Sione's Wedding 

Oscar Kightley; Robbie Magasiva; Shimpal Lelisi and Iaheto Ah Hi play Albert; Michael; Sefa and Stanley, four thirty-something friends from the Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn.

Self-dubbed the Duckrockers (they used to breakdance), the foursome have a reputation for getting drunk and ruining any weddings they attend. So when Michael's younger brother Sione (Pua Magasiva) plans to get hitched, their Minister bans them from the proceedings.

Not prepared to accept this, they make a deal with the minister if they can all get nice, steady girlfriends before the ceremony, they are allowed to attend. This causes a degree of introspection in each of the Duckrockers as they set about getting their love-lives in order.

Sione's Wedding is an unabashedly mainstream and crowd-pleasing comedy set in Auckland's vibrant Samoan community, and all I can say is it's about bleedin' time.

In a country still struggling to define its identity, only just emerging out from under a long period of cultural cringe, it's nice to see untapped areas of potent local comedy come to the fore in film.

There's nothing quite like the Polynesian sense of humour, and Sione's Wedding is an efficient vessel for presenting it to the masses, surrounded by a sweet story peppered with light romance and familiar fear-of-adulthood themes.

As the success of Bro'Town and the live Naked Samoans shows so emphatically attested, Polynesian style comedy makes for reliable laughs, and while Sione's Wedding is pitched a little broader, it still speaks with a unique voice that could only come from Auckland, New Zealand, the city with the world's largest Polynesian population.

Auckland is presented lovingly at the beginning of the film with beautiful aerial dawn shots, and features extensive location shooting throughout Grey Lynn. The suburb's eponymous park makes for some particularly pleasing scenes.

While there is plenty to amuse a national audience, there are also some specific jokes for the locals, which is always nice.

The main cast all embody their roles effortlessly, and the numerous supporting roles are generally all essayed with skill and charm too. Maryjane McKibbin-Schwenke in particular makes an impression as the aptly named Princess.

Director Chris Graham brings a music video director's tendency towards stylistic flourishes to Sione's Wedding, occasionally distracting from the story, but the overall result of this is that it is an extremely nice looking film.

The script covers lots of ground admirably, but as a result no one character's story gets to truly resonate. But that's okay. It's primarily a comedy, and very much works as one. It may not be a particularly profound film, but it's an extremely funny and enjoyable one with universally relatable themes.

The film's sunny energy and endearing spirit also makes you forgive some of its more blatant product placement. If that's what it took to get the film funded, I'm cool with it.

There is an inevitable comparison to be made with Toa Fraser's No. 2 , another film set amongst Auckland's Pacific Island community released earlier this year. Sione's Wedding is a broad, mainstream comedy while Fraser's film tells a more personal, dramatic story. Both are equally valid. Most of all, the artistic success of both films demonstrates the untapped wealth of stories to be told in this country.
 
With a locally produced film, you usually find yourself asking the inevitable question does it succeed on a global standard? But that never really happened for me with Sione's Wedding - it's so intrinsically of its time and place, so inextricably linked to the Grey Lynn of now, and is all the better for it. I don't care what people overseas think of it.

That's not to say it would lack appeal to an international audience - funny is funny after all. But I just felt so enriched being able to embrace a local comedy flick without qualification - when was the last time that happened? Plus it paints our city as an appealingly multicultural metropolis with a multitude of unique stories to tell.

At the risk of sounding like I'm appropriating the films specific milieu as my own (although it is one extremely familiar to me), I emerged from the cinema never prouder to be an Aucklander.

Highly recommended.

Dominic Corry

Sione's Wedding opens nationwide on March 30th. Go see it. It's awesome.