“The People We Hate at the Wedding” (2022) is Odd and Entirely Forgettable (Part I of II)

“The People We Hate at the Wedding” (2022), available exclusively on Amazon Prime, is one of the oddest movies I’ve ever seen.

I don’t mean it ‘s odd in the quality. By any account, this movie is downright mediocre, which is even worse than landing on the year’s worst list. At least the really bad movies get remembered for months and years to come.

Rather, what’s odd is that, with its premise, it decided it would work best as a comedy.

That premise is this: a couple decades ago an American Donna (Allisson Janney) married a well-off European Henrique (Isaach de Bankolé) and had daughter, Eloise (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), together. The marriage eventually failed, Donna came back to the US and married an American, with whom she had Alice (Kristen Bell) and Paul (Ben Platt). While these two were young, Eloise would come and visit the half-siblings every summer to spend time together as extended family.

Fast forward a decade or two and the polished Eloise is getting married in London. She’s invited Donna, Alice and Paul to the wedding, excited to see her half-siblings again after some years of not seeing each other.

Eloise’s excited feeling isn’t mutual. Alice in particular has a lot of grievances against Eloise. She’s resentful that Eloise bailed on visiting her in the U.S. when she had a miscarriage, and she’s resentful that her rich half-sister keeps on offering a job unsolicited when she’s already got one as an assistant to a CEO of a start-up. Meanwhile, Paul, who’s gay, is unhappy that Donna moved on so quickly from the recent death of his father and hasn’t spoken to Donna since the funeral.

All this is a lot of human drama packed into three characters, and none seem like a natural set up for a comedy. But alas, this film inexplicably tries to be a comedy, and it fails in very amateurish ways.

(Continued in Part II)