The Big Wedding (2013)
Average Rating: 2.9/10
Reviews Counted: 72
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 66
The Big Wedding's all-star cast is stranded in a contrived, strained plot that features broad stabs at humor but few laughs.
Average Rating: 3.3/10
Critic Reviews: 27
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 26
The Big Wedding's all-star cast is stranded in a contrived, strained plot that features broad stabs at humor but few laughs.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 12,121
My Rating
Movie Info
With an all-star cast led by Robert De Niro, Katherine Heigl, Diane Keaton, Amanda Seyfried, Topher Grace, with Susan Sarandon and Robin Williams, THE BIG WEDDING is an uproarious romantic comedy about a charmingly modern family trying to survive a weekend wedding celebration that has the potential to become a full blown family fiasco. To the amusement of their adult children and friends, long divorced couple Don and Ellie Griffin (De Niro and Keaton) are once again forced to play the happy
Cast
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Robert De Niro
Don Griffin -
Diane Keaton
Ellie Griffin -
Susan Sarandon
Bebe -
Katherine Heigl
Lyla -
Amanda Seyfried
Missy -
Robin Williams
Father Moinighan -
Ben Barnes
Alejandro -
Topher Grace
Jared -
Christine Ebersole
Muffin -
David Rasche
Barry -
Patricia Rae
Madonna -
Ana Ayora
Nuria -
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The Big Wedding Trailer & Photos
All Critics (73) | Top Critics (27) | Fresh (6) | Rotten (66)
Barring a few off-color jokes, though, the movie feels like a Carol Burnett sketch dragged out to feature length.
It's tired and dated with too few laughs to justify the stultifying attempts at drama and the impossible-to-swallow plot contortions.
Looks great, some terrific ingredients, but when you slice it up, what a disappointment.
Sarandon, Keaton and De Niro mesh beautifully, fully convincing as a trio of old friends and carting in lots of characterization that would be otherwise lacking in Zackham's rote screenplay.
The Big Wedding is a would-be screwball comedy that forgets to throw in the screws.
Many Hollywood films are founded on privilege, but few are as open and nasty about their racism, misogyny, and homophobia. It's a feel-good movie for people who only comfortable around people who look and act just like them.
As bland as a box of beige rocks.
It's not a bad film by any means, and there is some fizz seeing Sarandon, Keaton and De Niro bounce off each other, verbally and physically. Yet the film seems stuck in first gear, seemingly reluctant to dial up its screwball potential.
"Big" is an awfully ambitious modifier to affix to this pale wisp of a film.
All of the actors, young and old alike, look plastic, and the characters' big revelations -- pregnant, lesbian, had an affair, etc. -- all feel plastic.
Vulgar, witless, and an insult to its stars and its audience.
It simply takes all the things you've seen in other wedding movies and recycles them, all while pretending you're dumb enough not to notice.
The Big Wedding is not a classic, or even really memorable, by any means, but considering the pit it starts at, it gets off light. And that's better than usual.
Can I just say that The Big Wedding smells from herring and be done with it?
For a movie ultimately about what freaks we all are behind the fronts we build for the sake of normalcy, the apathetically performed The Big Wedding couldn't possibly be more square.
Ten minutes into this one and I was all set to hack off my arm "127 Hours"-style in order to escape and I wasn't even pinned underneath anything but a mounting sense of dread.
An incoherent string of crude skits, including one where Robert De Niro sheepishly sports a substance-eating grin after being caught performing cunnilingus between a widespread pair of naked legs. Look! A falling star! Make a wish!
Katherine Heigl puked on Robert De Niro, and he still had a better time than I did at The Big Wedding.
I'm... pleased?... not sure if that's the right word... surprised or relieved, maybe, like finding out you get to be the front part of the human centipede... to report that this not-very-good wedding farce is also not the worst film of all time.
It's a movie packed with purportedly smart characters making the sort of absurdly contrived decisions that haven't been seen since "Three's Company" went off the air.
What was once an amusing French farce has become a crass, crude, mean-spirited, smarmy mess.
