With the approaching end of her TV show, “Ugly Betty,” America Ferrera doesn’t seem to be having any trouble bouncing back. She is part of an impressive cast in the new film, “Our Family Wedding” that includes Forest Whitaker, Lance Gross, and Carlos Mencia.
The film is about young couple Lucia and Marcus, played by Ferrera and Gross, who have fallen in love and want to get married before he joins a “Doctors With Borders” mission to help poor people in Laos get medical aid. The couple goes to Los Angeles to tell their parents about the upcoming wedding since neither set of parents knows about the engagement.
Things don’t get off to a good start when the future father-in-laws attend the couples dinner and realize they have met earlier in the day. Brad Boyd, played by Whitaker, has his car towed by Mencia’s character, Miguel. Brad realizes his much younger date was a high school friend of Lucia’s.
The families soon decide to have the wedding in LA and things are a real mess when Lucia’s family quickly takes over the wedding plans to make it a traditional Mexican event which includes a live goat that later ends up eating Brad’s supply of Viagra, later sharing an intimate moment with him.
The film is loaded with funny moments where the families from two very different worlds try to integrate two different cultures into one family and how Lucia and Marcus try to deal with their pushy families. One line that is repeated by both throughout the wedding preparations is “My marriage, they’re wedding.”
It is funny but is loaded with a lot of racial stereotypes and often goes off in several strange directions with the goat and Viagra situation and the relationship between Lucia’s parents.
People who enjoy the work of Mencia, Whitaker, Ferrera, will enjoy the film as will anyone who is looking for a good laugh and won’t mind a chaotic script and several offensive moments.
Overall I would give the film an A- .