Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Episode 5.5 - Rachel Getting Married Review 5/10

Rachel Getting Married - 2008

The original idea for this movie was that Jonathan Demme, who did the amazing Silence of the Lambs and somewhat awesome Manchurian Candidate, was going to make an insanely boring movie about a pointlessly complex wedding but while filming he stupidly brought his cranky, psychotic, overly needy teenage daughter on the set who bitched and moaned and complained that she wanted to be in the movie too. What resulted was the somewhat charming, but mostly non-sensical clusterfuck that is Rachel Getting Married.

Rachel Getting Married is a movie that revolves around…take a guess. That’s right. Kym.  Got ya, didn’t I? Kym (Anne Hathaway) is an addict getting out of rehab to attend her sister Rachel’s wedding which, to her, should be more important than the planning of that wedding. In and out of prison, drugs, and tack on the fact that she was so hopped up on Percoset one night that she drove her baby brother off a bridge and killed him, it’s amazing that she’s even allowed back in the house. But she is and while in the house she needs to be the center of attention; she tries to force herself into this wedding to make sure people notice and validate her as a tolerable person while taking on speaking roles, pushing her way into the Maid of Honor spot and just appearing out of nowhere like that creepy uncle that still thinks shouting “Boo” behind you is funny.

As far as a personality, Kym is a bit off. She’s that skank who spent her school days ditching class under the bleachers smoking weed and saying things like “Spelling Kym with an ‘I’ is too conformist.” She was probably that kid that knew all the names of all the cops on campus and was able to engage in intimate conversations about their families. She’s dark and honestly believes that a majority of her mischief is cool and humorous and hasn’t the conscience to tell her that certain topics shouldn’t really be discussed in front of family members that don’t know you yet. It’s the world she grew up in, it’s all she knows and when it comes to the happy occasion of two families being joined together by a lovely couple, she just doesn’t fit.

She has a sweet side to her too (not Rachel from the movie Rachel Getting Married, still talking about Kym here). Rehab was probably not an easy decision for her, but it is working. As the story progresses, you see glimpses of humanity shine through the dank alleys of memories Kym wants to forget. It’s touching when she stops being whiny…but sadly those occurrences are rare and happen during moments where it’s pretty much required to crack a smile.

Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt, who appears 11th on the cast list in IMDB, ha ha) is the bride, naturally. She, like the rest of the family has come to the unnerving realization that the only way Kym is going to move forward with her life is if they suck it up and give in to the hard conversations, the temper-tantrums, and the “I wanna do this and don’t wanna do that” demands. But at the same time…she has her wedding to get to and just can’t really deal with the rantings of a post-teen adolescent.

And that’s all the depth you get. Hope you enjoyed. From the paragraphs above, you have the makings of a really solid psychological drama that can analyze the impact of positive encouragement and the introduction to “a life that could be” to someone who lost hope at an early age.  Sadly, Rachel Getting Married is just too afraid to take that next step, taking Kym’s story and struggle to find out just where she stands and sticks insane amounts of filler footage in between key moments as if to say “here’s some useless background noise to give you time to let all that process,” even though there’s nowhere for the character to go. Demme spends the whole movie developing an interesting person in Kym, and then forgets that the movie’s supposed to be over in five minutes and ignores all the investment that was put into her. I just sat there wondering “what the hell did she learn from this? Where’s the growth at all? What was the point here? …And why the hell did I just waste 15 minutes watching people dance around with no dialogue. I thought this was the climax of the film!”

I haven’t even talked about the groom or his family, even though they take up a good 40 minutes of time on screen (honestly), mostly playing music and telling anecdotes and try to convince you that the entire setting this story takes place on matters and yes, this film is about a wedding too. The only reason that I can think of that this takes place during a wedding is because wedding planning is a naturally stressful environment, thus easy to build a drama around.

I haven’t mentioned the actual things that Kym does throughout this story, because they really don’t matter. Her conversations, her tantrums, her breakdowns almost don’t feel like they were written into the script. It doesn’t mesh well into the movie and you quickly realize that you have two lackluster plots that use their natural drama to try to enhance each other and it fails miserably…but while you ponder it, literally, 40 minutes of filler. I was bored. I got cleaning done. I guess I can thank this movie for that.

Apparently I’m supposed to watch this movie again to understand it, kind of like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within or Magnolia. But ya know, that really doesn’t help the case here. This was just a drab, boring, pointless movie, filmed like a home movie, written like an intern stole the script and made it “relate to him more.” It just didn’t work.

I’ve tried to think about this differently. I slept on it, jotted down notes but I’m sorry. 5 dustbusters out of 10. Let’s just not try again, shall we?

2 comments:

  1. Besides being depressing and all over the place writing and direction-wise, I was also really disappointed with Anne Hathaway. I thought that she wasn't just wasted, she was completely miscast. There's an Oscar in her somewhere, but I don't quite understand the nom for RGM. Let's hope she does better in black leather. :)

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  2. Yeah, really I've only actually like Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada. She doesn't suck at what she does, it's just hard to think of a character that really fits her well...wholeheartedly agree there. There's an Oscar somewhere.

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