Audience Reviews for The Big Wedding
Super Reviewer
The story follows a man (Robert DeNiro) having to pretend to get back together with his ex-wife (Diane Keaton) in order to please his adopted son's real mother who is a strong Christian, while the rest of the family is dealing with their own personal problems.
The plot of the film is so ridiculous and idiotic that it felt like a group of horny college kids wrote it in a day, and I cannot stress this fact enough. I swear this film focuses on one theme and that is sex, which what I means is all the characters ever talk about is sex or failed relationships because of sex. Everything in this films storyline just all comes down to sex, and at a point I thought to myself "so this is where comedy has become, sex jokes." What made the sex jokes in a film like "American Pie" so great is that it took unknown teenaged actors and gave them a movie about teenagers who just want to have sex, but this film has a bunch of adults who just act like they are children who don't know how to solve their own problems. I will admit Topher Grace had a subplot about wanting to have sex with his adopted brother's real sister that had some good laughs, but that is just another example that the writers found a subject like incest to be comedy genius. When I left the theater I was thankful to get out of that cesspool of unrealistic human beings and a bunch of storylines that nobody really cared about. There are many subplots in the film that I could've cared less about, and I wondered if the writers knew the film sucked so they found a bunch of popular actors that they believed would bring in some money. Either way, this story was a disturbing waste of time and makes me disappointed for a good cast of actors to actually participate in this trash.
The cast of the film features some of the best actors in Hollywood, so the mystery of why they would include themselves in this garbage is beyond me. Robert DeNiro plays a womanizing jerk that cheats on both his ex-wife and his new girlfriend, and it just made him almost instantly unlikable. Diane Keaton is pretty much the same old Diane Keaton, just looking much older and in need of a paycheck. Susan Sarandon really didn't bring any laughs to this comedy, in fact nobody would've really noticed if she had been gone to be honest. Kathryn Bigelow is just the dramatic daughter who is mad at her dad and her life, and at this point Bigelow need s to start making some career changes. Topher Grace made me laugh because he is Topher Grace, and I am proud to say that he one of the few actors that actually make this seem like a comedy. Robin Williams screen time is brief but well used, and I have to hand it to him that he still has his magic touch. Ben Barnes is really just used to drive the films story (whatever that is) and with or without him, this film wouldn't have been different. Amanda Seyfried didn't provide any laughs and really had no real purpose in the film, but after "Les Misérables" I guess I expected her to actually do something good with her career, I guess I was wrong. There are a few more actors but I am getting tired of telling you what a failure this cast was, so overall just don't expect anything worth mentioning in this unfunny group of people.
The Big Wedding didn't need to exist; in fact if I could go back I would go watch "Oblivion" a second time just to not have to experience this crap again. Director Justin Zackham has created a worthless and awful experience that will make audience members want to find the nearest exit as soon as possible. There were some positive things about the film, including Grace and William's performances, the fact that it didn't last too long, and that the setting for the film was actually well done. But despite all this, the fact that somebody called this a comedy makes me angry and want to scream at every single person involved in this trash. Zackham doesn't know how to make a comedy and should think about doing something else in his career or quitting altogether, because this does not make me want to experience anything else he has to offer. What made me angry the most I believe was that Robert DeNiro actually joined this films cast after he had finally proven to me last year with "Silver Linings Playbook" that he is still one of the best actors of all-time, so why is an actor of such high prestige including himself in such a waste of time such as this? I will never get my answer most likely, so all I can hope is that other people find this funnier than I did. If you enjoy seeing your money being taken away so you can sit in a chair for 90 minutes and not have a good time, than please be my guest.
Super Reviewer
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Guess the Tomatometer | 1 day ago | 63 |
| The Big Wedding | 8 days ago | 12 |
| Robert DeNiro continues his descent from critical acclaim | 10 days ago | 5 |
| Probably worse than Pain & Gain | 11 days ago | 10 |
| Looks awful. | 12 days ago | 7 |
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Foreign Titles
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