Since we’re poised on the edge of the “Christmas Movie” season, I’ve been struggling to find a new movie that doesn’t involve sleigh bells, mall Santas, screaming children, or boring family flicks.
Luckily, a new flick dropped on Amazon Prime last Friday – “The People We Hate at the Wedding.”
It pairs up estranged siblings, an over-stressed and overmedicated mother, and a romance-comedy’s idyllic wedding venue- the English countryside.
And while the film doesn’t take itself too seriously, it shares in a glaringly obvious plotline and some poor punch line timing.
So, while I didn’t spend a lot of time laughing at the sarcasm and overall tone of adult children’s cringe and discomfort, it did have its mid-to-high points.
I also managed to catch this with my mom and we were both pleasantly surprised at how we shared some of the same feelings about similar tropes and predictable pitfalls.
I mean, when there’s usually an inter-office romance trying to be hidden from a spouse it proverbially ends poorly – but, in this case, it ends hilariously.
The People We Hate at the Wedding is a comedy film directed by Claire Scanlon from a screenplay by the Molyneux sisters, based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Grant Ginder.
It stars Allison Janney, Ben Platt, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Adam Godley, Karan Soni, and Kristen Bell.
The movie is 99 minutes long and is rated R for sexual content and language.
Starting off with some horrible Photoshop photos and narration, we’re introduced to siblings Alice (Bell) and Paul (Platt), their mother Donna (Janney), and half-sister Eloise (Robinson).
The flashback provides a seemingly perfect family photo outing during Christmas in the 90s which shows the siblings all getting along and sad to see Eloise leaving so soon.
But, after that, they all turn into teenagers, experience hardships and an emotional gulf divide them far wider than the Atlantic.
Eventually, we end up in the present-day where Alice and Paul pretty much hate their jobs and ignore talking with their mother Donna since their father died.
Alice is a brilliant architect working as an administrative assistant and sleeping with her married boss.
The boss feeds her plenty of lies about caring for her and wanting to leave his wife though nothing ever comes of it.
Paul works at helping Obsessive Compulsion Disorder sufferers try to work past their issues and become more adept at rolling with the punches that life throws at them and to develop better coping mechanisms in the meantime.
Paul is also in a strained relationship with his partner Dominic (Soni) where Dominic is trying to inject more excitement into their life together.
Once the siblings get their invitations they agree not to go to England for various reasons: for Alice it’s because Eloise left her high and dry without support during a rough patch in the summer and Paul claims to hate his mother for moving on too quickly after his father died and not wanting to deal with the drama that could come from such a family event.
Still, the siblings both have their lives derailed and decide to head to England for the big nuptials anyway – Alice invites her boss and finds him flaking out while she’s waiting for her flight.
Paul naturally brings Dominic and their mom is more than content to fly solo.
From then on, it’s like everything that could go wrong, does go wrong and family tension eventually snaps.
But, I’m not going to spoil it for you and suggest watching it with your adult children or friends to get the full comedic effect.
