Review of Margot at the Wedding (2007) by Bobe. — 25 Nov 2007

Aside from some fine acting, this film is a badly written mess. All the adult characters are raving neurotics without redeeming or attractive qualities. After ten minutes with any of these thoroughgoing whack-jobs we want to run screaming.

The one exception seems to be Margot's husband, played by John Tuturro, but after his small dollop of sanity and five minutes of screen time, he's gone for good. Even the neighbors are straight from Hell.

The weakest actor of the bunch is Jack Black, who, sad to say, is perfectly cast to play a pathetic, childish loser. But they're all pathetic losers in their own special way. As a Gilbert and Sullivan song says: "When everybody is somebody, then nobody is anybody.

" All these folks are so dysfunctional as to be hopeless. When we have no hope for them (or their poor children!) we lose interest rapidly. The film this should be compared to - one about another dysfunctional family, but one with complex, human characters - is Mike Leigh's brilliant "Secrets and Lies" Noah Baumbach should be sentenced to watch that film 4 o 5 times before he is allowed to waste such actors' - and our - time again.