Undescribable Perfection

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Film Review: "Rachel Getting Married" (2008)Director Jonathan Demme (1944-2017) gives into documentary-composed cinematography in this film about the character of Kym, portrayed in break-out fashion and chain-smoking on the plain actress Anne Hathaway, who gives in to every beat to be the black sheep in the herd of a family celebrating the older sister's wedding, title-given character of Rachel, performed by decent appearing actress Rosemarie DeWitt, which stays uneventful through a screenplay originally written by Jenny Lumet, who finds one major tension point for the audience, watching the character of Kym's distress in witnessing honor speeches in a tight stuffed of invited wedding guests before releasing her pressure through sex with a stranger, degrading her sister in public and crashing a car, which may keep the audience going up to 85 Minutes due to a demanding performance by Anne Hathaway, but not for the whole 100 minutes plus running time on this one, where the director of a motion picture classic as "The Silence Of The Lambs" (1991) and even the fairly suspenseful remake of "The Manchurian Candidate" (2004) can not hide the fact that "Rachel Getting Married" has turned out a disappointment in every cinematic sense of the way.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

There is nothing noble, empowering nor transcendent about watching the drama unfold of a female, American addict. There is nothing complex. If you think the self indulgent, self obsessed, sociopath behavior of a typical American woman who feels she didn't get hugged enough is worth watching a film about, here you go. Having met enough of these type of ladies and believe me, they're everywhere, there is no way I can stomach watching a film where actually one is starring in it. Although, because of their narcissism, this makes perfect sense for these characters. They believe that they are the star of the worlds narrative. People go on about Hathaway's performance. Are you kidding? This is an actress just simply being. Any actor will tell you this. Put this in the pile with 'gangsters,' 'coke dealers,' 'professors,' etc. This isn't a grand look at a tour de force role of anything new. Actors riff stuff like this as a warm up exercise in an acting class. Believe it.To those that this description fits. Know this: It must be great being a young woman in the western world nowadays: More education than young men, complete freedom to have sex whenever you want, huge pool of men to choose from, a whole culture watching after your psychological and physical well-being even if you do mistakes and make wrong life-choices. I would be a huge narcissist too, thinking my life is one big movie starring ME as the main role of this epic, beautiful, emotional and deep minded story, that is also wealthy and romantic. Until you wake up and realize you AGE. You will get older every day. And somewhere around 30 years old, you will realize that everybody ages, work and money and good looking tall men are not everything - and might even be a huge exception. Then you realize having children and having a stable loving family might just be the most important thing after all - because as you age, you will also see that a lot of your feminist "sisters" simply went the comfortable way in the end, just getting a normal man as a husband and father, suddenly don't wanna go out with you anymore, because they have to pay bills and care for their children. At this moment, since you realize that no one is paying attention to your putrid, wreck of a life - you have only two choices left: be nicer and shut up or be alone like a whole list of older, bitter women who have lied to you.

First, the positives of the film ... there was only one - Kim (Anne Hathaway). I found her completely adorable in every way, and I was totally able to relate to her troubles fitting in with the rest of the "normal" people. I wanted to just reach into the film and hug her and tell her that I understood her pain. Even though she stole some of the thunder from her sister's wedding, that is nothing compared to the pain she has been through in life, so she absolutely deserves to be forgiven and shown all the love there is. Her family disappoints her in every possible way, so I hate them all.The rest of it was pretty much all bad: Like others have said, I also felt like beheading the violinist. I would chop off his arms first, though, so that the violin stops producing noise.I was also annoyed by the amount of on screen time devoted to the other obnoxious idiots ... friends/extended family.The father character "Paul" needs male genitals. I agree that he is way too emotional and/or soft. How he babies his daughters is annoying.I agree that the movie tries WAY TOO HARD to seem multicultural, and this detracts from the main message being portrayed - Kim's troubled relationship with her family. Black and White marriage ? Check. Stereotypical Indian music, clothing, and food ? Check (I'm Indian, so I know about Indian culture). Completely mispronounced Indian words ? Check.Why couldn't they just show a conventional wedding and focus on the family dynamic a bit (no, a LOT) more.Too much time devoted to meaningless BS - 10 minutes on loading the dishwasher ??? Are you friggin kidding me ?In summary, this is a film worth watching if you can relate to Kim's story. If not, you will either be annoyed by Kim's character or just consider this movie a plain waste of time.

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.