Don’t be fooled by the marketing campaign for The Big Wedding. The pastel-hued poster may look as sweet as a wedding cake—it’s even tiered—but the screwball comedy from writer-director Justin Zackham (scribe on The Bucket List) contains unexpected layers of salty language, bitter political incorrectness and pungent sex that your mother may not be aware of when she deems it appropriate for her movie group. It’s not. Seriously, Robert De Niro goes down on Susan Sarandon in the very first scene.
De Niro plays Don, a successful sculptor and Griffin family patriarch who broke up his marriage to Ellie (Diane Keaton) a decade ago to get with her BFF Bebe (Susan Sarandon). Ellie has traveled the world finding herself since then and has emerged an independent, self-possessed divorcée, determined to demonstrate to her ex-husband and kids that she’s moved on.
That fondant is scuffed, then scratched, then gouged, when their adopted son Alejandro (Ben Barnes), who’s marrying sweetheart Missy (Amanda Seyfried), asks Don and Ellie to pretend to still be married for the sake of his über-Catholic birth mother Madonna (Patricia Rae), who’s visiting the States from Colombia for the first time, never having learned of his adopted parents’ divorce. If that plot twist sounds thin to you, it is—a flimsy stand on which to balance a teetering dessert.
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