Entertainment

Dusts off outdated stereotypes

It’s the snobs against the slobs at a Martha’s Vine yard wedding in “Jumping the Broom.” Mostly, it’s a tie: Both sides are equally irritating.

Both the groom, banker Jason (Laz Alonso), and the bride, a corporate lawyer (Paula Patton, who combines Demi Moore’s voice with an aggressive perkiness), are nice but bland. The real show lies in the nuttiness around them.

Members of the bride’s rich family, headed by Claudine (Angela Bassett) and her stressed-out husband, Greg (Brian Stokes Mitchell), are chilly control freaks. They tell Pam (Loretta Devine), the mother of the groom, what to wear, and refuse the other clan’s easily granted request to jump a broom at the ceremony in accordance with long-standing family tradition.

The groom, who grew up working-class, brings along a sleazy cousin (DeRay Davis) who keeps hitting on the female guests and spreading rumors that the bride is pregnant. His mom, a postal worker, refuses to eat the food (“The shrimp is cold,” she complains), and brings a pie she says is only for her son and his friends.

The inspiration for the movie seems to be “Meet the Fockers” (one character is even named Blythe, perhaps borrowing a name from “Fockers” actress Blythe Danner). The equivalent of the earlier movie’s dim ethnic stereotyping here amounts to one side saying things like “fine as a glass of wine” while the other slips in and out of pretentious yet woefully accented French. (French is like a musical instrument: Don’t whip it out to impress everyone if you’re not great at it.)

The jokes are slight. One girl says, “I’m a hermaphrodite” to tell an admirer to get lost. “I don’t care what religion you are” is the reply.

Yet midway through, the cheap comedy is temporarily abandoned and some genuine sources of conflict come up. The story might have worked fine if it had the courage to be a drama.

Jumping the broom is a tradition that dates back to slavery, Pam notes, but the wealthy Watsons aren’t nearly as fond of looking back as they are at savoring their success (which turns out to be more fragile than they know). Claudine says her ancestors once owned slaves, and that she is neither proud nor ashamed of this because it’s an immutable fact. Pam is outraged by Claudine’s blasé attitude.

“You need to get down off your high horse,” she says, “and come back down to Earth. Because you’re black.”

Things threaten to get interesting, and each of these actresses is formidable. But then someone gets up to sing “Sexual Healing,” and we move on to scenes such as the one where a flirting couple in the kitchen start a fire on the range and everyone comes running to gawk. Tee-hee, they’re not wearing pants.