The Film Blog: This dissection of The Wedding Party is the best thing you will read all day

We haven’t really talked about The Wedding Party, have we? Sure, we’ve acknowledged and celebrated it’s record-breaking box office figures and what they mean for the industry as a whole. But we’ve never really said much about how we feel about it.

Maybe it’s because, well, what is there to say? The movie clearly tried very little to be anything beyond “fun,” and succeeded at being “fun” and little else, so what was the point in digging deep? Was there even anything to dig into and devote critical consideration to?

Turns out, there is, as we’ve just read a fabulous review that expresses our thoughts on the film far better than we ever could.

Take, for example, this paragraph about the movie’s tone:

The Wedding Party never truly decides if it wants to be a good-natured drama or just farce. On one hand, Banky W and Adesua Etomi are putting their best into roles as a young couple battling the odds, and on the other Balogun and Emma Oh My God are in their own slapstick movie. This is a format usually employed by wedding dramedies like this, but with the caveat that both parts—the drama and the slapstick—are made to clash in moments of pathos, the comedy giving lightness to the emotions of the drama. The instances where these two parts clash in The Wedding Party—for instance, the scene where the robber brings out the gun that ignores Chekov’s admonition—are like the confluence of two immiscible liquids.

Seriously. Could there be a more accurate encapsulation of the film’s genre issues? It’s perfectly fine to dance on the line between comedy and drama. Maybe even keep one foot squarely in each. But it takes a delicate touch to manage the juxtaposition between both. And an even more delicate one when the comedy at play is of the slapstick variety being employed by The Wedding Party.

Then, there’s this bit about the acting:

Ireti Doyle’s acting is undoubtedly phenomenal, but in this movie she’s a professional cyclist given an Okada to stunt with. She does her best to pull off the role of icy Obianuju Onwuka, detached mother of the groom who is displeased with everything on show. But there’s a limit to the tricks you can perform on a Bajaj motorcycle before falling off.

Richard Mofe Damijo as Felix Onwuka and Ali Baba as Bamidele Coker find themselves in two differing situations with similar results: one is a good actor in a limiting role that requires him to bat eyes at a woman across the aisle while pretending his wife seating right beside him doesn’t notice, while the other is a mediocre actor who comes short in a role that requires proper dramatic range.

And this part that so perfectly expresses AY’s career that we wonder where this writer has been all our lives:

Ayo Makun is on stage to confirm the general suspicion that he’s a good compere masquerading as a mediocre comedian because that’s what pays the bills.

The entire thing is quite the brilliant read. Check it out here.

 

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