The People We Hate at the Wedding

We started this movie at the suggestion of the NYT, but after about 25 minutes we looked at each other and said, "Haven't laughed yet." Kristen Bell is cute and Allison Janney has her comedy chops, but this mish-mash is so disjointed and so reliant on cheap sex situations that we gave up and turned on the news. None of the characters were sympathetic and the opening sequences were so truncated and unclear that we found ourselves wondering who was who and why they mattered. It's too bad. The premise seemed to have great possibilities. Maybe it gets better by the end but where we stopped it seemed pointless.

Allison Janney has been nominated for and won so many awards over the past 30 years that it takes a separate, linked Wikipedia entry just to list them all. For her mere presence in this movie I must give this movie an extra star on its rating. And Kristen Bell, of Veronica Mars and Frozen fame (and all the ensemble & supporting roles in both TV & movies that she's had in between), isn't exactly chopped liver, y'know. So then why isn't this made-for-streaming movie better than it is? Honestly, I'm not sure. But if you're a big fan of these women (as I am), or of the young Tony-winning star of "Dear Evan Hansen," it's still worth the 99-minute investment to watch.

Talk about contrived? Yikes! "Eloise" (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) makes the cardinal error of inviting her estranged and dysfunctional family to London for her posh wedding. Her brother "Paul" (Ben Platt) and his boyfriend "Dominic" (Karan Soni); her unpredictable and unreliable sister "Alice" (Kristen Bell) who is having an affair with her married, architect, boss and finally her mother "Donna" (Allison Janney). It seems that they all pretty much loathe each other in equal measure, but they all decide to attend and in so doing "Alice" hooks up with the handsome "Dennis" (Dustin Milligan - probably the only decent person in the whole thing) with the others going through the usual relationship tribulations that, aside from a fun scene in a Thames-side inflatable champagne dinghy - rarely raise even the faintest hint of a smile. What Miss Janney is doing in this is anyone's guess, and without a song to sing I am afraid that Platt is just, well flat! I think the trick with good comedy is having characters that we can at least like. I struggled here with all of them before the ending that could have been seen by a blind man from outer space. The soundtrack is quite good now and again, but otherwise the writing and direction offer us nothing at all new here and it almost left me wishing for Henry Golding's equally lacklustre Christmas effort from 2019!

This had the potential to be a funny film, instead I found myself kind of disgusted by some of the characters actions and dialogue. Very little was believable and some characters were really quite horrible, self absorbed, whiners. I know films are meant to exaggerate or be farcical sometimes but the situations these characters were in were so over the top it really made no sense. I wanted to root for at least one character but really didn't, none were that interesting and few had any redeeming qualities. Many reviewers commented on the location, I have to agree. London is a beautiful city and the best thing about the film is that it was mostly shot there.

This movie is one incoherent scene full of people who don't even remotely act like real people after another. Ben Platt and Kristen Bell are absolutely insufferable and made me actively angry. There's almost no explanation for how awful these characters are or why they hate their sister for no reason. This isn't an Always Sunny in Philadelphia situation where it's entertaining watching awful people do awful things, it's more so I want to rip my eyeballs out and extract the memory of this wretched pain from my brain. Also, this has some of the most egregiously disgusting product placement I've ever seen. It's like watching that fake Korean Subway tv show from John Oliver.

This was a truly horrible experience that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Please avoid this like the plague.