Out at the Wedding

There are two tropes in romantic comedies that drive me crazy. The first one is misunderstandings that are drawn out for 90 minutes that could and should be rationally solved immediately with two minutes of clarifying conversation. The second is promoting a lie or false identity in elaborate and potentially expensive ways. This is also used as an alternative of just being fucking honest. Out at the Wedding has both of these tropes in spades. If the characters in this film acted rationally and honestly, this movie would be about six minutes long.

Out at the Wedding is about Alex, who is currently dating and recently engaged to Dana, her half-black, half-Jewish boyfriend. Alex has not told her parents about Dana. She has also told Dana and his parents that her family is dead. When Alex attends her younger sister’s wedding, a miscommunication causes her extended family to believe she is a lesbian. Alex’s sister Jeannie becomes upset that Alex stole the thunder at her wedding. Subsequently, for reasons that make sense to only Alex, instead of being honest, she doubles down and again insists she has a girlfriend.

Then things get even more ridiculous. Alex is apparently too deep in this lie now. So upon Jeannie visiting her, Alex and her friend Jonathan hire a lesbian they just met to pretend to be Alex’s girlfriend “Dana.” Of course, sparks fly between fake-Dana and Jeannie. Meanwhile, Alex is trying to keep the various people in her life from finding out about all the monumental lies she has told them.

If you like wacky misunderstand romantic comedies, you will like this movie just fine. Personally, however, I found it too hard to find humour in the events as they became increasingly elaborate. There are moments of a certain amount of self-awareness as to how ridiculous this whole set-up is in the script. But the fact that the writers clearly knew that the story tended to go a bit too far makes it worse that they did anyway.

The acting as all fine. The two actresses who play the romantic couple have great chemistry. None of that stops this from being a movie built on a foundation of lies from a neurotic, compulsive liar, her shallow friend who offers the worst sort of encouragement and her newly married sister, who was willing to cheat on her sister’s alleged new girlfriend with only minor feelings of guilt. The characters overall are just too unlikable or at least appear so given this story for me to find their antics particularly funny.

I do not recommend Out at the Wedding. It is not funny enough to make up for how unlikely the premise is, nor are the characters likable enough. There are better queer romantic comedies to watch. There are worse ones as well but just because Out at the Wedding is not the absolute bottom of the barrel doesn’t make it good.

Overall rating: 3.6/10

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