Review: Rachel Getting Married
Anne Hathaway Shines in an Otherwise Dreadful Indie Drama
Apr 1, 2009
Rachel Getting Married is the first film to showcase Anne Hathaway’s skills as a leading actress. In the past, she has starred in plenty of silly Disney features, and in 2008 she shared the screen with Steve Carell in the poorly received adaptation of Get Smart.
But she hasn’t had a chance to deliver that true breakout performance until now, a decade into her career. Unfortunately, Hathaway’s performance is about the only positive aspect of Rachel Getting Married.
Incredibly Slow Pace, Tedious Scenes Ruin Rachel Getting Married
From the start, the film moves at a pace normally associated with chess matches, which may send many viewers scrambling for the eject button on the DVD player so they can verify that they are not actually watching Searching for Bobby Fischer.
Anyone who has ever complained about the lengthy wedding footage in the first hour of The Deer Hunter need only watch about forty-five minutes of this indie disaster to discover a newfound appreciation for those scenes of Mike Vronsky and the gang dancing at the VFW.
Rachel Getting Married is the story of a woman named Kym (Hathaway) returning home from rehab just in time for her sister Rachel’s wedding – hence the title. This isn’t a movie about the title character at all, yet there must be half an hour or more of tedious, painfully boring footage of family and friends standing up to toast the new bride and groom within the first three quarters of an hour of the movie – and this is just the wedding rehearsal, not even the actual wedding.
Do not fret, though, as the wedding itself, in all its festivity, takes up a hefty percentage of runtime as well.
Completely useless scenes like these make this Sony Pictures Classics indie look like someone’s home videos, and as Tom Bergeron will attest, home videos are only fun to watch if someone gets hit in the groin or falls off a bicycle.
Rachel Getting Married Filled With Annoying, Unlikable Characters
The remainder of the movie is almost equally insufferable since the characters are all detestable and spend their time arguing and hating each other.
Rachel feels that Kym is stealing the attention away from her wedding and that Kym never really tried to change because she lies to everyone and you can only get better if you don’t lie – all the while Kym feels that Rachel doesn’t know what it’s like in rehab or what goes on in the mind of a former junkie.
And there’s some sad, sappy back story about how Kym killed their little brother in a car accident, but it has no emotional resonance whatsoever because by the time it’s mentioned, the viewer likely hates every single member of the family already and won’t devote any time to pitying them.
Hathaway was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance here, and she definitely does a fine job with what’s handed her. However, one quality performance does not a good movie make. One can equate the drudgery of watching this from start to finish to that of licking envelopes for a thousand wedding invitations.
Director Jonathan Demme (the man responsible for such cinematic gems as Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia) made a rare misstep with this drama. When the most tension in the movie comes from a Who-can-fill-the-dishwasher-the-fastest? competition, then maybe it’s time to go back to making films about straight-jacketed cannibals.
