The People We Hate at the Wedding follows Alice and Paul who are placed amidst the many problems of their dysfunctional family when they attend the wedding ceremony of their half-sibling Eloise.
The People We Hate at the Wedding is adapted from Grant Ginder’s book of the same title. The screen adaptation is directed by Claire Scanlon and stars Kristen Bell, Ben Platt, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and Allison Janney.
The People We Hate at the Wedding Story Summary
Donna (Allison Janney) is a kind-hearted, fun-loving woman who moved to England in the early 80s and fell in love with Henrique, a handsome Frenchman. They had a daughter who they named Eloise (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). All was well until Henrique decided to have an extramarital affair with their babysitter.
Heartbroken, Donna returned back to her hometown and met another guy called Bill who turned out to be her long-term partner in the future. They decided to get married and had two kids of their own, Alice (Kristen Bell) and Paul (Ben Platt). Eloise, Donna’s firstborn, was never made to feel like a half-sister to Alice and Paul. The siblings shared a loving relationship as children.
Eloise used to visit them for half the year to enjoy life in Indianapolis. But as they grew up, they grew apart. The walls being created amongst them, painted their warm loving relationship out of the picture. Eloise, after inheriting her papa’s wealth, chooses to settle in the heart of England.
Alice and Paul lead their own life back in America. Alice is working as an assistant in an
architecture firm, and Paul is a therapist to Mysophobia patients. One morning coming to work, Alice receives an invitation. It’s an invitation to Eloise’s wedding in England.
Reading the invitation, Alice feels as if Eloise is showing off her money with the expensive card yet again and immediately calls up Paul to rant. Both of them discuss whether they’d be going to the wedding. Alice wants to be there considering Eloise asked her to be her maid of honor way back when they were 17. But Paul is absolutely sure he doesn’t want to go.
Donna, on the other hand, has been relentlessly trying to call and get in touch with Paul. Paul is cold-shouldering his mother, rejecting her calls and screening her texts. Donna desperately wants both Alice and Paul to go to Eloise’s wedding and thinks it can be a good way for them to reconnect.
Alice, who’s is having an affair with a married guy called Jonathan, the CEO of the firm she works in. While at lunch with Jonathan, she tells him about Eloise and her wedding. She believes that Eloise has never been there for her or the family. She’s drowned in the wealth her papa left for her and wasn’t there when Alice had a miscarriage which resulted in her parting ways with her then-partner.
She tells Jonathan that she’d still be going to the wedding and Jonathan slyly insinuates that they can both go to the wedding. Paul too seems to be struggling with his relationships; his partner Dominic (Karan Soni) constantly instigates Paul to have an open relationship and seems to be more interested in other men than Paul himself.
Alice starts preparing to take a flight to London. Paul, due to misconduct at work, is given unpaid leave for a month which unwillingly makes him decide to go to London as well.
Upon hearing the news of Alice and Paul’s decision to go to London, Donna becomes ecstatic. Finally, the three of them set off to London. Alice’s partner Jonathan ditches Alice at the last moment and tells her that he’d not be making it to the flight. While on the flight, Alice meets a guy called Dennis Bottoms (Dustin Milligan) and hits it off quite well with him.
Meanwhile, Dominic manipulatively informs Paul that he had canceled their hotel bookings and they’ll be staying with his “dear” friend Alcott Cotswold, who’s a wealthy businessman. Paul is visibly uncomfortable with this decision.
While both Paul and Alice are making their way to London, Donna who has already arrived finds herself reminiscing about her early love with Henrique. Thinking he is a changed person, Donna reckons she can give him another chance. Both of them start kindling their old feelings back. Meanwhile, Paul and Alice also arrive.
Eloise, ecstatic about meeting her siblings after a long, plans a dinner at an expensive restaurant to allow everyone an opportunity to meet once before the wedding day. Donna, Henrique, Alice, and Paul are hosted by Eloise for the night. However, she is taken aback by seeing Donna and her father getting intimate on the taxi ride to the restaurant but tries to keep her cool.
The entire family meets for dinner for the first time after many years. The dinner soon turns into a fiasco of sarcastic comments and emotional gaslighting and much about the family history is revealed. The three siblings find it seemingly impossible to move past all their differences.
