The Wedding Party (1969)

The Wedding Party: Directed by Brian De Palma, Wilford Leach, Cynthia Munroe. With Valda Setterfield, Raymond McNally, John Braswell, Charles Pfluger. Charlie and Josephine are to be married in a church on the island off the East Coast where her family, the Fishes, live; the other wedding events will take place in and around the well-off Fishes’ extremely large house. Alistair and Cecil are Charlie’s groomsmen; despite neither really believing in marriage, they believe in love and friendship and will do everything they can to make Charlie’s married life tolerable (they think it will be miserable). Charlie, Alistair, and Cecil arrive on the island the morning of the day before the ceremony, the first time they will actually be meeting for the first time most of Josephine’s very large network of family, extended family, friends, and acquaintances, many of whom border on the eccentric. As Charlie goes through the process of the pre-wedding events, including the stag party, rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, and the minister’s counseling services, some problems arrive, like the Fishes’ trusty servant Baker expressing frustration about his job, Charlie starts to have doubts about marrying Josephine and tries to work his way out of the wedding. If that doesn’t work, his Plan B is to sabotage the wedding. This film is less a “will he or won’t he make it to the church on time?”; rather, it’s a satire on the rituals associated with weddings; excerpts from the fictional etiquette book “The Compleat Bridegroom” are presented as title cards to these events, followed by the mess of the actual event.

“Being the first feature film with Robert De Niro (although not released for years later), this is worth the watch. De Nirou0026#39;s role isnu0026#39;t huge, yet amusing as one of two friends who first try to prevent another friends marriage only to later chase him down to force him into it. Any die hard De Niro fan will get a kick out of an early performance by arguably the best actor today.”