[The burden of A Wedding, Altman's] very black and very funny new movie is to make us laugh at our romantic, sentimental, pretentious absurdity. We are, in the Altman canon, certainly the oddest creatures on the face of the earth, and he looks at us with astonishment, as if surprised to discover that an animal so ill-equipped for living has managed to get by for so long. One of our chief drawbacks is the yawning abyss between what we think of ourselves and what we are, and it is into this abyss, with ungentlemanly relish, that Altman jumps with all his troops….

Altman believes in pushing his observations on film as close to lifelike experiences as the medium will stand without boring us to tears. So he fills the screen with action and character, floods us with information, breaks up our perception of it into forgettable gobbets, buries...