LiC: Samoan Wedding

I also rented "Samoan Wedding" on Netflix. I was pleasantly surprised as to how much I enjoyed and was intrigued by this movie. It was both humorous and sad.

Samoan Wedding is about 4 friends: Michael, Albert, Seva, and Stanley - who, because of their immature behaviors always seem to be making a mess out of everyone's wedding. Their community priest bans them from any future weddings, including Michael's little brother-Sione's wedding. In an attempt to be at Sione's wedding, they come up with the idea that if they bring dates, they'll behave better. The priest agrees, but only if they can find a respectable date of whom they can commit with to bring to the wedding. Because of their boyish antics, the boys have a hard time finding someone who will agree to go with them.

One of the things I noticed was that Samoan was very limited in this movie. You would hear random Samoan words thrown out there, but then an English translation would follow suit. It didn't seem natural. It wasn't only until the end when they were at the wedding was Samoan spoken in the context of truly conveying Samoan culture. Another hard thing to miss was their New Zealand accent. With the accent it was really hard to tell if they spoke pidgin or differently from the white people unless you have them speaking right after the other (like in the conversations with Michael and his white girlfriends). There is a difference, very subtle. When the Samoans speak English, it is kind of slurred and harder to understand with the accent. The whites enunciated their words more so it was easier to understand pass the accent. I caught one sland word that was interesting: honkie - for "whites". It reminded me of "haole". I also noticed that they used "auntie" to refer to their friend's mothers like we do in Hawaii.

One more language observation I made was that they always mentioned that people shouldn't be speaking a language if they aren't of its origin. Albert always commented that Derek tried to speak Samoan when he was from Grenfield. When Derek first came into the picture, he tried to be "Samoan" but Albert stopped him by telling him "start speaking your own language". Before the fight broke out in the parking lot, Derek said something in Samoan and Albert asked him why he said it when he wasn't Samoan. Another example was when the boys were in the car after Albert found out about Michael and Princess, Albert said something in Maori. And Michael's response was "Why you speaking Maori?"

Samoan Wedding is a really good movie. I would recommend this if you wanted to learn more about Samoan culture. Although it's not submerged in Samoan language, you pick up on its traditions, ways of living, values, and life.