Our Family Wedding

When Lucia (America Ferrara) returns home to introduce her boyfriend, Marcus (Lance Gross) to her family and announce their engagement; chaos soon follows, as these two diverse families must come together to plan their children’s wedding in two short weeks. Things become even more stressful for these families, when the two strong-willed patriarchs, Brad (Forest Whitaker) and Miguel (Carlos Mencia) do not see eye to eye. Tempers flare and racial tension between the families increase, as the wedding day draws near, but these two families learn that they must reconcile their differences and come together in support of their son and daughter’s marriage.

Objectionable Content

Much of “Our Family Wedding”'a brand of humor is distasteful, and this film more than earns its PG-13 rating. There is a lot of racial tension between Lucia’s Mexican-American and Marcus’ African-American families. While many of theses racial jokes and themes are presented in a humorous manner, and ultimately these families come to have a better appreciation and understanding for one another’s cultures, many of these jokes are still offensive.

Even though there are no bedroom scenes in this film, there is still a lot of sexual content throughout. Like so many unmarried couples in modern cinema, Lucia and Marcus are living together, and, at one point in the film, she openly admits that they are sleeping with each other. Marcus’ father, Brad, is a long-time divorcee and womanizer, who has not set a very good example of marriage for his son. The various couples kiss one another in different scenes throughout the film.

Marriage is not always portrayed in the most positive light. Lucia’s sister, Isabella (Anjelah Johnson), does not have a very optimistic outlook on marriage. On several occasions, she talks about how she never wants to marry, and she perceives her mother’s married life with her father as unfulfilling. She believes that her parents have a relationship where her mother does all of the giving and her father does all of the taking. Isabella asks Lucia “when was the last time dad did anything nice for mom?” In another scene, one of Marcus’ married friends responds to his single friends’ criticisms about his nagging wife by bragging about how he gets “sex on the regular.”

In one awkward scene, Lucia’s dad, Miguel, discovers a box of condemns and a bottle of Viagra, while snooping through Marcus’ dad’s bathroom. Somehow, Miguel accidentally swallows one of the pills. When Miguel returns to the living room, where the families are discussing wedding plans, he is obviously trying to fight the affects that the medicine is having on him.

There is a moderate amount of drinking in the film, and, in one scene, Miguel and Brad get drunk at a bar, and later get arrested for accidentally causing a bar fight. On the whole, the two fathers’ behavior throughout the film is rather immature and petty.

Lucia keeps many important aspects of her life hidden from her family. She hid her relationship with Marcus from her parents until they announced their engagement. She also hid the fact that she and Marcus live together, and she lied to her parents about her decision to quit law school in order to pursue a different career path.

There is a moderate amount of profanity throughout the film, including 1 f-word, 2 s-words, 1 or more use of h*** and d***, 1 use of p***ed, 1 b****, and 8 or more uses of the Lord’s name in vain.

“Our Family Wedding” had the potential to be a cleaner romantic comedy, à la “Father of the Bride,” and could have explored the humorous ups and downs of planning a wedding in a non-offensive manner, but much of this film’s comedy falls flat and is in poor taste.

Positive Elements

One of the most important lessons that can be taken away from this film is the importance of open and honest communication among family members. Lucia’s decision to hide her relationship with Marcus, as well as her lie about quitting law school only hurt her relationship with her family and Marcus. Marcus encourages Lucia on many occasions to tell her parents about dropping out of law school. Lucia’s father tells her that he will always love her no matter how big of a mistake she may make.

Lucia’s family feels that God needs to be a part of their marriage, and they are very upset that she and Marcus do not want to get married in their family’s Catholic church. Lucia’s family is, also, upset that Marcus does not attend church regularly.

This film also demonstrates how important it is for married couples to continually work on their relationships, and never take their spouse’s love for granted. This important lesson is learned by Lucia’s parents. Marcus’ father also apologizes to him for all of the bad things that he ever taught him about marriage, and he tells him that marriage gave him the best thing in his life, his son.

Even tough, there are a few good lessons that can be gleaned from this film, I wish I could say that these lessons came in a movie with fewer sexual jokes and less offensive content.

Summary and Recommendations

While there are some positive aspects to this film, I cannot recommend this film to Christian audiences, because these redeeming qualities are largely obscured by this film’s often distasteful brand of humor, which in many ways only serves to reinforce much of the secular world’s ideas about marriage and romantic relationships.

Violence: Mild / Profanity: Heavy / Sex/Nudity: Heavy

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.