It's modern day South Africa and in Cape Town the beautiful Ayanda (Zandile Msutwana) is just days away from achieving her lifelong dream: the perfect white wedding. The only problem is that her husband-to-be, the loyal, committed Elvis (Kenneth Nkosi) is 1800 kilometres away in Johannesburg. He sets off on Tuesday night by bus to Durban intending to connect with his childhood friend and best-man Tumi (Rapulana Seiphemo). But the plans start to go awry when Tumi doesn't show up at the bus
station. Not an auspicious beginning, but this is just the first in many comic and illuminating misadventures they meet along the way. In the end, the two lovers learn that celebrating their union is more about the journey than getting to the church on time.-- (C) Stepping Stone Pictures
This is a movie so excited to exist that it overwhelms you with plot. Sitting through it is like opening the door to an overloaded closet. Stuff just tumbles out.
Some scenes are mild fun, but the mishaps that befall our hero aren't especially inventive, and although the South African setting provides a bit of interest, it's never really used incisively.
An enjoyable film set in South Africa that makes full use of the country's lingering apartheid tensions and generational divides without ever losing its smile.
...the didactic and unbelievable nature of many of the conversations and events, sometimes emphasized by cross-cutting, strains the patience of even the most generous viewer.
At its best when looking at the 21st century trying to get a foothold in a country where a rural landscape, centuries of indigenous tradition and decades of entrenched colonial racism make progress difficult.
The film trivializes real problems in South Africa so I won?t feel bad saying that White Wedding makes it seem like the biggest danger facing the post-apartheid South African film industry is falling victim to Hollywood clichés.
Standard ingredients of predictable nuptial nonsense are given an enjoyable new spin in contemporary, middle-class, multiracial, multilingual South Africa.
a southern afircan 4 weeddings and a funeral (the goat!) meets "planes, trains and automobiles" good stuff.
September 3, 2011
Gregory Wood
One of the funniest movies I've ever watched in a uniquely South African way - I was pleasantly surprised.(I only wish there were some normal white South Africans... )
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