Famuyiwa
• Inclusion Information : Black directors, Female actors, Latino actors, Black actors
• Studio : Fox Searchlight
• Genre : Comedy
• Run time : 90 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some sexual content and brief strong language
• Last updated : August 13, 2023

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

No pie fights, but then you don’t expect pies at a wedding

America Ferrera and Lance Gross in "Our Family Wedding."

“Our Family Wedding” is a perfectly good idea for a comedy: A wedding between a Mexican-American woman and an African-American man leads to culture clash. The film, unfortunately, deals with the situation at the level of a middling sitcom. You almost miss the laugh track. Difficult problems are sidestepped, arguments are overacted, and there are three food fights involving wedding cakes. Well, two, actually, and the destruction of a third cake.

At the center of the wedding are Lucia Ramirez ( America Ferrera ), who was a law student at Columbia, and Marcus Boyd ( Lance Gross ), a Columbia med school graduate. They plan to move to Laos, where he will work with Doctors Without Borders. They’ve been living together, but keeping it a secret from her parents, because her mom ( Diana Maria Riva ) expects her to remain a virgin before marriage, and her father Miguel ( Carlos Mencia ) would be crushed if he learned she dropped out of law school. In a plot twist of startling originality, she is not pregnant.

A slimmed-down Forest Whitaker plays Marcus’ father Brad, a popular Los Angeles all-night DJ. He’s doing all right, and inhabits a huge house in the hills with a pool, stairs leading to a terrace, and a lawn big enough to hold a wedding party. Plus, his ride is a Jaguar. Not bad for an all-night DJ. Miguel is also well off, with his daughter at Columbia, a big luxurious house, and a passion for restoring classic cars. He owns a towing service, which is how he and Brad have a Meet Cute. All his drivers call in sick, so Miguel fills in, and he and Brad meet when he tows the Jag.

The dads meet again when their children pop the big news, and are immediately screaming insults and shaking each other by the throat. This scene, like all the stagy arguments between the fathers, is completely unconvincing. Their fights are drummed up for the purposes of the script. Their families flutter their hands and beg them to calm down. Their running feud feels phony to begin with, and painfully forced by the end.

All of the family difficulties seem trumped up. Although Lucia is terrified that her mother will discover she had sex before marriage, that revelation, when it comes, is almost a throwaway. Brad is embarrassed that his dad dates much younger women, but when he turns up at the family dinner with a girl who was Lucia’s softball teammate, there’s barely a mild stir. Lucia’s grandmother faints when she sees her fiancé is a black man, but when she comes to, this is forgotten. (Didn’t anyone tell her?) Oh, and speaking of softball, the game played between the two family teams is so badly staged I wasn’t sure which side many of the players were on, nor who won the game.

The bright spots are America Ferrera, a cuddly beauty who plunges right in and kisses a guy without worrying about her makeup, and Lance Gross as the guy, who has a thankless task as the perfect fiance but doesn’t overplay it. Regina King steals many scenes as Brad’s longtime lawyer and secret admirer; her character is smart, focused and sympathetic. King’s costumes showcase those Michelle Obama-like arms.

“Our Family Wedding” is a pleasant but inconsequential comedy, awkward for the actors, and contrived from beginning to end. Compare it with “ Nothing Like the Holidays ” (2008) to see how well a film can handle similar material.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Diana Maria Riva as Sonia Ramirez
• Lance Gross as Marcus Boyd
• Regina King as Angela
• Carlos Mencia as Miguel Ramirez
• America Ferrera as Lucia Ramirez
• Forest Whitaker as Brad Boyd
• Malcolm Spellman
• Wayne Conley

Directed by

• Rick Famuyiwa

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• DVD & Streaming

Our Family Wedding

• Comedy , Drama , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

• March 12, 2010
• Forest Whitaker as Brad Boyd; America Ferrera as Lucia Ramirez; Carlos Mencia as Miguel Ramirez; Regina King as Angela; Lance Gross as Marcus Boyd; Diana-Maria Riva as Sonia Ramirez

Home Release Date

• July 13, 2010
• Rick Famuyiwa

Distributor

• Fox Searchlight

Movie Review

Lucia Ramirez is more than happy about being the fiancée of Marcus Boyd. But she’s terrified to tell her dad about him.

She’s also more than happy about her decision to drop out of law school and volunteer her time as a teacher in a Los Angeles school for immigrants. But, you guessed it, she’s terrified to tell her dad.

Our Family Wedding , of course, forces her to fess up, and the resulting comedic chaos is exactly the stuff that romantic comedies are so often made of: equal parts silliness, foulness and heart-to-heart seriousness. Most of the silliness comes from the idea that because Lucia’s family is Mexican and Marcus’ is African-American, nobody’s going to get along with anybody. Most of the foulness comes from sexual situations … and a goat. Most of the seriousness comes from generations learning to settle their differences and one man (Marcus’ father) retracting everything bad he’s ever said about marriage.

But before everybody can get to that last bit, there’s a whole lotta fighting, bickering and meddling to be done. And there’s a wedding to plan too—but when it comes to these families, that’s all one and the same.

Positive Elements

Lucia’s parents, Miguel and Sonia, love her and have strived and sacrificed to do what they think is best for her. When Miguel is deeply hurt by his daughter’s choices, he assures her that he’ll always love her, and that even when he’s mad at her, he still loves her. Sonia is just as supportive.

When Miguel takes offense at Marcus’ not formally asking for his daughter’s hand, Marcus (eventually) does so in a very ceremonial way, finally recognizing the importance of the tradition.

And when Sonia overhears Lucia and her other daughter, Izzy, mocking her, saying she’s lost her vim and vigor for life along with her love for Miguel, she moves from being hurt and angry toward doing something about it pretty quickly. She approaches Miguel, sharing her feelings with him, and—after a few blunders—the pair reconnects and reignites their sputtering flame.

