Robin Williams | ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES

This movie is worth watching if just for Ben Affleck’s matching windbreaker and tear away pant outfits alone. He has the EXACT wardrobe of my Catholic school gym teacher\music teacher\ librarian, who accessorized hers with orange lipstick, a popped collar before they were cool, and faux-black curls that reached at LEAST three inches in height.

Matt & Ben, god love em. I love how these two high school drop-outs laboured to make the college classroom scenes authentic, but couldn’t be bothered to learn how to use a mop. I love Hollywood for that. Actors can learn to box and DJ and make a béarnaise sauce, but they can never convincingly fold laundry or pump gas. Why is that?

Anyway. The interesting thing about this movie is that it fools you with its quirkiness and quick wit into not seeing the incredibly predictable story arc. Sad, abused, troubled kid is actually a genius and he just needs someone to provide the Armour-Piercing Statement: “It’s not your fault” enough times to crack through his tough-guy veneer and get some healing on. Despite the basic cliché upon this film is predicated, the film succeeds in its smaller bubbles of truth. The defense mechanisms feel true. The relationships are charismatic. And blessed be, it avoids the gift-wrapped perfect ending. I like the ending of this movie so much, I’ve written about it before:

Like every other morning, Ben Affleck pulls up to Matt’s house with a product-placement cup of coffee, and jobs up the front stoop in his latest sport-douche look. This time, though, the last time, he knocks on the door, and no one answers. We already know that Ben has always secretly hoped for this very thing: he has said that his favourite part of the day is between his knock and Matt’s answering, that length of time where he can imagine that his brilliant friend has left his desultory life behind to chase the stars. So we know that Ben is happy, but we also know that he will inevitably also be sad, having just lost his best friend, and having no such escape route himself. It’s a very bittersweet moment where not a single word is spoken, but so much is said. All of this is communicated with just a slight grin, but the script and the director have set this moment up so perfectly that it plays on the audience’s emotions for all it’s worth. Love it.

The Big Wedding stars FOUR Oscar winners: Robert DeNiro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, and Robin Williams.

So the answer to the question is: at least 5. It takes at least 5 Oscar winners to save a piece of shit; four were definitely not enough.

The premise: a long-divorced couple (Keaton & DeNiro) have to pretend to still be married on the occasion of their adopted son’s wedding (Ben Barnes, white guy, not remotely Columbian, to Amanda Seyfried), to keep up appearances in front of his religious biological mother, who is visiting all the way from – you guessed it – Columbia.

Flimsy? You bet. It’s exactly the kind of role I hate to see Diane Keaton doing these days, and now she’s dragging Susan Sarandon down along with her (playing her former best friend and current flame of the ex-husband). Ladies at this stage in their career should not have to resort to slapstick.

Topher Grace and Katherine Heigl round out the cast as the two other unlucky-in-love kids, heaping contrived subplot onto contrived subplot. And then Robin Williams shows up as the drunk but devout Catholic priest who’s set to marry these two crazy kids, despite the racist protests of a soon-to-be in-law unfortunately named Muffin (beige grandbabies alert!). Um, haven’t we seen Robin play this exact thing before?

Anyway, you won’t think this movie is good, but if you’re in the right mood – like, in bed with a bad head cold, for example – you might find it…passable. Like, if it’s playing on TV and you can’t find the remote, you could do worse. And maybe you just need a little schmaltz in your life: nothing wrong with that. Don’t admit to it, maybe, but enjoy it with a bowl of popcorn, or maybe melty ice cream, because let’s face it: the movie itself is cheesy enough to clog your precious arteries.