In most wedding comedies, there is a lengthy build-up and a big payoff to meeting and getting to know the in-laws of the wedding couple. But exactly like the title suggests, this film introduces another kind of wedding with an unsavory set of relationships among the in-laws that dates back many years. Instead of "let's get to know" the in-laws in the literal sense, the film is about "let's get to know" the in-laws in the biblical sense!
The film is difficult to wade through due to the incessant flashbacks where we learn about the coupling of the characters that has occurred in the past. The flashbacks are so poorly conceived that it is often difficult to know whether the action unfolding on the screen is in the past or present.
The various relationships include a lesbian coupling between the two mothers and a heterosexual coupling between the bride and the brother of the groom. It may not be an exaggeration to describe this film "comedy" as an exploration of incest. Throughout the film, there is an "icky" feeling to the character interactions, and one is constantly asking oneself what actually are the relationships.
There is one line in the film that offers a good summation of this creepy set of people: "everyone suffers from failed potential." But this evaluation does not go far enough in acknowledging that these losers never had much potential to begin with: a failed actor/rapper hitting on his brother's fiancé who was his former lover, an aspiring disk jockey sponging off of his girlfriend, a dirty old man flirting with a young Latina, a creepy chap jumping into the hotel's hot tube in the nude, a high-strung, obese matriarch bossing her kids around.
By the time the wedding couple is finally united in holy matrimony under the chuppah, the audience is relieved to be out of the hotel, out of Montréal, and out of the disgusting lives of the Berkman clan.
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