Speaking of flames, Lucia and Marcus have to adjust theirs a bit, too. Lucia doesn’t know quite yet how to stand up to her father in defense of her husband-to-be, letting her dad think less of Marcus than he should when she withholds certain bits of information. Cut to the quick, Marcus begs her to show her father that Marcus is the man who is her everything now—and Lucia begins to learn the ropes of transferring her allegiances.

This is part of why the couple gets cold feet for a while. The other reason revolves around their respective families’ squabbling over the wedding—and the quantity of negative opinions they hear about marriage. But as they work through their situational and personal differences, they find that their relationship is strengthened. And marriage is ultimately celebrated and revered.

Here’s where Marcus’ father, Brad, comes into play in a big way: He’s been the most vocal about marriage being more problem than its worth. But when he finally comes to his senses, he recognizes and apologizes to Marcus for his negativity toward the young man’s mother (Brad’s ex) and toward matrimony in general.

At daggers’ points for most of the film, Miguel and Brad come to appreciate each other, and all the cutting remarks they’ve made become water under an interracial bridge. So when Izzy brings home an Asian boyfriend, Miguel is much better prepared to accept him with open arms.

Marcus and Lucia are both charity- and volunteer-minded, and they’re willing to risk financial stability to try to help others.

Spiritual Elements

Marcus says he’s “technically Baptist” but doesn’t attend church or believe in organized religion. He nods vaguely when prompted to say he believes in God. This prompts Grandma Ramirez to call him a heathen in Spanish.

During the wedding, a huge crucifix is used as decoration, and a priest presides over the ceremony in which Catholic vows and prayers are said.

Sexual & romantic Content

Integral to the story is the question of whether or not Lucia and Marcus are living together and having sex. Lucia leads her family to believe they aren’t. But we already know she’s lying. And she eventually admits it too—without changing her mind about it. (We see her and Marcus making out on a couch.)

Brad hooks up with several women who are both strangers and young enough to be his daughters. We see him grinning to himself in bed as his latest conquest brushes her teeth. And we see another woman wearing only his shirt the morning after. His onscreen “conflict” revolves around him falling in love with a longtime friend but wanting to continue his one-night-stand ways.

Sonia initiates what she hopes will be a romp with Miguel in their convertible. They end up falling out of the car and onto the ground where Izzy sees them and wrinkles up her nose in disgust. They talk about the good times they had when they were young, driving around and “parking.”

A central gag revolves around a box of condoms and a bottle of Viagra in Brad’s bathroom. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that Miguel ends up ingesting some of the drug and has to hide behind a pillow for a while. Later, a goat gets loose in the house and eats quite a few of the pills. Crazed, the creature “attacks” Brad.

One of Marcus’ friends tells him that at his age he should be lining women up and knocking ’em down like bowling pins. He firmly believes that one-night stands are far more exciting than tame marital sex. It’s said that he pays for sex sometimes.

Women wear low-cut shirts and dresses with high hemlines. Sex toys and the sexual prowess of black men are joke topics. Cocktails named after an erogenous-zone body part are ordered and downed. Dancing gets suggestive in a couple of scenes, and Grandma Ramirez gropes a younger man’s bottom. In a dream sequence, a woman crudely accuses her husband of committing adultery.

Violent Content

As part of that same sequence, she breaks a champagne flute and threatens her husband with it, then throttles him. A thug curses at and threatens a little boy. Brad relishes the idea—displayed visually—of his ex getting hit by a bus. (We don’t see the impact.)

In real life, Miguel gets into a bar brawl and, later, purposely hits Marcus with a softball pitch—triggering an on-field donnybrook. Women shove and fight after the wedding cake is destroyed. Rowdy kids break glassware, as does a construction crew that comes to Brad’s pad to set up for the wedding. The goat runs amok, generally wreaking havoc throughout the house and yard.

Crude or Profane Language

Two s-words and one f-word; the latter is yelled at a child. Jesus’ name is abused once, God’s a half-dozen times or more. There are one or two uses each of “p‑‑‑,” “a‑‑” and “h‑‑‑.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Alcohol is served pretty much everywhere and for every occasion, from meals to nightclubs to a wedding boutique. It’s also consumed for pretty much every reason: to relieve boredom, to relax or to try to forget problems. At a bar, Miguel says he deserves to party because he hasn’t been clubbing since he was married 25 years earlier. Many, many, many cocktails later, he and Brad both end up in jail for disorderly conduct and drunkenness. At the wedding, champagne and beer are staples.

Other noteworthy Elements

Miguel’s and Brad’s petty jealousies, insecurities, spite and short tempers are mostly presented as comedy. Included in their “banter” are racial stereotypes and demeaning retorts.

Brad comes around a bit, as we’ve noted, but he wholeheartedly values what he calls “unorthodox” fatherhood for most of the movie, and so he balks at giving Marcus parental advice even when the young man asks for it. He compares older single women to war veterans, saying they’re “twisted and bitter.”

Lucia lies about several situations, including her whereabouts. Brad and Angela practically destroy a cake decorating shop when they playfully start a wedding cake fight. Miguel’s police record shows that there’s an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Why? Because at 19 he got drunk and high and naked in public.

One of Marcus’ friends says that married men are all whipped by wives who never trust them. Izzy thinks it would be terrible if Lucia wasted her life by getting pregnant before she’s 30.

Our Family Wedding is mostly an eye-roller, filled with Viagra jokes, runaway goats, racial stereotypes and flimsily manufactured conflict. But it also highlights the value of family unity and honest communication, the resolution of old grievances, owning up to bad behavior and extending an apology when actions call for it.

They might be getting a bit tipsy by film’s end as the ceremony and reception drag on and on, but the Ramirezes and Boyds have managed to form a new, perhaps stronger family despite the ridiculous rivalries, outlandish idiocy and crude comments. Each member comes to a greater understanding of others and what it means to love.

Hollywood moviemakers need to finally realize that they really can entertain and flirt with family values without sexing, boozing and slurring things up for the sake of cheap laughs, ratings and publicity. And can somebody please start a petition to ban any and all sexualizing of farm animal from films?

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Our family wedding — film review.

