Cliche reigns before ‘I do’

Getting married in the movies is rarely a case of walking serenely down an aisle, staring dreamily into the eyes of a beloved and nervously saying “I do”.

Our Family Wedding is a predictably fraught ensemble comedy about the clash of cultures between Mexican-American and African-American families, who must grit their teeth and bear their cultural differences for the sake of their love-struck offspring.

Lucia (Ferrera) and her fiance Marcus (Gross) are head over heels in love, but they haven’t introduced one another to their respective families.

In Lucia’s case, she has been avoiding her father Miguel (Mencia) and mother Sonia (Riva) because she has dropped out of law school.

In Marcus’s case, his old man – Los Angeles radio host Brad Boyd (Whitaker) – is too busy bedding women half his age to take an interest in his son’s happiness.

So the soon-to-be-weds organise a meal where they intend to get the introductions out of the way in public.

It transpires that Miguel already knows Brad: he towed away the radio host’s illegally-parked car. The men agree to put their grievances to one side for the sake of their children’s impending nuptials.

Our Family Wedding trades heavily on stereotypes.

Ferrera and Gross are a sweet, albeit two-dimensional match, at the mercy of their loved ones’ demands and inevitable lapses in judgment.

The screenwriters create friction between the happy couple to contrive a hint of dramatic tension.

Love is a battlefield... except this is a romantic comedy and convention dictates a blizzard of celebratory confetti over the end credits.