America Ferrera & Lance Gross in Our Family Wedding

Instead of invitations, they should be sending out apologies for "Our Family Wedding," a cake-and-kisses comedy that has disaster written all over it, and not for the right reasons.

Race as much as romance is at the heart of the matter, with director Rick Famuyiwa playing that card in nearly every scene, and a card shark he is not.

The film stars America Ferrera, who's finishing up her final lap on ABC's "Ugly Betty," and Lance Gross, a resident of Tyler Perry's "House of Payne," as the secretly betrothed Lucia and Marcus.

In case no one notices that she is Hispanic and he is African-American, Lucia's grandmother (Lupe Ontiveros) is there to screech, "He's black," and then faint.

The film kicks off with what amounts to an emotional drive-by, with the couple traveling to Los Angeles to meet the parents and get married on the fly. The reason for the rush turns out to be another bit of bad news for the parents, destroying a few more hopes and dreams. But the family conflicts and the movie's problems actually start hours before that first family gathering, because the real couple wreaking havoc here are the dads, Brad Boyd (Forest Whitaker) and Miguel Ramirez (stand-up comic Carlos Mencia).

They even get the movie's meet-cute moment -- Brad's vintage Aston Martin is parked in a loading zone, and Miguel is manning the tow truck that's about to haul it away. But instead of hilarity ensuing, Miguel and Brad pull out nearly every racial slur in the book, a lot of half-baked slapstick and even more macho posturing in an effort to entertain.

As it happens, slapstick and slurs don't complement each other very well, and machismo humor seems way past its prime, but the filmmakers stay with that strategy until the bitter end. throwing in everything but the piñata.

Weddings are notorious for bringing out worst in everyone, and this one is no exception with everyone in both families more than happy to sort through their dirty laundry in public.

There is also the typical assortment of wedding-related problems -- the dress, the venue, the seating arrangements, the onslaught of crazy relatives and, of course, the cost. The real cost, though, is the wasted opportunity to take a smart cut at a subject so thematically rich and so rarely explored by Hollywood. Instead, the warring families, the interracial romance, the inherent cultural clashes and the socio-economic divide of middle- versus upper-class divide are squandered.

It feels like a step back for Famuyiwa, who shares writing credit with Wayne Conley and Malcolm Spellman. The filmmaker's last romantic comedy, 2002's "Brown Sugar" starring Sanaa Lathan and Taye Diggs, drifted toward too sweet at times but kept the cynicism at bay.

With all its flaws, "Our Family Wedding" is not going to be the film that proves Ferrera can make the transition to big-screen star either. It will take more than a better-dressed, braces-free version of the quirky cute "Betty," which is all that is asked of her here.

Long before the priest gets to the "Do you take" question, someone should have stepped in and said "I don't."

 

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"Our Family Wedding" Movie Trailer

In this clash-of-cultures comedy, two overbearing dads must put aside their differences to plan the wedding of their son and daughter in less than two weeks.

Starring Forest Whitaker, America Ferrera, Carlos Mencia, Regina King, and Lance Gross. In Theaters March 12!

 

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MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some sexual content and brief strong language).

Running time: 1:41.

Cast: America Ferrera (Lucia); Lance Gross (Marcus); Forest Whitaker (Brad); Carlos Mencia (Miguel); Regina King (Angela); Diana Maria Riva (Sonia).

Credits: Directed by Rick Famuyiwa; written by Wayne Conley, Malcolm Spellman and Famuyiwa. Produced by Edward Saxon and Steven J. Wolfe. A Fox Searchlight release.