There are two love stories here, and also a view of the Melbourne's Muslim community from the inside looking out. The first and most obvious love is that of Ali (Osamah Sami) for his neighbour and fellow Muslim, Diane (played beautifully by Helena Sawires). One of the problems for Ali is that Diane is apparently the wrong kind of Muslim - of Lebanese decent and Australian born while Ali's family are more recent refugees from Iraq. Another difficulty is that she has flown through the entry exams to study medicine at the local university while Ali has only pretended to pass to try and live up to his family's expectations. Just to make the path of true love yet more bumpy, Ali also walks - more or less by accident - into an arranged engagement with a girl he doesn't know at all. (And this whole story is apparently true.)

The second, and more nuanced love is Ali's deep affection for his father - a cleric who struggles constantly to bring a human, humoured and caring interpretation to his religion. And it is living with an all encompassing religion in a secular country that it the source of much of the film's humour - and its challenge. For non Muslims, this doesn't always work - we (or at least I) just don't know enough about the culture and customs involved. And we aren't familiar with a rule system this strict.

It is an education, though, and a touching story. 7/10.

Even though I hate every single religion on earth I have to admit I enjoyed Ali's Wedding. It's a good entertaining story and the acting wasn't bad either. I don't know everything about the Muslim culture but I saw enough things that I was aware of and those things were the things that made me laugh. As a convinced atheist it's fun to watch religious people. I studied a lot of religions just to see what drives those people to be oppressed like that for their entire life. It looks like they are stuck in the middle ages with their crazy superstitions, rituals and beliefs. I'm not attacking Islam if you were wondering, to me every other religion is as stupid as Islam but everyone is entitled to its opinion and as long as nobody hurts anyone else and/or don't impose their religion to others I'm fine with it. I thought it was funny to see how stupid they are but I wonder if a Muslim will see the same humor as me. I guess to them this looks all normal but as an outsider you can't help it to feel smarter than them when you see their ridiculous ritiuals and beliefs. Arranged marriages, it looks like something from another century but it's still practised worldwide. Women are just objects in Islam, inferior to men, and in Ali's Wedding they're not shy to show that. Overal I thought Ali's Wedding was a good representation of the Islamic traditions. The fact that Ali wants to break partially with those dumb laws was the positive note of this movie and made it worth watching. There's still hope in this world, hope one day all religions will be obsolete.

I really enjoyed this movie. Osama Sami, who plays the lead role, is also the author, not only of the movie, but of the actual lies that spun this tale - that's right, he's writing about his own life. The story is entertaining, heartfelt and laced with life-based humour. The cast gives us great performances and we are rooting for the would be lovers, the whole way. I give this film an 8 (very entertaining) out of 10. {Life Inspired RomCom}