Our Family Wedding

Yet another "getting hitched" comedy-machine fresh off the Dream Factory assembly line, "Our Family Wedding" copies monster-grossing "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," but its euphemized cultural collisions between middle-class African-Americans and Latinos are good for few laughs. When Lucia (America Ferrera, "Ugly Betty") and Marcus (Lance Gross) announce their impending marriage, the salt-and-pepper pair trigger outrage from their respective dads (Carlos Mencia and Forest Whitaker). The juvenile attempts of the conservative family man and the swinging bachelor to get over on each other become increasingly tedious, the kind of one-note acting out you'd expect on a bad sitcom. Shot in primary colors with nary a hint of subtlety, utterly bereft of dramatic momentum or pacing, tricked out with ginned-up emotion and predictable "epiphanies" for all, "My Family Wedding" feels like comedic Valium.

Helmer and co-scripter Rick Famuyiwa is an old hand at milking comedy from wedding/romantic high jinks among middle-class blacks: in 1999's "The Wood," his hero got cold feet just before the nuptials; and best friends in "Brown Sugar" take forever to recognize how right they are for each other, a plot thread that turns up again in "Our Family Wedding." What Famuyiwa hasn't got are the most basic directorial chops, and as a result his story and actors drift. The film consists of one vignette (or sitcom chapter) after another in which the protagonists mug, do double takes and engage in forced and unfunny conversations at dinner, at breakfast, in the car, at a bar, in the bedroom -- you get the picture. It's "My Dinner With Andre," only there's only one, suffocatingly dull topic. And did I mention that almost every scene is Muzak'd with cocktail lounge piano riffs?

The lovebirds plan to let their families in on their impending marriage during dinner at an upscale restaurant, unaware that the fathers have already mixed it up with some mild ethnic slurs when Miguel towed Brad's illegally parked ride. Worse yet, womanizing Brad has brought a hot date, a girl so young she played high-school baseball with Lucia. The little boys passing as dads mouth off and, painfully, gracelessly, the scene cranks into high gear. When the whole restaurant turns to regard this truly embarrassing performance, we're with them. And that's the thankless role assigned Ferrera, a charming actress who deserves better than this, and Gross; mostly the two are stuck projecting appalled dismay, their genuine romantic rapport given short shrift.

In between all the talking, Famuyiwa interjects a few action scenes: a baseball game ruined by Miguel's pent-up animosity toward his black son-in-law-to-be; a wedding-cake-fight between Brad and Angie (Regina King, much too down to earth), longtime friends who fall into bed afterward; Brad and Miguel getting stinko on "Pink Nipples," boogying with embarrassing abandon. Trouble is, these outbursts of physicality are just as strained and phony as the film's nonstop jawing.

Whitaker's Oscar-winning acting style has always featured a fiercely stylized slowness; he can be alternately tender and berserk, but this big man always takes his own good time to eyeball and process reality. It can be hard to adapt that deliberate style to comedy, which needs to be collaborative and quick. In "Our Family Wedding," Whitaker rarely seems himself, except when he learns his life lesson (everybody must in this schematic fairy tale) and seriously woos King. The fact that stand-up comic Mencia's face seems to have frozen, as though it's been Botox'd into a single expression, also reduces any possibility of snappy give-and-take.

Absent any live-wire pitch-and-catch between the feuding fathers, all "Our Family Wedding" has got to go on for comedic energy is conflict between two different cultures. And expressions of that conflict are so benign or over-the-top -- Grandma Ramirez (Lupe Ontiveros) fainting dead away at first sight of Lucia's intended; Whitaker and Mencia outbellowing each other with ethnic anthems; a live goat delivered to the wedding for ritual sacrifice -- and settled with such improbable ease, that the film pulls its punches on this front as well.

There's something a little shifty about pretending that these upscale African-American and Latino families are so enlightened and politically correct that the elephant in the room, racism, can be ignored by dressing it up pretty and bland. It's got to be said: "Our Family Wedding" is a white-bread comedy by a black director, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" for African-American and Latino audiences.

Kathleen Murphy currently reviews films for Seattle's Queen Anne News and writes essays on film for Steadycam magazine. A frequent speaker on film, Murphy has contributed numerous essays to magazines (Film Comment, the Village Voice, Film West, Newsweek-Japan), books ("Best American Movie Writing of 1998," "Women and Cinema," "The Myth of the West") and Web sites (Amazon.com, Cinemania.com, Reel.com). Once upon a time, in another life, she wrote speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon, Harrison Ford, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel and Diana Ross.