Movie review: Rachel Getting Married

Rachel Getting Married is the latest movie from director Jonathan Demme who you might know from films like Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. It stars Anne Hathaway in a role that has gotten her a Best Actress nomination. She plays the character of Kym who gets out of rehab to go to her sister Rachel’s wedding.

Of course what movie about a wedding wouldn’t be complete without the dysfunctional family? It doesn’t really help that Kym herself is a bit dysfunctional already. So this leads to a lot of interesting situations. Like one where Kym gives a toast at the rehearsal dinner and doles out some brute honesty.

She kind of does have a reason why her family doesn’t exactly care for her. Something happened in her past that her sister and her parents still resent her for. It becomes one of the main focal points of the fights in the movie.

The movie is well written and the acting all around is pretty good. The stand out, of course, is Anne Hathaway. She does a really good job of playing this character that is just trying to spend some time with her family and hopefully make it up to them for what she did in the past when she was self-medicating herself. I would say that she definitely deserves her Oscar nomination even though I don’t think she has much of a chance of winning.

One interesting thing about this movie is it was filmed almost entirely with handheld cameras. So you get some real interesting camera angles and you get this sense like you are someone just observing what is going on with everybody at the wedding. I think it was a good choice by Demme to use this because it really helps to draw you into the scenes and make you feel like you are a part of them.

This was a good movie even though the pacing was a bit slow. It is just shy of 2 hours long and I think they probably could have trimmed it down a little without losing too much. I think there were a lot of scenes that you could call filler and fluff like watching the people in the wedding band play. Now one of the guitarists is Demme’s son so of course he will get some screen time. But had they cut out a few scenes here and there the movie probably would have flowed a bit better and would have drug on at times.

I still say this is a good movie and it’s worth watching. If anything watch it to see Hathaway’s performance which is the best one she’s given since Brokeback Mountain.

My score: 7.5/10