The path to the altar twists predictably through strained high jinks and more convincing sentiment in "Our Family Wedding," a slightly fractured fairy tale that places Latino and black characters center stage.

By The Associated Press

The Associated Press

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As a spectator sport, wedding planning is hardly Olympic material, and this nuptials-focused comedy doesn’t up the entertainment factor to any significant degree. The path to the altar twists predictably through strained high jinks and more convincing sentiment in “Our Family Wedding,” a slightly fractured fairy tale that places Latino and black characters center stage. But though the intended hilarity is forced and flat, there’s a sweetness to the silliness that’s likely to find a warm welcome when the film opens March 12.

Television stars in the cast also will be a draw, and perhaps their fans won’t be disappointed by the movie’s mild sitcom flavor. America Ferrera (“Ugly Betty”) and Lance Gross (“House of Payne”) play bland, virtuous lovebirds Lucia and Marcus, returning to Los Angeles to break the news of their engagement to their families. She’s worried her tradition-minded father (Carlos Mencia) won’t be pleased with her plans to marry a black man and even more afraid to tell her parents that she’s dropped out of law school. But before the gathering of the Ramirezes and the Boyds, the two patriarchs, Miguel and Brad (Forest Whitaker), meet under less-than-ideal circumstances, setting off what’s meant to be the butting of heads by two alpha dogs, one long married and the other a divorced ladies’ man.

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To his credit, director and co-scripter Rick Famuyiwa (“The Wood,” “Brown Sugar”) doesn’t turn the dads into clowns, but neither does he generate anything close to convincing conflict between the would-be Montagues and Capulets. Like the proceedings in general, Mencia and the inescapably soulful Whitaker are too tamped-down. In bit parts, Taye Diggs and Charlie Murphy provide mildly diverting shtick as friends of Brad, who is a sharp-dressing radio personality with an ultramodern dream house. He also is in denial about his feelings for his attorney and best friend (Regina King, feisty and wise), choosing to strut his stuff with women young enough to have attended school with Lucia. As his date at the meet-the-parents dinner, Shannyn Sossamon lends the scene an infusion of screwball that accentuates how carefully programmed — and unfunny — the rest of the characters are.

The two-week countdown to the wedding proceeds with the usual stops and starts and shopping trips as the increasingly unhappy couple adopt the mantra, “Our marriage, their wedding,” and referee their families’ game of matrimonial one-upmanship. A montage of hypothetical nightmare seating arrangements is the film’s most inventive piece of comedy. Otherwise, the script doesn’t balance drama and humor so much as veer between heartfelt moments and utter stupidity — unless your idea of funny is an old-school Latina (Lupe Ontiveros) fainting at the sight of a black man in her house or a goat getting into someone’s Viagra stash. The scenes of “pandemonium” are particularly unconvincing.

Although it’s certain that all necessary lessons will be learned, every romantic issue resolved by story’s end, the film rings truer in its quiet moments, especially those involving Whitaker’s character and a few scenes concerning Lucia’s mother (Diana Maria Riva) as she refuses to settle quietly into middle age.

Production designer Linda Burton’s picture-perfect settings — key among them Brad’s mid-century spread and the Ramirezes’ Victorian in Angelino Heights — and costume designer Hope Hanafin’s effusive color schemes underscore the story’s fairy-tale aspects, and cinematographer Julio Macat casts the city in a mood-suiting aspirational golden glow.

Opens: Friday, March 12 (Fox) Production: Fox Searchlight Pictures presents a Sneak Preview Entertainment/Edward Saxon production in association with Dune Entertainment Cast: Forest Whitaker, America Ferrera, Carlos Mencia, Regina King, Lance Gross, Diana Maria Riva, Anjelah Johnson, Lupe Ontiveros, Charlie Murphy, Shannyn Sossamon, Taye Diggs Director: Rick Famuyiwa Screenwriters: Wayne Conley, Malcolm Spellman, Rick Famuyiwa Story by: Wayne Conley Producers: Edward Saxon, Steven J. Wolfe Director of photography: Julio Macat Production designer: Linda Burton Music: Transcenders Costume designer: Hope Hanafin Co-producer: Scott G. Hyman Editor: Dirk Westervelt Rated PG-13, 102 minutes

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Our Family Wedding Reviews

The comedy skates between hypocrisy and impudence, fighting to make an exclusive audience laugh. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 11, 2022

Will likely appeal to the Tyler Perry crowd.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 19, 2020

Comedy and heart are the common threads that carry [ Our Family Wedding ] above the stereotypical making it color blind...

Full Review | Nov 7, 2019

With several solid performances and its share of sweet and even clever moments, Our Family Wedding occasionally blooms with potential. But the goat and other silly notions gobble it up.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 13, 2018

The fact that it's two minorities who are slinging racially charged comments at each other doesn't make it acceptable or funny.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 17, 2017

It may be clichd and unoriginal, but it accomplished something that most other movies in the genre failed to do: It made me, and a theater full of people, laugh quite a bit.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 1, 2012

Too many scenes are forced and seem out of place.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jul 31, 2012

Good intentions and a good cast do not necessarily a good film make.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 8, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: D | Feb 18, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Except for Mencia, who should never be allowed near a camera again, Our Family Wedding isn't particularly awful, but that's about the best that can be said about it.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Apr 25, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011

This inexplicable Hollywood movie contains a shocking collection of racial stereotypes...

Full Review | Jun 25, 2010

Lacks a single legitimate laugh, despite engineering the humping of Forest Whitaker's leg by a priapic goat. Don't ask.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 24, 2010

My Big Fat Rubbish Wedding.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jun 24, 2010

A goat eats Forest Whitaker's Viagra. Do you really want me to tell you what happens?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 24, 2010

This leaden romantic comedy feels like a pilot for a television series that never made the grade.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 21, 2010

Too much lowest common denominator thinking sabotages any merits this might have had.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 21, 2010

Do you recall a racial culture-clash comedy from 1967 called Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? This is an appalling, crass, 21st-century rehash of the same idea.

