As the name suggests, when you watch The People We Hate at the Wedding, you're going to be watching messy characters doing things that would make someone hate them. The film successfully toes the line of making that kind of cringe comedy without completely sacrificing these characters, despite their many flaws, you do still root for these people, and you want them to resolve their issues and live happily ever after.

Underneath the plentiful high jinks in its physical-comedy-heavy scenes, The People We Hate at the Wedding ends up being a poignant enough good time that celebrates imperfect yet endearing familial love.

Those looking for a heartfelt tale of family and love might find this one misses the mark, but other viewers willing to go along for the ride could find themselves grinning by the credits. The People We Hate at the Wedding will likely be somewhat divisive, and that makes it a rather intriguing movie in the end.

It’s not especially fair to criticize the movie that could have been made, rather than the one that was actually made. But even on its chosen terms of a family dramedy, People feels lopsided.

A short, patchy, straight-to-streaming piece of semi-amusing content that tries to fit several different romantic-comedies into a single movie that doesn’t have the bandwidth (or the interest) to mine any of them for major sources of romance or comedy, Claire Scanlon’s The People We Hate at the Wedding basically feels like watching a bunch of talented actors chug cheap red wine for 90 minutes.