I can't claim to know anything specific about Polish culture or Polish-American culture and I'd assume the slating "Polish Wedding" has got, particularly from Poles, is something akin to how some Irish people view Hollywood films about Irish-American families. Some of it is understandable (ever watch "Far and Away" without cringing?) but most times I think critics read too much into the context and not enough into the film itself.As an outsider, "Polish Wedding" comes across as a film about white working-class Americans. I can see parallels with some of my own relations - an American community that uses the glue of their shared ethnic origin to bind themselves together. In the film's case, that happens to be Polish and there is an authentic ring to the hothouse bonds of a large family with Catholicism always present in the background.However, despite its very American setting, "Polish Wedding" is far more European in structure and storyline, a record of ordinary events about ordinary people who don't have heroic aspirations and who adapt the best they can to whatever life throws up. In a way, it's almost like reality TV, a chance to peek into the lives of others without having any influence on the outcome.While not as intense as classics in that tradition like the "Three Colours" trilogy, it is an interesting take on a theme that has rarely been examined by Hollywood and has enough inter-personal emotion to compensate for the lack of complexity in the story.

I have watched this flick many times, received it for a Christmas gift and love and recommend it to the right crowd. this film deals with infidelity and how it affects all the family members, including Hala, who follows in her mothers's footsteps and her sister-inlaw, Sofie, who does the same. All became pregnant as a way of ensuring marriage. The family meals reflecting polish recipes were interesting. It has a happy ending as Lena Olin's character as well as Gabriel Byrne's character make up and seem to solve their marital problems, and Hala seems to catch the heart and marriage of Russell.I thought there was great meaning in this film of you look past the props to see the true meaning... love conquers all

It is quite obvious that whoever is responsible for this film knows absolutely nothing about the culture of Poland or the Catholic Church. Some of the scenes bordered on sacrilege. A priest man-handing a young woman during a May procession honoring the Virgin Mary....I mean get real !!! This movie is a complete fantasy and NOT a good one. Don't waste your time or money on this turkey.I have to say also that the process to even comment on this disaster of a film is so ridiculous that it is set up to actually NOT provide comment. Since the film in my opinion is anti-Catholic bigotry at it's worst I can understand why they would want to do that.

For a first film, this is not bad. Meanders a bit, and the matriarch is not believably presented compared to the depressed father who works night-shift as the neighborhood baker. Contains several charmed moments along the way. The core interest of this story is in its insistence on a kind of tough motherhood, an affirmation of life in the physical sense of pregnancy and everything that necessitates. A re-visioning of the religious Virgin is one of the more memorable scenes.As the title promises, this is a marriage plot, one of the most common of traditional plots. Here too the film presents a revision in terms of the woman's point of view. The old mystery for males: "What do women want?" was the infamous question asked by Freud and many others. One honest answer is given in Polish Wedding.