Full Review | Jun 17, 2010

Lance's family are black. America's family are Mexican. And hilarity ensues! Supposedly.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 16, 2010

America Ferrera, Forest Whitaker, Carlos Mencia, Regina King & Lance Gross Rick Famuyiwa Rick Famuyiwa, Malcolm Spellman, Wayne Conley Rated PG-13 90 Mins. Fox Searchlight

helmer Rick Famuyiwa's benefits tremendously from a winning cast and an abundance of sweetness that work together to create a film that often transcends its broad humor, hyperactive culture clashes and wealth of ethnic stereotypes that would have likely trashed virtually any other film. Unlike however, the film's sweetness and winning cast can't quite compensate enough to offer the film a hearty recommendation. follows the African-American Marcus (Lance Gross) and Mexican-American Lucia (America Ferrera), a pair of recent college grads who've returned home to share the news of their pending nuptials with their respective families. Unfortunately, their families have already been "introduced" to one another when his father, radio talk show host Brad Boyd (Forest Whitaker), runs afoul of a tow truck driver, her father (Carlos Mencia), after leaving his car parked downtown overnight. What began as a vision of a small wedding quickly becomes a war for wedding supremacy between the two very competitive fathers, as Marcus and Lucia adopt a "Our marriage, their wedding" attitude and the small wedding becomes a lavish affair in quick order. Do you see where this is going? Of course you do. It's difficult to determine with any certainty just how or why a film directed by the same guy who shot and could turn out so badly, but the blame does, indeed, seem to rest squarely on the shoulders of Rick Famuyiwa, who also co-wrote the script with Malcolm Spellman and Wayne Conley. While Famuyiwa's two other films did a nice job of portraying African-American culture, his attempts here at blending two cultures falls flat and, even worse for a comedy, is startlingly unfunny. It's not the fault of the cast. That much I know. America Ferrera, as the bride-to-be struggling to be the sparkling presence between the two sides, is her usual dazzling self and gives the film a solid zest and energy even when the dialogue itself is immensely flat. As her future husband, Lance Gross is generally called upon to be not much more than a quiet, steady presence and he does so quite nicely. The two performers are lovely together and project a natural, believable chemistry. While Forest Whitaker has never been known for his ability to pick scripts, bouncing between award-worthy and straight-to-video with equal enthusiasm, his presence here is definitely a plus as he proves to be a nice counterbalance to the more manic Carlos Mencia. Anna Maria Horsford, Shannyn Sossamon and Anjelah Johnson all have nice turns in supporting roles. It's difficult to fathom that this was the best film Famuyiwa and crew could come up with in a year in which the United States has its first black president that we couldn't end up with a more insightful or even edgy film on culture clash and race relations than Weren't we seeing films like this 20 years ago? Or more? Tech credits are fine across the board, most notably Julio Macat's bright and lively camera work that gives the film an energy all its own. Original music from Transcenders is also a huge plus, a nice complement that calms the film down on more than one occasion. will likely appeal to the Tyler Perry crowd, a crowd that cares more about message than method and family than cinematic focus. While the film is flawed, has a genuine heart and, of course, a feel good ending likely to please its target audience.

Movie review: 'Our Family Wedding' is more charming than it seems

• Published: Mar. 13, 2010, 3:15 p.m.
• The Associated Press

One enters a movie like this bracing for cheesiness. But as "

Our Family Wedding

" moves along, the realization dawns that director Rick Famuyiwa ("The Wood") has made a mostly charming movie despite its cliche milieu.

America Ferrera and Lance Gross play a newly engaged couple who have returned home to Los Angeles to break the news to their families, one black, the other Latino. A culture clash follows, with patriarchs Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia predictably feuding. It loses its balance around the time the goat gets loose and eats a bunch of Viagra. But, thanks partly to the performances, the film is mostly filled with quieter, more realistic moments.

With a soundtrack of Daptone soul, kicked off by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings.

Film is rated PG-13 and is 101 minutes long.

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Our Family Wedding (2010)

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Our Family Wedding

"Our marriage, their wedding." It's lesson number one for any newly engaged couple, and Lucia (America Ferrera) and Marcus (Lance Gross) are no exception. In Fox Searchlight Pictures' 'Our Family Wedding' they learn the hard way that the path to saying "I do" can be rife with familial strife. When they return from college and too suddenly announce their marriage plans, they soon discover that their fathers--two highly competitive over-the-top egos - can wreak a major amount of havoc on their special day. With insults flying and tempers running high, it's anyone's guess if the alpha dads (Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia) will survive to make it down the aisle in one piece. Lucia's mother (Diana Maria Riva) is busy planning the wedding of "her" dreams and the only levelheaded one in the bunch is Angela (Regina King), the groom's father's best friend and lawyer, who manages to keep her cool when the madness reaches a crescendo. With only weeks to plan their wedding, Lucia and Marcus soon discover the true meaning of love and find there is truth to the saying--that when you marry someone, you marry their entire family.

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Review: our family wedding.

The interracial meet-the-parents setup pioneered in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner gets a modest comic update in Our Family Wedding .

The interracial meet-the-parents setup pioneered in 1967 by Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner gets a modest comic update in Rick Famuyiwa’s Our Family Wedding . If the film follows a relatively straightforward trajectory and occasionally falters on the repeated childish antics of the older generation, it benefits from a surprisingly sophisticated consideration of family models as well as the winning performances of America Ferrera and Lance Gross as the central couple. While the most explicit attempt to reimagine the Kramer classic, Kevin Rodney Smith’s 2005 film Guess Who , flipped the script on the original by placing the white Ashton Kutcher in the Sidney Poitier role where he’s forced to contend with the disapproval of prospective father-in-law Bernie Mac, Famuyiwa’s film dispenses with white characters altogether, positing its black and Latino paterfamilias as equal repositories of suspicion—and bringing considerably more intelligence to the proceedings than the earlier film.

