You ever have a movie experience where you feel like you've checked out after about 30 minutes? That's what happened to me when we saw Rachel Getting Married. I just wasn't into it. Thankfully, that changed.
Rachel Getting Married is about, well, Rachel's marriage. Anne Hathaway stars not as Rachel, but her sister Kym, an ex-junkie coming out of rehab for her sister Rachel's marriage. Family difficulties ensue.
As I was saying earlier, I had written this movie off about a half-hour into it. I wasn't buying the family interactions. It seemed like everyone was trying too hard. I know that Kym was trying too hard to have normal relations with her family, but it came off as an actress knowing that her character needs to try too hard so she tries too hard to look like she's trying too hard, if that makes any sense. Anyway, there was that and a couple of unbelievable exchanges ("Didn't I see you on Cops?") that made me feel like this movie wasn't going to work. And so about a half hour in, I'm glancing around the theater, feeling bored, and we get to the rehearsal dinner scene. There are a bunch of toasts and then Kym gets up to speak. It started out as I expected, with forced references and rough dialogue, but as Kym kept speaking, talking about her time in rehab and the mistakes she had made, she started to suck me in. And then, as the movie kept going, I got even more sucked in. The more details the movie gave me, the better it became. I got to admit, there was a couple of times that my "allergies" nearly kicked in. The middle and last part of the film really drove it home for me, emotionally-wise. (By the way, Kinsey thought the total opposite about the beginning of the movie. She liked Rachel Getting Married all the way through.)
Let me finish this post with a little bit about Anne Hathaway. I've never been a big Hathaway fan. She was sufficient in the Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada. She ruined Becoming Jane while James McAvoy acted circles around her. She was the weak link in Brokeback Mountain. So I was pretty surprised when I heard all the Oscar hype around her performance in Rachel Getting Married. The preview certainly didn't convince me. But, after seeing the film, I think she deserves it. The scenes with her mother (played by Debra Winger) are especially good. And she is able to convey so much emotion with just a stare, which is something I definitely didn't expect from Anne Hathaway.
Wade: first half hour 1.5 stars, rest of the film 5 stars
Kinsey: 4 stars
