Film

A Wedding

Name: A Wedding
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 1978
Cast: Desi Arnaz Jr., Carol Burnett, Geraldine Chaplin, Howard Duff, Mia Farrow

Dark comedy

Robert Altman's 1978 ensemble farce about two families colliding at a lavish wedding. A controlled chaos of overlapping conversations, class anxiety, and mounting catastrophe, where nobody gets what they expected and everything goes sideways. For anyone who loves crowded rooms, dark comedy, and the Altman method of managed mayhem.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like ensemble comedies where a crowd of quarrelling relatives talk over each other, and the chaos is the point and the wit comes from overlapping chatter.

Skip it if you need tight plotting and a clear throughline, since this is a sprawling, meandering two-hour-plus gathering that often feels more like loose vignettes than a story.

What it asks of you: Settle in for just over two hours and keep track of a large cast, with attention shifting between groups rather than following one steady line; the laughs come in layers.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Nashville1975

Altman's masterpiece of ensemble storytelling, where dozens of characters intersect across one transformative day. If you loved the fractured perspective and overlapping dialogue of A Wedding, this is the film that perfected the technique.

But Two-and-a-half hours and deliberately constructed to feel loose and aimless; some find it exhausting rather than exhilarating.

The Graduate1967

A wedding as pressure cooker and moral reckoning—elegant, funny, and structurally brilliant. The anxiety of family expectation and generational collision played at full pitch.

But It's a Boomer classic that some find dated in its anxieties; the famous ending divides people sharply.

Four Rooms1995

Single night, single location, mounting absurdity as guests and staff collide in a hotel on New Year's Eve. Chaotic ensemble energy with that same feeling of civilisation dissolving in real time.

But Wildly uneven—written and directed by four different people, and it shows. Some sequences land brilliantly; others collapse.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A Wedding

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America2016

Both use formal social gathering—with its codes of behaviour and pressure to civilise—as the crucible where real human contradiction surfaces.

A documentary following white-supremacist-turned-activist Daryl Davis as he literally sits at dinner with KKK members. A wedding is a ritual of binding; this follows a man attempting to use hospitality and conversation as a path to transformation.

But Asks uncomfortable questions about reconciliation and whether dialogue with extremists is naive or necessary. Ends with genuine ambiguity rather than moral clarity.

Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America poster

The Poseidon Adventure1972

A disaster film with Altman's sensibility: formal dinner party upended by catastrophe, ensemble cast in escalating crisis, dark comedy threading through the chaos.

But Plot-heavy and more straightforward than A Wedding; if you want pure character collision over narrative drive, this pulls the other way.

Death Becomes Her1992

Black comedy about vanity, marriage, and women at war, with the same gleeful viciousness toward human foible. Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as a pair of monsters—hilarious and mean.

But Shifts into horror-comedy territory that some find jarring; the tone whips around rather than settling.

The Witches of Eastwick1987

Ensemble comedy with sexual politics and moral chaos; women, men, desire, and consequences tangling up. Devilish and darkly funny about what people actually want versus what society says they should.

But Jack Nicholson's performance as the Devil is broad and hammy; some find it insufferable.

Bridesmaids2011

A wedding as site of class anxiety, competition, and female friendship under strain. Funny, crude, and genuinely touching about what we owe each other when things fall apart.

But Relies heavily on gross-out comedy that derails the emotional beats for some viewers.

Dinner at Eight1933

The template for ensemble comedy-drama: one evening, multiple storylines, social climbing and secrets colliding. Languid 1930s glamour masking desperation underneath.

But Pre-Code Hollywood, which means dialogue can be clipped and the pacing feels glacial by modern standards.

The Big Chill1983

Weekend reunion of old friends; gentle, conversational, funny about nostalgia and how people actually are versus who they thought they'd be. The template for a whole genre of ensemble dramedies.

But Can feel slight and self-satisfied; the emotional weight some expect doesn't quite materialise.

Withnail & I1987

Both treat a social event as a pressure system where class, pretension, and human need collide; both find the comedy in people being helpless against circumstance.

Two unemployed actors' ramshackle weekend becomes a series of collisions with eccentric strangers, building toward a social gathering that nearly destroys them. Quotable, hilarious, and genuinely weird in its structure and humour.

But British deadpan comedy of a very particular kind; if you don't find the whimsy amusing, the film is nearly unbearable.