As a woman of Iranian background living in North America, I enjoyed the film. I also appreciate the enthusiasm and the effort that went into this film. However I can understand where the low rating possibly comes from.
You see lots of energy spent on correcting the misrepresentations about the true culture of Iranians. Nice effort to show what a typical middle class Iranian family is like these days, even in Iran (although you never get to see the latter due to the censorship of the theocratic Islamic government in Iran).
The film tries to tackle issues about gender equality, same-sex marriage, war, immigration baggage... I understand that fearing this may be their only chance, the screen/story writers tried to put so much in one feature film.
As a result, every topic is lightly touched on since there's no time to explore all these issues in depth.
Someone here mentioned that this film lacks the charm of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Yes of course it does! My Big Fat Greek Wedding was focusing on mainly two issues with the objective of being a comedy: romance and culture clash. A Simple Wedding is too serious to be taken as a simple romantic comedy. It's so ambitious a project that it needs to be written as a novel in depth.
The Iranian diaspora is dealing with many issues such as recent immigration, being mistaken as Arabs, being judged as Muslims even though most of them don't practice Islam, pride of a 2600 year civilisation rich with humanity, love and poetry, and the shame of a current backward Islamic government, family culture rooted in tradition and conflict with modern life, having lived during a war and wanting peace.
The Iranian people are incredibly complex and difficult to represent, especially to the people of America whose sole idea of an Iranian is a clergy talking as Iranian government on tv.
I applaud the hard work and the ambirion that went to the making of this film. However I believe that it may not have been a great idea to bring all this baggage into this rom-com, if it was solely intended as such.
There would have been more success, in my opinion, if this film could have adhered to the simpler style of My Big Fat Greek Wedding (most people like simpler films just for entertainment). Then, for the more curious and intelligent viewer, offering an exploration series where each episode focuses on a different aspect of the Iranian culture. Now you're asking me who would want to watch that? Well, aren't there people watching series on Rome? Make Persia interesting and it will happen. Thanks.