Alice is still holding on to some grudges of the past and expects an apology from Eloise. Paul, on the other hand, can’t seem to forgive Donna. He despises her for throwing away all of his father’s stuff without asking him or Alice and also thinks she is ashamed of him being gay. Paul’s situation with his self-centered partner Dominic also looks grim.
Paul and Dominic both fight after having a drunken night with Alcott. Alice too is unfolding more in front of Dennis; they both seem to have good chemistry and Dennis asks if he could join Alice for the wedding. It was at this moment that Alice gets a text from Jonathan that he’ll be arriving soon in London. On seeing the message, Dennis gets mad and leaves.
The People We Hate at the Wedding Ending Explained
The siblings and Donna are all at Eloise and Olli’s wedding rehearsal party. Eloise is mad at Paul for being a mess at her party and they start digging up past skeletons again as they fight. She breaks it to Paul that his father Bill was actually the one who was disgusted at the fact that her son was gay. Donna warned him not to break Paul’s heart and as soon as he died, threw away all of his stuff leaving Paul overwhelmed with disbelief.
The dinner commences and Alice is eagerly waiting for Jonathan to join her. But hell breaks loose when Alice sees Jonathan’s wife Marissa entering the party and realizes that it was her and not Jonathan who texted her all along about coming to London. Seeing Alice flee, Merissa shouts and in a fit of rage, challenges Alice into a fistfight. The whole party turns into havoc.
Paul starts hitting Henrique after watching him get intimate with another 25-year-old girl. Donna gets in between Alice and Marissa’s fight. Paul, Alice, and Donna find themselves in jail the next day, leaving Eloise’s wedding ceremony all shattered. In the jail, the three sort out differences between them, and Paul apologizes to his mother.
Donna has no grudges to hold against any one of them and forgives them in a wee. They are later informed through a letter by Eloise that she doesn’t want them at the ceremony anymore as she has relentlessly tried to mend differences between them but it never seems to solve anything.
Did Eloise, Paul And Alice Make Amends?
Alice seeks help from Dennis to get them out of jail. On the ride back home, she apologizes to Dennis for breaking his heart and thanks him for getting them out. They both leave sorrowfully. Donna immediately ends things with Henrique and makes him realize how empty a man he actually is.
Eloise’s fiance Ollie (John MacMillan) tries to calm Eloise down before the ceremony. He tells her that they’ll have their own happy family one day. Eloise seems to be hiding something and suppresses it under the rain of tears rolling down. After Ollie leaves, Eloise Panics and flees the ceremony.
As Donna, Alice and Paul are preparing to fly back home as Eloise didn’t want them to be at the ceremony anymore, Ollie desperately seeks them out and tells them that Eloise is missing from the ceremony. After searching, they find Eloise at a Taco Bell, having a panic-stricken meal. Alice decides to talk to her alone and on seeing Alice, Eloise immediately apologizes for not being there for her when she needed.
But she also narrates her side of the story. She told Alice that she can’t have any children which was the reason she couldn’t come. She’s also afraid that Ollie would leave her once if he comes to know about this fact.
Eventually, Eloise does end up revealing the secret to Ollie, but Ollie, being a good man, understands and all goes well. Alice, Paul, and Eloise are, for the first time in many years, truly happy being together.
Donna blesses them as she can’t contain her own happiness. The siblings seem to have found the bond they lost long back. They all hug each other and Paul and Alice walk Eloise down the aisle. In a beautiful lush green garden, Eloise and Ollie marry each other.
The universe seemed to have everything planned out, as Dennis once again finds Alice on the flight back home and this time, Alice chooses not to let go of him easily.
A few years pass by and at a family gathering, everyone is preparing for a picture for the holidays.
Eloise and Ollie have been blessed with a child who they adopted. Alice and Dennis continue to be together. Donna has stopped holding on to the past and has moved on. Donna’s happiness has only grown through the years as she witnesses her family staying happily together through thick and thin.
In the end, it can be said that Eloise’s wedding really turned the fate of the relationships the family members shared with each other.
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