Ferrera and Gross star as Lucia and Marcus, a young couple who met at Columbia grad school (she’s a dropout of the law program, he’s a recent med-school alum) and whose secret engagement is a question of great anxiety due to the presumptive disapproval of their parents. Flying to their native Los Angeles, they arrange a surprise dinner for their respective families in which they announce their intentions to get married, unsurprisingly resulting in the considerable consternation of both Lucia’s parents (heads of a tradition-minded middle-class Mexican family) and Marcus’s father (a wealthy, womanizing radio host who raised his son as a single parent).

As the fathers get to know each other, they engage in constant games of racially motivated one-upmanship (belting out traditional black and Mexican songs while trying to drown out the other, arguing over tuxedo color), but despite the efforts of Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia, these sequences soon prove more exhausting than humorous. Similarly, class also proves a crucial point of contention between the two men, as illustrated in a should’ve-been-funnier Tatiesque gag in which Mencia runs afoul of Whitaker’s ultramodern, automated household appliances.

More successful, from a comedic standpoint, is a sequence in which the families plan the wedding seating chart, imagining the potentially disastrous possibilities of seating members of the groom’s party with members of the bride’s. But even this segment trades too much on racial stereotypes, a tendency that comes to the fore in the concluding wedding sequence which parades the likes of a gangbanging ese and an ay-yay-yay-ing Mexican grandmother before the camera. Still none of these moments can be termed the film’s comic low point—not when the wedding counts among its guests a Viagra-popping goat.

If the film plays its racial angle relatively conventionally, then it’s considerably more interested in exploring the varied possibilities of family organization. In addition to presenting the differing structures of the bride’s and groom’s clans, the movie offers up a variety of conflicting voices on the question of sexual politics. While conservative attitudes are spouted by Lucia’s tradition-worshipping grandmother (Lupe Ontiveros) and a friend of Marcus’s father (comedian Charlie Murphy) who advocates keeping women in the kitchen, they’re counterpointed by the bride’s younger sister Izzy (Anjelah Johnson), a fierce proponent of female emancipation and rather harsh critic of her own family dynamic. Explaining to her sister how she doesn’t want to end up like her mother, an unsatisfied housewife with no life of her own, she’s overheard by the older woman, who is understandably hurt. Repeating the conversation to her husband, though, she seems to miss her daughter’s feminist critique (a misreading that the film does nothing to correct), taking her words as a reproach only to her lack of sexual satisfaction, not to her failings as a well-rounded person.

Lizzy’s warning, however, is presumably not lost on her sister. Having once made a pledge with her younger sibling not to marry, Lucia remains aware of the dangers of falling into an unequal partnership. At once progressive (she ditched law school to teach immigrants, a job she says she “loves,” and plans on jetting off to Laos with her new husband on a Doctors without Borders program) and traditional (she cops to finding Marcus’s family upbringing “irregular,” she’s giving up a career to follow her husband to Laos), the bride (and groom) are faced with many examples to choose from as they begin their own family. One imagines, given the couple’s makeup—and it’s refreshing to see young characters as intelligent, sensitive, and socially conscious as the central pair—that they’ll avoid many of the undesirable patterns of the older generation, but the influence of their parents is clearly felt. Still, in the end, even those parents are redeemed: Marcus’s father through an unfortunate subplot involving a potential relationship with a longtime platonic friend which shows that, for all its progressive tendencies, the film views monogamy as the sole acceptable way of life; and Lucia’s parents through the father’s dedication to renewing his marital romance, which shows that even if it’s the only way, at least monogamy can be sexy.

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Our Family Wedding

• The weeks leading up to a young couple's wedding are comic and stressful, especially as their respective fathers try to lay their long standing feud to rest.
• "Our marriage, their wedding." It's lesson number one for any newly-engaged couple, and Lucia and Marcus are no exception. In "Our Family Wedding," they learn the hard way that the path to saying "I do" can be rife with familial strife. When they return from college and too-suddenly announce their marriage plans, they soon discover that their fathers--two highly competitive over-the-top egos--can wreak a major amount of havoc on their special day. With insults flying and tempers running high, it's anyone's guess if the alpha dads will survive to make it down the aisle in one piece. Lucia's mother is busy planning the wedding of "her" dreams and the only level-headed one in the bunch is Angela, the groom's father's best friend and lawyer, who manages to keep her cool when the madness reaches a crescendo. With only weeks to plan their wedding, Lucia and Marcus soon discover the true meaning of love and find that there is truth to the saying that when you marry someone, you marry their entire family. — Fox Searclight Pictures

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Our Family Wedding Parent Guide

While the conclusion attempts to tie up every last string and ensure nobody leaves the theater without a smile, "our family wedding" likely won't leave you wishing for another invitation..

Family cultures collide after Lucia Ramirez (America Ferrera) and Marcus Boyd (Lance Gross) announce their intention to marry. Their fathers (Carlos Mencia and Forest Whitaker) seem to have the hardest time accepting the engagement because neither can overlook the couple's color and class differences.

Release date March 12, 2010

Run Time: 103 minutes

Official Movie Site

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by rod gustafson.

If you can remember when Sidney Poitier had to break the ice with his white suburban in-laws in the 1967 movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner , then you’ll be able to guess what problem is about to erupt during Our Family Wedding. In this updated version the clash happens between Hispanics and African Americans.

The potential groom, Marcus Boyd (Lance Gross) has more than cultural and racial differences to bridge after he and his fiancée Lucia Ramirez (America Ferrera) return to their family’s homes in Los Angeles to announce their engagement. Their fathers, Brad Boyd and Miguel Ramirez (Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia), have already had a previous close encounter of the interracial kind when Ramirez’s towing company hauled Brad’s costly car away for a parking violation. Add Lucia’s mother Donia (Diana-Maria Riva) in the throws of a midlife crisis, and her Mexican grandmother (Lupe Ontiveros) who literally faints the first time she sets eyes on Marcus’s black skin, and you have a recipe for a mixed bag of racial tensions, uncomfortable jokes and tedious wedding plans. And all this fun happens before a goat eats Brad’s bulk-sized bottle of Viagra.

