Rachel Getting Married (2008)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Anne Hathaway has come a long way from her "Princes Diaries" days. Here she gives a gutsy performance as Kym, a recovering drug addict about to face her past as she returns home to her sister's wedding.All the actors do much for a film that is otherwise a bit directionless. The movie is at its best during a few really strong shows of character interaction backed by plausible dialog. As a whole I'd say "Rachel Getting Married" is a pleasant but slightly underwhelming experience.

I don't write reviews often but I feel compelled to write one for this movie because I loved it and I hated it. I loved how much thought had been put into each of the characters. There was a depth to each one of them and many of them were mysterious, causing you to feel like you wanted to know so much more about them. This of course is partly down to the acting. What a great cast! Anne Hathaway is brilliant in the role of Kym, probably the most convincing I have seen her. Some reviews I've read have said that she plays a very unlikable character but I disagree. If you follow the film you actually understand a lot about why she is the way she is and I felt a lot of empathy for her. Debra Winger is fantastic as the distant mother, it makes you want to kick her! The guy who plays Kieran also did a great job as a very likable character. I wish we could see more movies where the characters are this real and fascinating. Despite all of this I just couldn't get over the things that let this movie down. First of all the music throughout the movie was annoying most of the time, mainly because of the shrill violin. Perhaps this was done on purpose, if that's the case it certainly works but it makes the movie harder to watch. Also some of the scenes are unnecessarily drawn out. I would have much preferred finding out more about the characters instead. I also found the ending unsatisfactory. Over all, I don't regret having watched this movie. If you like movies that look at the rawness of relationships with in-depth character study you will enjoy it but, you may not love it.

Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married" stars Anne Hathaway as Kym, a young woman who has been recently released from a drug rehabilitation centre. Kym was at the wheel during an accident in which her brother Ethan died. Kym's mother blames Kym for Ethan's death, as does Kym's sister, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt). Guilt-ridden, and in the throes of a severe persecution complex, Kym clashes with her family members, particularly her sister, who blames Kym for "hogging all the attention" in the aftermath of Ethan's death. By the film's end, mother, father and siblings learn to forgive, forget and move past traumas. Cue hugs.Reminiscent of "Ordinary People", "Girl Interrupted", "A Woman Under the Influence" and "Margot at the Wedding", "Rachel Getting Married" also finds Demme attempting an aesthetic evocative of Robert Altman and John Cassavetes. The film has been praised for its "edginess" and "realism", but too often assaults us with contrivances, clichés and overcooked moments in which Hollywood actors contort their faces and strain desperately to convey DEEP EMOTIONS. The film's pretence at being "naturalistic" rubs awkwardly against what is super-charged melodrama. When a daughter punches her mother in the face and crashes a Mercedes into a tree, it's hard not to giggle. Throw in surprise pregnancies, alcoholism, sibling hatred, divorce, anorexia, sexual molestation, two car crashes and dead kids, and you have a movie that plays like a tabloid talk-show. Influenced by Hal Ashby's "The Landlord" (Demme adores Ashby), "Rachel Getting Married" attempts to sketch a portrait of a multi-cultural, post-racial America. And so the film is packed to the brim with whites partying alongside African Americans, Asians, and Indians. Bizarrely, though not surprisingly (America is in no meaningful way post-racial), none of these black characters are given significant roles or input into the film's central drama. African Amerians remain at the level of good-natured, smiling ciphers, Demme portraying them with the same benign attitude (singers, dancers, Bible-junkies etc) common in minstrel shows. "Multiculturalism" is still coded as wallpaper for white, upper-middle-class, suburbanite issues.Demme, incidentally, has throughout his career made an effort to exhibit a certain "sensitivity". He made two documentaries on Haiti, one about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, dealt with African American slaves in "Beloved" and sketched a character in "Philadelphia" whose parents were "totally fine with his homosexuality". In "Rachel", Demme packs his film with whites wearing saris, musicians playing sitars, wedding cakes shaped like Indian elephants, Orthodox Christian icons, Jamaican reggae singers, jazz musicians, belly dancers and people yelling "L'chaim!" whilst making toasts. For Demme, race is "no big deal", and he's right, but the film nevertheless has a certain engineered feel. You're always aware of the forced political correctness, a saintly stance which clashes awkwardly with the film's cold shouldering of Rachel's fiancé (Tunde Adebimpe) and his family."Rachel Getting Married" was written by Jenny Lumet, daughter of Sidney Lumet. It contains several "musical interludes" (and references to Neil Young), some of which recall Demme's many concert films. Like watching the fatal crash of a clown car, it's both riveting and ridiculous.7/10 – Worth one viewing.

Rachel Getting Married is supposed to be a story about a girl's challenge in dealing with the fact her family is moving on with their individual lives while she has to deal with sobriety after getting out of rehab. This happens just as her sister Rachel is getting married. Hence the title. This may have been an acting tour De force for a young Anne Hathaway but unfortunately it was with a poorly cooked script that has zero character development and does nothing to make us like the characters in it. Screen writing 101 tells that you must have the characters do or show something that makes us like them so we can get behind them and cheer for them as they grow throughout the story. If you miss this very important step, you have an audience that is disconnected and does not care about the characters. If the audience does not care, why are you making the movie?Jonathan Demme obviously had a ton of favours to repay when he cast this nag as each scene is filled to overflowing with actors, and non-actors who are delivering lines that do nothing to move the story forward. The Wedding Rehearsal Dinner scene is painful to endure as actor after actor gets up to deliver another inane monologue that is useless. Demme repaid everyone of these non-actors with a part in this film to the detriment of the movie and at the expense of the audience. He also let the scenes run waaaaaaay too long and seemed to not know when to get out of each one. This is a huge mistake and something you expect from much less experienced directors.