(In the Garage Productions)
In the Garage Productions, 2022. Comedy. 82 min.
Grade: 2 out of 4
A movie called My Sister’s Wedding couldn’t be more upfront about its subject matter, save, perhaps, that it might imply a rom-com rather than a more general “com.” Just so you know, Allison (Samantha Sayah) is not going to butt heads with a handsome but mildly obnoxious groomsman who turns out to be wonderful. She’s not looking, and there aren’t any prospects anyway; for her, victory and a happy ending means pulling off a supposedly private family function without anybody coming to serious harm. Or, at least, her titular sister not being mad at her. That small triumph might have to suffice, if it’s even attainable.
Writer-director Kenneth R. Frank’s model would appear to be Noah Baumbach’s close-to-the-bone stress comedies, with Allison getting progressively more and more of other people’s baggage piled on her as the day goes on. Naturally, her parents are estranged. Dad’s paying for it and providing the house, and expects certain privileges as a result. The whole thing was supposed to be private, but it isn’t. Ironically, the main aspect of the wedding that viewers might expect to prove controversial – it’s interracial and same-sex – is the only thing nobody’s upset about. Both families may have 99 problems, but a bigot ain’t one.
A lesser influence, but one oddly called out, is Tommy Wiseau’s The Room – at one point, angry dad Big Al (Brian Donohue) welcomes “Everyone that I love!” only to suddenly shift moods, turn to his son-in law, and go “Oh hi Mark.” It’s the funniest moment of a movie that ought to be funnier. Baumbach’s films rise and fall based on an audience member’s ability to relate to the given subject matter, but he also eschews easy answers, for the most part. Frank wants to have things both ways, indicting the narcissism of Boomer parents on the one hand, but then making everything okay again.
Favoring long master shots and an over-present piano score, My Sister’s Wedding is made up of scenes that want to feel like spontaneous improv, and perhaps they are, because if scripted, they ought to be funnier. This may be where another comparison to Wiseau could be apt – in his own bizarre way, he also tries to write dialogue that sounds real rather than scripted, hence the large number of non-sequiturs and plot dead-ends in The Room. But if the goal is to increase the tension and frantic pace, dialogue does need massaging a bit in the right direction. Craftier editing, and perhaps even more handheld shots, could add to it. As is, the long takes feel more like a play, although props for the realistic sound design that includes morning weed-whackers and nearby helicopters – the actual audioscape of urban and suburban life that we rarely encounter in the movies.
Allison’s best scenes play out with her father, and his resolute declaration that “There’s two kinds of people in this world: me and everybody else.” In real life, actor Donohue was briefly a preliminary wrestler in the then-WWF, known as The Dublin Destroyer. (I’m a lifelong WWE fan and have never heard of the character, but the story checks out.) In the movie, he’s no less pugnacious…and inevitably scripted to lose. But Al’s so righteously needy in that way older parents are that he makes a perfect foil for Allison, who’s determined to stand up to him but has to suck it up at least until the wedding’s over. As the mother, Olivia, actress Jennifer Jiles was clearly told she’s playing a Wendie Malick type, and her voice is a pitch-perfect impersonation. She could use a bit more crazy in the eyes, though.
My father, who hated Blake Edwards comedies, used to indict them as “the sort of movie where somebody gets pushed into the pool and it’s supposed to be funny.” I’m not as down on the Pink Panther director, but My Sister’s Wedding absolutely resembles that remark, dutifully rolling out a pool-pushing in the hopes that some slapstick might provide the cherry on top of its stressful sundae. Unfortunately, it’s no more laugh-out-loud than anything else – as with the rest of the film, it elicits a “Huh, I guess that’s kind of amusing, in a way.” Unfortunately, for the movie to work as apparently intended, it needs to do more than that.