Non-explicit sexual discussions and infrequent profanities are among the content concerns. However, while bad words are few in number, they do include a sexual expletive and another crude term for sex, along with terms of deity. Family squabbles abound, racial slurs are heard and alcohol flows freely in some scenes. Finally, there’s the goat that takes a liking to Brad for a few seconds of animal awkwardness.

While the conclusion attempts to tie up every last string and ensure nobody leaves the wedding without a mate (or the theater without a smile) Our Family Wedding likely won’t leave you wishing for an invitation to the clans’ next shindig.

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Rod Gustafson

Our family wedding rating & content info.

Why is Our Family Wedding rated PG-13? Our Family Wedding is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for some sexual content and brief strong language.

Non-explicit sexual discussions occur a few times during this movie, with talk about premarital sex, pregnancy, and women considering ways their mother might relieve her sexual frustrations. A goat eats a large bottle of Viagra pills, and later the animal is briefly seen thrusting against a man. A couple kisses and embraces on a sofa. A man’s promiscuous sexual behavior is discussed. A bus is seen running over a woman during an imaginary sequence. Men begin to wrestle and fight during a baseball game. A couple throw food at each other in a bakery. Frequent family quarrels are heard. Language includes infrequent profanities, along with a sexual expletive, a crude term for sex and terms of deity. Characters frequently consume alcohol at social events and are seen drinking to relieve stress on two occasions.

Page last updated July 19, 2016

Our Family Wedding Parents' Guide

What is the significance of the identified ethnicities in this film? Do you think American society is any more tolerant of interracial marriage than it was in 1967 when Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner , was released?

A character in this film says, "If your lady loves you, she laughs at your jokes." How important is a sense of humor in a relationship?

The most recent home video release of Our Family Wedding movie is July 13, 2010. Here are some details…

Release Date: 13 July 2010

Our Family Wedding releases to DVD and Blu-ray with the following bonus extras:

- Deleted Scenes: Lucia and Miguel Toss the Ball, The Families Meet Gusto; the Families Walk and Talk Outside of Gusto’s on the Street, Marcus Asks Angela to Stand in for His Mother, Angela’s House The Morning After, Brad is Pouring His Heart Out on the Radio and The Director’s Cut Ending

- Extended Scenes: Police Station: Sonia and Miguel Discuss Lucia and Marcus and Angela Discovers Tipsy #1

- Featurette: Til Dads Do Us Part

Related home video titles:

The stress of wedding preparations and having to let go plague a usually mild-mannered man in The Father of the Bride . America Ferrera can also be seen in The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2 .

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Wedding Plan: Jump a Broom or Eat Goat?

By Megan Angelo

• March 5, 2010

LIKE weddings, wedding movies have their traditions: the dress is white and, usually, so are the characters.

Fox Searchlight’s “Our Family Wedding,” which opens this Friday, subverts that custom with a cast that includes Forest Whitaker, Carlos Mencia and Regina King. Set in Los Angeles, the film revolves around an interracial couple (America Ferrera and Lance Gross) and the tension between their families.

“Wedding films are always about the differences between people,” Rick Famuyiwa, the movie’s director, said. “But they haven’t quite dealt with African-Americans and Latinos.”

It’s a surprising oversight since the wedding movie has been reliably lucrative, especially in the last two decades. “Father of the Bride,” Charles Shyer’s 1991 remake of the 1950 film, took in $89 million at the box office and sparked a seemingly endless parade of Vera Wang-clad followers, like “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “The Wedding Date,” “Bride Wars” and “27 Dresses,” to name just a few.

Though some minority-driven studio pictures have had wedding-centric plot points, like “The Best Man” and “The Brothers,” none has truly capitalized on the genre’s successful formula — one often filled with stressed-out brides, unlucky-in-love sisters or friends, and oddball relatives — much less used it to confront intermarriage. Sensing an opening, Mr. Famuyiwa was intrigued by the opportunity to work on “Our Family Wedding.”

He first heard about the project in 2008, just as Barack Obama’s presidential campaign began to heat up. “At the time the entire debate seemed to be around Hispanics voting for an African-American president,” he said. “We’ve all seen these projections of how society is going to look in 50 years. We’re all going to have to deal with each other culturally. It felt like a great opportunity to tell that story without being preachy.”

The film funnels that idea through another wedding-movie staple: the grumbling dad. The father of the bride (Mr. Mencia) and the father of the groom (Mr. Whitaker) have a random run-in before meeting through their kids: Mr. Mencia’s character, who owns an auto shop, tows the car belonging to Mr. Whitaker’s character from a no-parking zone. The incident sparks hostility that manifests itself throughout the film with ethnic digs.

Mr. Famuyiwa and Zola Mashariki, Fox Searchlight’s senior vice president for production, sought to make sure the constant racial bickering never darkened into pure insult. “We wanted to make sure the dads were the same,” Ms. Mashariki said. “That’s why we had the tow truck, which had nothing to do with race. It’s not really race that’s holding them back. It’s that neither dad is able to let go of his child.”

So the barbs play as the gruff coping mechanisms of parents struggling with shifts in their family. And Ms. Mashariki said she believes the cutting remarks are further forgivable in the heat of wedding planning. “It’s great to have the wedding as a backdrop because it’s an environment in which families act a fool,” she said, laughing. “People do things around weddings they would never do otherwise.”

It was Ms. Mashariki who had the notion, as she and her creative team brainstormed wedding-movie ideas, to infuse such a film with a racially driven story line. Upon moving to Los Angeles 10 years ago, she was struck by the seeming stratification among Latinos and African-Americans in the city. “I came from New York, where I grew up with Puerto Ricans and Dominicans,” Ms. Mashariki, who is African-American, said. “People moved interchangeably through those communities. In L.A. it wasn’t the same.”

In the film Ms. Ferrera’s and Mr. Gross’s characters fall in love in New York while studying at Columbia University. They’re shocked when, upon returning to Los Angeles and announcing their engagement, their parents’ prejudices surface. That generational gap jibes with Los Angeles’s real politics, according to Raphael Sonenshein, a professor at California State University, Fullerton, who is researching black-Latino relations during the rise of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles.

