Big Stars Get Naughty in "The Big Wedding"

By Skip Sheffield

“The Big Wedding” offers some big-name movie stars the chance to talk dirty, act naughty and get paid well for it.

Diane Keaton and Robert De Niro play a divorced couple who are asked to pretend they are still married at the wedding of their adopted son.

Those of you who are divorced will surely know what a terrible idea this is, but it is the hook cooked up by writer-director Justin Zackham. Zackham is a bright young NYUFilmSchool graduate who wrote the screen play for “The Bucket List.”

Both “The Bucket List’ and “Big Wedding’ deal in black humor, but the latter is more a sex farce.

This is clear at the outset when we see Ellie (Diane Keaton) find the hidden key to a big, beautiful lakefront estate in Connecticut to let herself in unannounced. Though Ellie has been divorced ten years from sculptor Don (Robert De Niro), she still has affection for the guy who cheated on her with her former best friend Bebe (Susan Sarandon).

Ellie picks a particularly embarrassing moment to barge in on Don and Bebe. This sets the tone for embarrassment galore to come.

Bebe has been living with Don ever since Ellie left and has been acting as a step mother to offspring Lyla (Katherine Heigl), Jared (Topher Grace) and adopted son Alejandro (Ben Barnes). Lyla is married but separated. Jared is a doctor and a prime catch for all the females in his vicinity, but he has vowed to remain a virgin until true love comes along. Jared is almost 30 and still waiting.

Alejando is engaged to be married to Missy (Amanda Seyfried), the lovely daughter of Don’s snobby, insufferable neighbors Muffy (Christine Ebersole) and Barry (David Rasche). Alejandro’s real mother is Madonna (Patricia Rae) a very pious Catholic woman who lives in Columbia. Madonna has never before come to the USA, but to be at her son’s side she decides to visit, with her nubile daughter Nuria (Ana Ayora).

Did we mention Don is a recovering alcoholic who has been sober three years, or that Bebe has been asked to bear the humiliation of Ellie masquerading in her role? Oh, and how about the fact Nuria takes an instant shine to Jared, despite the fact he is technically her half-brother?

Throw Robin Williams in as a boozy priest, and you have the recipe for chaos. To the credit of all involved, “Big Wedding” is very funny, though the laughs may feel guilty.

Three stars

“No Place on Earth” a Place to Survive

“No Place on Earth” is as serious as “Big Wedding” is silly. This is a true story of surviving the Holocaust in a remote corner of western Ukraine.

In 1942, when Germany invaded Russia, the Ukraine was part of the USSR. Esther Stermer was a mother determined to survive with her children at any cost. She and fellow Ukrainian Jews discovered the passageway to a large cave, and it was there they hid for a year and a half while war raged above.

The cave was rediscovered by an American spelunker and amateur detective Chris Nicola, who discovered clothes, shoes, pottery and other evidences of human inhabitation in the vast cave system. Nicola’s investigation uncovered the amazing story of the survival of 38 men, women and children from late 1942 until liberation in March, 1944.

The story is recounted in a memoir titled “We Fight to Survive,” by Esther Stermer.

Nicola and film writer-director Janet Tobias found survivors of the Stermer and Dodyk families in New York and Montreal and offered them the opportunity to revisit the dark refuge they had left 67 years ago.

Tobias recorded remembrances by Saul and Sam Stermer and Sonia and Simia Dodyk. All were children then, but are elderly now. Combined with Nicola’s detective tale and dramatic recreations by actors, the tale of survival is dramatized. “No Place” is literally dark. The interviews are barely lit, perhaps to simulate the darkness of the cave.

“No Place” is not as exciting or heart-wrenching as many Holocaust stories, but it is a remarkable account of the human spirit in a lesson one must never forget.

Two and a half stars