Cut the Cake Already...

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a big fan of Anne Hathaway. I enjoyed the Princess Diaries, thought she was great in The Devil Wears Prada, and I even didn't throw a fit when she was chosen to portray my beloved Jane Austen in Becoming Jane. That said, I know that she is talented enough to be nominated for an Academy Award for playing a recovering drug addict in Rachel Getting Married. I just wish I wasn't invited to the wedding.

It's not that this wedding doesn't feel authentic. It does. Perhaps that is the problem. It does feel like you are taking part in a weekend of premarital preparation before watching two become one. Between the overextended wedding toasts to the excruciatingly long rehearsal dinner, you are there to partake in it all, whether you want to be or not. And I, for one, felt more like a prisoner than a guest.

There's not a bad performance in the bunch; this is truly a character study at it's heart. Hathaway plays Kym, sister of Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), who has been given a weekend pass from the rehabilitation center she has been attending for the past nine months, to see her big sister get married. Kym is obviously dealing with some tough issues, unable to forgive herself for things she has done in the past while high. This makes you feel slightly sympathetic towards her, though she tries her darnedest to make you hate her. Meanwhile, poor long-suffering Rachel just wants her wedding to be about her for once, instead of everything being about Kym. After spending half an hour with her family, it is no surprise that she is working on a PhD in psychology.

Director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) tries to bring so much authenticity to Jenny Lumet's screenplay, that a good portion of the movie is filmed with hand held cameras. It gives the feel of a home video of the celebrations, true to authentic form, but mostly downright boring. The film is just shy of two hours, but feels longer, due to the unnecessary and strangely placed scene between Rachel's father (Bill Irwin) and her fiancee (Tunde Adebimpe) trying to see who can load a dishwasher the best,and the music video length portrayals of the wedding musicians. Unlike a real wedding, where you can quietly escape once the cake is cut and the couple have their first dance, Rachel's wedding just went on and on and... well, you get the picture.

The best thing to come out of this film is that it finally emerged Hathaway into the world of adult roles. While I highly doubt she will be chosen for the Academy Award, she should feel right at home at the ceremony; not only because she is that level of an actress, but because the program tends to continue on long after the enthusiasm for it has worn off.