The Big Wedding (2013)

There are so many things wrong with this overblown, idiotic pile of feces that it's actually overwhelming me to put my thoughts in order to review it. Well, first of all, these giant wastes of ensemble comedy have been prevalent lately and they must end. The characters always end up ill defined, baseless, crude, and unfunny. That turns out to be a true statement of the cast assembled for this schlock, and what's so sad about it is that some of the biggest and most beloved names are attached to this film. I can critique every one of their performances negatively: De Niro is a pervert and a misogynist plain and simple, Keaton is playing yet another drippy old mom, Heigl is yet another disenchanted neurotic, and Williams plays another funny priest, because he just did so well in his previous role, right?! The premise is that a divorced couple pretend to be together to please their son's biological mother during his wedding, which in itself is simply too stupid to bear, and even if it was a smart start for a film, it is not utilized as a plot device as well as it could have been. Now, I definitely love mind numbing romantic comedic films, but this film is so far off from what is appropriate for a film to be. The humor is all adult, granting this film an R-rating, but none of said humor is anywhere near funny or smart. De Niro is in a role where he cheats, lies, and makes horrific comments and jokes that are women hating, nausea inducing, and pathetic. Every joke in this film revolves around sex, and really, aren't jokes. It's more shock humor than anything, but there's nothing shocking about a horrible older man who uses women and then makes fun of them for sport. Everyone in this film should truly hate one another, but they keep finding each other's antics to be eccentric or quaint, which is simply scary, not endearing. Only the siblings, who make fun of each other, have any scenes where familiar ties are displayed, but they slip right back into acidic behaviors. That and there's a large block of background information that gets schlepped onto us in the last several scenes of the film, and with prejudice, for no apparent reason other than to add more shock, and what do you know, it doesn't. Seriously, even for a film that at its core only wants to briefly entertain can't even do that right.