Exiting rehab, Stallone-eyed Anne Hathaway rips into her sister Rosemarie DeWitt’s wedding like a self-harming toofan. The co-star of Rachel Getting Married is tying the knot with Tunde Adebimpe, lead singer for experimental rock group TV on the Radio. He’s got the marigold garland, basso profondo and aviator specs of a Ugandan neta. He croons Neil Young at the altar. Theirs is an eclectic, musical wedding stuffed with Chinese lanterns, Afropop, blues, Carnaval dancers, and an oud-strumming band in every slice of score.

The groom wears a gold kurta, a two-tone brown and blue sherwani made of raw silk with golden juttis. The bride’s outfitted in a cream-colored sari with gold appliqués. Flower garlands smother the living room. The bridesmaids are decked out in lilac saris with a gold border, and an Asian-American guest wears a striped blue kurta. Everything looks ill-fitted and drab, even for a pastel palette, but hey, they’re trying. The wedding cake is a blue elephant with a mounted rani and raja and white piping made of icing. A pre-wedding roast serves sag-rhymes-with-tag paneer; a meal the next day, ‘aloo gabby.’ There’s Indian art on the walls, and ethnic clothes adorn mannequins lining the dining room. Adebimpe’s mom namastes at a compliment. At the reception, Hathaway sends away a boat-borne candle like one does in remembrance at the Ganga.

We spend half the movie staring at the back of Hathaway’s head and her crescent Indian earrings the size of small handbags. Those saris even get a shout-out in a tussle over who gets to be maid of honor. DeWitt tells her troubled sister, ‘I didn’t know if you’d be here in time for the fitting.’ Hathaway shoots back, ‘It’s a sari. It’s several yards of fabric which you wind around yourself.’ It’s not quite that easy, but, point. Two random, parentless desi munchkins complete the cultural homage.

Rachel’s is the kind of wedding you might really dig were it not for the harrowing addiction tale squatting troll-like at its core. This flick is about the kind of Serious Family Drama which involves dead relatives. Mom and daughter punch one other in the face. Hathaway steers a station wagon head-first into a boulder. A bridal roast reveals histories rarely talked about at weddings. This is exhausting, cringe-filled drama and not my idea of entertainment.

The movie is overlong with lots of wedding event filler shown virtually in real time. Parts of the flick feel like that mid-afternoon wasteland between a ceremony and reception. Director Jonathan Demme must be sleeping with the band, which get such share of screen and score, it’s almost a rockumentary. Demme’s unsteady hand-cams feel like a shortcut to drama, and there’s no arc of redemption here, only pugilists bloodying each other with sucker punches. Don’t be fooled by the titular wedding — this less amuse bouche than rubbernecking at an emotional train wreck. You walk out of the theater feeling like you’ve just witnessed your parents going at it with flowerpots and frying pans.

Katie Holmes’ indie dysfunction comedy Pieces of April tackled some of the same themes with a lighter touch. I did, however, learn more about how sisterhood is different from my brothers-only upbringing. Not only do birds share clothes, in times of crisis it’s permissible to shave one another’s armpits.

The trailer:

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