A Simple Tool

Wes Anderson movies make me want to kick a puppy.

The whole #50 movies thing is sorta stalling out, as I’m sure the fact that I’ve watched 100+ movies since I started am only at review 41.  Oh well, onto Rachel Getting Married:

I’m not going to go over all the reasons why this is a good movie.  For that, read any other review, it’s well made and has good acting..blah….blah.  In the interest of being unique, I’m just going to talk about what I didn’t like and why I wouldn’t recommend this movie.  The film is shot in a very naturalistic style kinda grainy, handheld cameras, this weird thing with diegetic vs. non-diegetic music.  On top of this, the characters are (sorta, just wait) written very realistically, particularly the immediate family of Anne Hathaway’s character, Kim (this is sort of a problem in its own self, more later).  So, obviously Jonathan Demme is going for a very realistic film.  Then he chooses to place alongside this realistic set-up the second most unrealistic family interactions recent film.  (Of course, the most unrealistic family being the ludicrously annoying family in Dan in Real Life, whose “family fun” antics made me want to die.  Well, actually they made me want to make something else die, but anyway.)  Aside from the fact that the titular wedding is essentially the multi-cultural dream wedding straight out of some hippy dippy liberal white-guilt fantasy (this is pretty grievously bad by the way), the whole interaction between the families is so ridiculous “ooh lets have a dishwasher loading contest!”  What the fuck?   The toasts and various speeches given throughout (especially by the husband (whose name I forget but who sported these weird 1980s African dictator shades)’s family) are equally as ridiculous.  Why would you set up all this hard hitting realism and then engage in this nonsense?  I have no idea, but it certainly yanked me right out of the film.

Thing I didn’t like number 2:  The characters in this movie were pretty damn unlikable.  This most likely stems from them being written very realistically.  Odd complaint, eh?  Here’s the problem, realistic people aren’t usually that likable, or that compelling.  This is especially bad when the characters, like those in the movie, have undergone a bunch of really heavy shiz-nit in the past.  Basically, I wasn’t rooting for anything to happen to them.  I just wanted them to go away so the movie could either a.) move onto something interesting or b.) end.  Eventually choice b. happened.

As I said in the beginning, I don’t really recommend this movie.  However, it’s undoubtedly well made, acted, whatever, I just didn’t enjoy it.  You might.  Anyway, make of that what you may.