Review of Rachel Getting Married (2008) by Hannah M — 05 Jan 2012

Here's my main problem with Rachel Getting Married -- it just tries too hard. We are presented with a dysfunctional family on the eve of a wedding. It's chaos, emotions are running wild and to top it off, Kym (Anne Hathaway) has returned home from rehab with her guns loaded, ready to take the family down with her. I remember the trailer for this movie made the claim, "This is not your family. But this is your family." (Or something like that.) Actually, this is not my family at all. Not one character in this film I felt I could relate to. The performances are great, nonetheless, and the movie itself looks lovely. But what story there is is skimmed over with long, drawn-out scenes of before and after wedding speeches and a contest to load a dishwasher that comes out of absolutely nowhere. This family seems too over-excited about everything and a lot of the real heart of the movie is just pushed aside to make way for more scenes that shout "look how ridiculously much stress this wedding is causing!" Even the wedding itself seems as confused as the rest of the movie does. Over the course of a half hour, the wedding goes from what seems to be an Indian/African theme to Chinese to...Polish, maybe? With some Christian and Jewish sentiments expressed throughout.

I guess the point is that I just didn't connect with Rachel Getting Married, which sucks because I've been wanting to see it for a long time.

P.S. - After re-reading this review I realize how mean it sounds. That was totally unintentional, I still had a good time watching it and am glad I got to see it. But I did just wake up and haven't really written a review in a long time and...meh.