“The younger folks are crossing boundaries,” he said. “They’re growing up in a more multiethnic L.A. The older folks have conflicts. They get on each other’s nerves a lot, but it’s not profound hostility.”

And the tensions are not always overt until something as emotionally charged as marriage enters the picture. The aim is to make the cultural clashes in the film specific enough to feel tailored for minority audiences, but not so narrow that they feel like inside jokes. When the two families argue over which ethnic customs will be included in the wedding, it’s apparent that both just want control — especially when Mr. Whitaker’s character struggles to come up with African-American counterparts to a legion of Mexican customs, like draping a rosary around the couple’s neck to symbolize togetherness or eating freshly prepared goat.

“For black families, it’s pretty much jumping the broom — that’s it,” said Ms. King, Mr. Whitaker’s foil in the scene, referring to the custom of having a couple jump over a broomstick to close the ceremony.

The argument lets audiences “latch on to the universality of the experience,” Mr. Famuyiwa said. “It’s just the bride’s side and groom’s side trying to mark their territory.”

Such relatable laughs cushion the racial conflict, but the film’s appeal depends heavily on its look. The importance of pretty fun in the wedding movie is not lost on Mr. Famuyiwa, who scatters stemless wine glasses, al fresco brunches and Audis throughout the film. The movie also defies some genre conventions. Few similar films explore the personal lives of the bride’s or groom’s parents, but Mr. Famuyiwa makes time to plumb the state of both fathers’ romantic relationships. And while most wedding movies orbit around the bride, Ms. Ferrera’s Lucia hardly hogs the spotlight, partly because “her wedding isn’t the most important thing in her life,” as Ms. Ferrera said.

That’s one of the modern ideas Mr. Famuyiwa puts forth without sacrificing the wedding-movie elements audiences love: the chaos, the whimsy and the emotional truth beneath all that tulle. “It’s about families coming together,” he said, “whether they want to or not.”

OUR FAMILY WEDDING

"bringing families together".

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

What You Need To Know:

(B, C, Pa, LL, V, S, AA, M) Light moral worldview with light Christian references, marred by immoral pagan behavior and references; eight mostly light obscenities but one “f” word, one strong profanity, and seven light profanities; light brief slapstick violence such as man spills things in new relative’s bathroom and grandmother faints; implied sleeping together and other sexual references such as goat eats Viagra pills and attacks man’s leg; no nudity but some female cleavage; alcohol use and drunkenness in one scene; no smoking or illegal drugs; and, ethnic prejudice but it is rebuked.

More Detail:

OUR FAMILY WEDDING is a comedy about an engaged couple caught between their two fathers, one Hispanic and the other African American. It stars America Ferrera of TV’s UGLY BETTY and Lance Gross of TV’s HOUSE OF PAYNE.

Lucia and Marcus are ready to break the news of their engagement at a dinner for their families. Lucia’s parents are still married, but Marcus’ dad, Brad, is single. Unfortunately, the day of their dinner, Lucia’s father, Miguel, towed Brad’s expensive car that same morning.

With tempers running high and insults flying, Marcus and Lucia try to bring the families together by planning a wedding that will please everyone. Can their engagement survive the animosity coming from their fathers?

OUR FAMILY WEDDING is a funny comedy that extols family and transcending ethnic conflicts. Carlos Mencia is very funny and believable as the Hispanic father. His character seems to be the most developed. The rest of the cast does a serviceable job. The script needs a stronger sense of comic jeopardy, however.

Also, the movie has some sexual references, as well as strong foul language. So, strong caution is warranted. Also, the movie has some sexual references, as well as brief strong foul language. So, extreme caution is warranted.

Our Family Wedding (2010)

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Our Family Wedding

In this Our Family Wedding film, Forest Whitaker , America Ferrera played the primary leads.

The Our Family Wedding was released in theaters on 12 Mar 2010.

The Our Family Wedding was directed by Rick Famuyiwa

Movies like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes , Deadpool & Wolverine , Kung Fu Panda 4 and others in a similar vein had the same genre but quite different stories.

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‘Families Like Ours’ Review: Thomas Vinterberg’s Grimly Prophetic Series Tackles Subject That Is Perhaps Too Huge For The Confines Of A TV Drama – Venice Film Festival

Everything is about to rot in the state of Denmark. The sea is rising, water is starting to bubble out of the ground and a decision has been made: the entire country is going to be dismantled and turned into a wind farm, its six million inhabitants sent to whichever country will accept them.

Thomas Vinterberg’s grimly prophetic seven-part series Families Like Ours follows timeworn convention by whittling down a macro issue — one we find too big to think about, mostly — to the stories of a few individuals. The families of the title are a rondel of comfortably-off Danes who never expected to want for anything, let alone a country: an architect and his wife who think they will be able to transfer their lives to Paris; the wife’s brother and his husband, who have the advantage of advance knowledge of the government’s plans; the architect’s depressive ex-wife who must go to Romania, the short straw offered to people who need government help to emigrate.

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At the center of things, this woman’s daughter must choose between the two parents, each of them needy in different ways, and thus between Paris and Bucharest. Her new boyfriend is determined to follow her, wherever she goes. It is this young couple’s desperate, dangerous treks across Europe to find each other that become the leading narrative in what is essentially a collection of experiences.

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The evacuation process is all very Nordically organized, with few hints of the looting, battles for places on departing boats or inevitable rebel hold-outs that would almost certainly make the real thing chaos, but would also clutter Vinterberg’s jigsaw of stories. From that point, however, each fictional family nosedives into its own tragedy. Young Laura (Amaryllis August) flip-flops on her choice between her parents, misses her boat and disappears. Her father Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), who has managed to get an under-the-counter job in Paris, immediately does the Danish thing: he goes to the police, bringing dire official attention on the French architect who risked his business to give him a job. “You are two very spoiled people,” Jacob’s benefactor snaps as he turns the family out onto the street.

