Sister of the Groom premiered on 18th December 2020 on Video on Demand. Directed by Amy Miller Gross, the 92-minute-long film stars Abigail Marlowe, Adrienne Ellis, Alicia Silverstone, Charlie Bewley, Claudja Bicalho, Deeva Green, Jake Hoffman, and Jamie Choi alongside other cast members.
Insecurities and Relations
Sister of the Groom revolves around Audrey (Alicia Silverstone), a housewife and mother to 10-year-old twins, who is insecure about her body and is missing out on her career as an architect but plans to make a return in the field soon. As she visits her childhood home to attend her brother Liam’s (Jake Hoffman) wedding to his French girlfriend Clemence (Mathilde Ollivier), an aspiring pop star who goes through the day as if she’s in a 24/7 music video, Audrey starts to believe that she has to stop this union as his now-fiancee is unkind and most probably, a gold-digger.
In all these shenanigans enter Issac (Charlie Bewley), Audrey’s ex-boyfriend, which pushes her beloved and always supportive husband Ethan (Tom Everett Scott) off the edge.
For women in their mid-40s, the film brings a fairly good image forward bringing forth their insecurities, self-doubts, jealousy, fears, and wishful fantasies one might experience at that age. While Audrey’s life from the outside looks picture-perfect with a loyal and loving husband, kids, and a nearly good life, on the inside she is going through turmoil – feeling that she is not who she is supposed to be and wanted to be. There is no career for her, she misses her work and younger days.
She feels pushed out by her brother’s life by his beautiful young fiancée, who has the world at her feet/ While this entire point seems pretty shallow, everybody has their own insecurities, regret, and reasoning and it’s unfair to judge.
There are no big problems here, just first-world kind! The movie almost screams that you can have it all and still be inconsiderate and spoilt about it. If there were more concern about her brother here, it would still have been understandable, but it seemed more like her anger towards and complaint from a person half her age was because of the mindset: “how can she have it all while I can’t”. Apart from this, the characters here are half-baked with little to no arc. There is no development with Clemence’s father Philibert (Ronald Guttman), who apparently was a big French TV star, or her 2 wives or their ideology or emotions or anything for that matter.
There is an ugly physical scuffle between the bride-to-be and the sister of the groom. Audrey is nasty to Clemence, not that Clemence is nice to her either but Audrey could literally be charged for what she does to her. She even goes as far as eavesdropping and telling her brother Clemence’s secret, while being a sister her concern seems ok here but she wants to see Liam decide what she wants i.e., breaking off the marriage is senseless. To me, Audrey isn’t someone who is going through mid-life crises but instead, she is reckless, narcissistic, and self-centred.
Stream It or Skip It
SKIP IT! Sister of the Groom is not a movie you would love seeing but half of the time it’ll leave you questioning why is any character doing anything, why are they all half-baked, selfish, and unrelatable. While the film might work for women who have been in a similar phase but for everyone else it’s a questionable bummer. There are also stereotypes like language and cultural barrier that are not dealt with properly.
Lastly, don’t ever drug anyone’s food. It is not fun, no matter how sorry you are about it!
Sister of the Groom is now available to stream on Video on Demand.
Read our other reviews here.