Our Family Wedding

Fathers know foolishness best in this culture-clash family comedy, which presides over a cursed union of slushy sentimentality and dim humour. Two lovebirds (Lance Gross, America Ferrera) wreak havoc among their clans by announcing their intention to marry. Such news upsets their not-so-proud pops – a playboy radio personality (Forest Whitaker) and a clingy car-restorer (Carlos Mencia) – who begin volleying racial and class-based insults at each other.

Paternal bickering and egomaniacal prejudices soon give way to slapstick fighting, which leads to clichéd crises and reconciliations as predictable as the script’s slurs are tame. A variety of side players fulfil the stereotype quota, with African-Americans represented as party-hearty lotharios and Mexicans as traditionalist kooks. Aside from an uncomfortable Mencia, who cowers before the camera, the cast is efficient – though that’s not the same as coming out of this unscathed. It’ll take years of yeoman’s work for Whitaker to repair his reputation after allowing himself to be humped by a goat on Viagra.