Kym (Anne Hathaway) gets out of rehab to attend her sister Rachel’s (Rosemarie Dewitt) wedding. In the hubbub of the two family’s meeting each other and much pre-wedding preparation, the particular dysfunctions of the women’s family history are pushed to the surface causing tons of drama before the big day. Dealing with issues of addiction, loss and jealousy, the movie is one long therapy session against the joyful backdrop of a wedding.
Watching Rachel Getting Married is like being dragged to a wedding where you know no one and have a hunch that underlying family tensions are about to explode in an awkward, histrionic scene at any second. Kym, Rachel and their parents are defined by their issues. These characters are, in fact, nothing beyond the emotional baggage they lay on each other throughout this indulgent, overblown weeper of a film.
Anne Hathaway’s Performance
Hathaway’s Oscar nominated performance is amateurish and generally annoying. It's like she's trying way too hard to shed her Princess Diaries persona and, as a result, her performance comes off like she's in a grade eight play. It’s hard to feel sorry for such a pathetic character with no redeeming qualities, even after you find out the big family secret that continues to drive her addiction and her self-pity. That her performance in this film has been so praised is confounding given its one-note, consistently over-the-top quality.
Director Jonathan Demme
The shaky handheld camera, meant to convey a sense of being intimately involved in the story, gets old after the first five minutes of the movie. One gets the impression that Demme simply got a large group of his friends together, gave them a rough storyline and told them to “act natural.” The result is like multiculturalism on speed, with an interracial couple getting married (African American and Caucasian), Indian dress and décor for the wedding, tons of ethnic food being eaten, belly dancers dressed like showgirls at the reception and a troupe of multi-racial, wandering musicians whose random playing scores the movie that, by the end, even begin to annoy the other characters in the film.
Dysfunctional Family
Rachel Getting Married a dizzying portrait of a family completely revolving around one immature, paranoid and self-obsessed character that can’t accept responsibility for any of her mistakes and instead repeatedly emotionally vomits on her family members, arriving at no conclusion or resolution. Viewers with similarly dysfunctional families will find it tedious, especially since the film leaves the audience with a distinct lack of hope when the credits finally roll.
