Sione's Wedding

Sione’s Wedding is an urban romantic comedy that brings the humour, life and colour of Polynesian culture to the big screen.

Sione's Wedding, New Zealand, 2006

Director: Chris Graham
Production Company: South Pacific Pictures
Producers: John Barnett, Chloe Smith
Executive producer: Paul Davis
Writers: James Griffin, Oscar Kightley
Cinematographer: Aaron Morton
Production designer: Iain Aitken
Costume designer: Jane Holland
Editor: Paul Maxwell
Composer: Andy Morton aka DJ Submariner

With: Oscar Kightley (Albert), Robbie Magasiva (Michael), Shimpal Lelisi (Sefa), Iaheto Ah Hi (Stanley), Teuila Blakely (Leilani), Madeleine Sami (Tania), David Fane (Bolo aka Paul), Pua Magasiva (Sione), David van Horn (Derek aka D-Rizzle), Nathaniel Lees (Minister), Ana Tuigamala (Albert’s mum), Maryjane McKibbin-Schwenke (Princess)

35mm, 97 minutes, M–offensive language & sexual references

Sione is getting married. But there’s a problem, well actually, there are four problems – Sione’s brother Michael and his three best mates Albert, Stanley, and Sefa; the ladies’ man, the good boy, the weird one and the party boy. They’re 30-something, but they still act as if they’re 16. They get drunk, they chase the wrong women and they have a remarkable record of causing chaos at every wedding they attend. But when Sione bans the boys from his wedding, they know something has to change. The boys have one last chance; find girlfriends to take to the wedding or be left out in the cold. Their lives are about to get turned upside down. How hard can it be finding a girl in the world’s biggest Polynesian city when you’re young, gifted and brown?

Sione’s Wedding is an urban romantic comedy that brings the humour, life and colour of Polynesian culture to the big screen.

“The big, burly Samoan Wedding is a shrewdly written, impeccably timed and audaciously played romantic comedy about four thirtysomething slacker buddies in New Zealand forced to clean up their acts and find respectable dates in order to attend a best mate's wedding. Known as Sione's Wedding in the Southern Hemisphere – where it broke the opening weekend Kiwi box office record in late March 2006 – is being sold under the current name elsewhere by London-based HanWay films. Under any title, this is an instantly exportable comedy that will play gangbusters in all situations on all platforms. Though action is set among the sizeable Samoan community in an Auckland suburb, the affable but irresponsible quartet around which events revolve are immediately identifiable as Peter Pan types. Albert (co-writer/co-producer Oscar Kightley) is a good-natured office drone who lives with his mom; Michael is a hunky Lothario with a weakness for white women; Sefa actually has a girlfriend, Leilani, but keeps forgetting this in his enthusiasm for the next party; Stanley is so busy trying to find the perfect woman through dating services that the world's passing him by. Formerly members of an early 1990s break-dancing crew called the "Duckrockers," they've pretty much ceased to mature. When their local minister confronts them with video evidence of their immature behavior at previous nuptials, the boys work hard to persuade him to let them attend the wedding of Micheal's brother Sione – but only if they find suitable, legit dates. The balance of the film charts these often howlingly funny efforts, which grow to include Albert's co-worker Tania; gorgeous but treacherous cousin Princess; Sefa's naive cousin Paul, aka Bolo; and white gangsta wannabe Derek. The film’s stopwatch-tight comedic timing was developed by Kightley and a chunk of the cast in the long-running Naked Samoans touring theater troupe. There's not a weak link in the sizeable cast, with each principal assigned just enough screen time to give depth to caricature. Technical credits are pro, with former musicvid helmer Chris Graham making full use of the widescreen frame for skilled physical comedy. Toe-tapping tunes mix hip-hop and pop acts from the stable of Auckland-based record label Dawn Raid Entertainment.” — Eddie Cockrell, Variety, 1 September 2006

Sione’s Wedding is a rowdy, bawdy New Zealand comedy that perceptively depicts the universal with the particular in an amusing, affectionate way. The setting — the particular — is Auckland's substantial Samoan community; the universal is any urban community in which a group of guys in their 30s are not doing a good job of growing up. Not even remotely attempting to embrace maturity are Michael, a physically imposing pursuer of white women; Albert, a wimpy middle-management insurance executive; Stanley, a man who has committed all his faith and attention to dating services in his search for the perfect woman; and Sefa, a chronic betrayer of his elegant live-in lover, Leilani. They spend virtually all their free time hanging out together, playing basketball, getting drunk and, with the exception of Albert, chasing women. Their penchant for hell-raising has marred a number of weddings to such an extent that the local minister has banned them from the upcoming nuptials of Michael's younger brother — unless they arrive accompanied by honest-too-goodness girlfriends, not just dates for the evening. Since Leilani has finally had it and departed, Sefa finds himself in the same boat as his pals. Writers Kightley and Griffin gleefully chart the guys' frequently hilarious struggle to qualify for admission to the wedding. They discover that, like it or not, they have engaged at last in the often painful and uncertain process of becoming adults. At work the bespectacled, stocky Albert has an office mate, the demure Tania, who is secretly in love with him but to whom he is oblivious. He instead is lining up his cousin, Princess, to accompany him to the wedding, but this gorgeous playgirl (portrayed by a former Miss Samoa, no less) zeroes in on Michael, her counterpart in spectacular looks and aggressive sexuality. Directed by Chris Graham with zest and good-natured perception, Sione’s Wedding eschews the often self-consciously staged rituals that mar films set in ethnic communities and is instead content to celebrate the underlying bonds of loyalty and respect that ultimately tie these Samoans together. Benefiting from relatively unfamiliar photogenic locales, Sione’s Wedding is consistently imaginative, revealing and funny.” — Kevin Thomas, LA Times, 9 February 2007

“This is a very polished production. From the title sequence’s jump-cut aerial views of Auckland – which has never looked better – to the music of Dawn Raid that’s an apposite but never obtrusive counterpoint, to the colourful, complex set piece of the traditional (Auckland) Samoan nuptials at the end, Sione’s Wedding rarely puts a foot wrong. Sione – you’ll have deduced by now – is getting married. His brother, Michael the stud, should be his best man, but Michael and his three mates – nerdy Albert, feckless Sefa and out-of-touch Stanley – are a bunch of immature prats (with hearts of gold, of course) whose drunken antics ruin every event they attend. So, unless they can grow up quickly enough to get girlfriends to take to the wedding, they will be banned. Written by Kightley and James Griffin, this is classic comedy as it’s been structured for centuries. We begin with everything out of the natural order and end with harmony restored, in the form of a wedding. There’s one other useful, old-fashioned ingredient there that is missing from so many contemporary films: a deadline. The boys have to complete their task within a week, or else. Jeopardy impels the action. With a quartet of leads, there are four plot lines. This means there’s always something going on and give the narrative pace… Sione’s Wedding is a very deliberate attempt to reflect contemporary urban Samoan life with its generational conflicts and tension between New Zealand values and community ways. It makes much of its setting in the once-fashionable suburb of Grey Lynn. The film risked being so cool it hurt, but disciplined filmmaking prevents it getting carried away. And although it’s specific in its milieu, its subject is universal. Young men are refusing to grow up in every society.” — Paul Little, Sunday Star Times, 26 March 2006

Screenings: Sione's Wedding screened on 4 July 2007 as part of the Arts Foundation Laureates season, it honours the work of Laureate Oscar Kightley.