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It’s true. These people are the most privileged refugees imaginable. Over the first six relentless episodes of Families Like Ours , we watch them unravel or commit hitherto unthinkable acts of savagery that turn them into people they used to despise. By episode three, the mounting hopelessness makes you wonder why they aren’t just throwing themselves into the encroaching briny. So it is a punishing watch but, at the same time, there is an uneasy sense of contrivance. How is it that everybody blunders unerringly into the worst possible choices? It is as if all these First World losers are obliged to keep adding to the plot’s misery count until their souls are cleansed.

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Fans of Vinterberg’s Danish films — which include the Oscar-winning Another Round — will enjoy the familiarity of his favored set pieces: a wedding dance, crowds bursting into harmonious song, the echoing vastness of a church.

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There is also a kind of comfort in seeing so many of the remarkable actors who came to international prominence with the Dogma movement: Paprika Steen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, David Denrick, Magnus Millang. All are now well into middle age, but peerless in their ability to convey waves of half-smothered emotion through the twitch of an eyebrow or the sag of a jaw. Whatever the situation, their hallmark naturalism convinces us that life is being lived here, moment to perilous moment.

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The same can’t be said for the central young couple. Vinterberg clearly wants to stake a claim to optimism by suggesting that even through an apocalypse, love will prevail. In fact, nothing between them suggests a connection that would last a week.

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As Elias, Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt’s puppyish vigor is appealing, but there is zero chemistry with Amaryllis August, a model in her first significant acting role. Laura is the story’s moving force, but August’s beautiful face is a wide-eyed blank. Not that the script gives her much help; we see very little of the couple’s togetherness before events and their own inevitably bad decisions overtake them.

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Only in the last episode is there a sense that some of these walking wounded will not just survive, but manage to make something out of having nothing. The weakest of them may find strength; the greatest sinners may achieve some measure of redemption. But the most poignant moments here have nothing to do with the characters, in fact: they are the panoramic scenes of an empty Copenhagen, its highways silent and windows dark. The destruction of an entire country by climate change is a huge, urgent prospect. Maybe it is just too huge to conjure in the confines of a television drama about a few individuals whose lifelong good luck – being born Danish – has run out.

Title:  Families Like Ours Festival:   Venice  (Series, Out of Competition) Director: Thomas Vinterberg Screenwriters: Thomas Vinterberg, Bo Hr. Hansen Cast:  Amaryllis August, Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Paprika Steen, Helene Reingaard Neumann, Magnus Millang, Esben Smed, David Dencik, Thomas Bo Larsen, Asta Kamma August Sales agent:  Studiocanal Running time:  5 hr 45 mins (7 episodes)

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Matt damon & casey affleck on a possible ‘the instigators’ sequel at apple, streaming’s future, their chemistry & some serious fenway park love, ‘and their children after them’ review: boukherma brothers’ youth drama weighed down by repetitive narrative – venice film festival.

By Stephanie Bunbury

Stephanie Bunbury

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Gormless working-class boy Anthony (Paul Kircher) pursues Steph (Angelina Woreth), a pretty girl from a couple of yards the other side of the tracks, from one summer to the next. They meet first at the picturesque local lake, where Anthony has just stolen a canoe along with his cousin (Louis Memmi). That night, they all meet up again at a party where Anthony clashes with sleek gatecrasher Hacine (Sayyid El Alami), an encounter that will develop into a feud running in parallel with his unfulfilled yearning for Steph. 

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Directors Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, who have adapted the film from a bildungsroman by Nicolas Mathieu, are actually declared enthusiasts for American cinema, citing a kinship with coming-of-age films from Hollywood rather than the New Wave. The soundtrack reflects that allegiance, for sure, with numerous needle drops from the ‘90s directly picking up on story elements and a sprinkling of heritage numbers: Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” act as bookends. 

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It is Anthony’s decision to sneak out to a party with his cousin on his father’s old bike, which sits in the garage unused but still treasured, that drives the drama. Anthony is only 14; he hardly knows what he’s doing when has a scuffle with Hacine, at the party who gets his revenge by stealing the bike where Anthony parked it. The boys’ attempts to recover it, before the search is taken over by his stoically determined mother, plunge them into the charged atmosphere of their region’s racial divide. The Arab boys’ gangs are hostile; the white thug who offers them a gun to deal with the issue is truly terrifying. 

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Anthony’s transgression with the bike also pops the plug on a lifetime of fury stored in his father’s bullish frame, destroying the perilous balance within his home. The family dynamics work powerfully, thanks to the superb performances by supporting characters. Ludivine Sagnier , has emerged from her kittenish roles as a young woman to play this blue-collar mom with tremendous warmth, savvy and toughness. Gilles Lellouche brings a terrifyingly dark energy to Anthony’s drunken father who, like most of the men in town, lost his job a decade ago when the steel industry collapsed. The town’s old blast furnace remains as a ruin dominating the skyline; in this story it serves as meeting point, monument and memento mori.

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There is always a sense here of something lost. Social commentary is not the purpose of this film, but it makes a stronger impression than Anthony’s wisps of lust for the girl to whom he can barely muster anything to say beyond “you’re pretty.” It also informs the consciousness of class that pulses beneath the characters’ aspirations. Steph comes from a family better off than Anthony’s, but feels the chill of inferiority at university where, she says, her contemporaries “were studying before they were born.” Hacine is brighter than she is – we see a glimpse of the austere literary paperbacks on his desk when he is just a boy – but his color is against him; he returns from Morocco with a better way to make money than he is going to find at the toothless local labor exchange. 

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The Boukherma brothers’ last film was also set in a small town, but was a genre film involving body transformation. And Their Children After Them takes them into the verdant territory of literary romance, which weighs heavily on the long, repetitive result; however much of the original novel has been excised, the end result feels overstuffed, as if everything had to be included.  

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Title:  And Their Children After Them Festival:   Venice  (Competition) Directors-Screenwriters: Zoran Boukherma, Ludovic Boukherma Cast:  Paul Kircher, Angélina Woreth, Sayyid El Alami, Gilles Lellouche, Ludivine Sagnier, Louis Memmi Sales agent:  Charades Running time:  2 hrs 24 mins

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