Anne Hathaway Movie:

		List Price: $19.94		Label: Sony Pictures Classics Salesrank: 3927 Released: March 10, 2009
		Our Price: $9.44
		Used Price: $1.97
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
When Kym (Anne Hathaway - Golden Globe Nominee, Best Actress, Motion Picture (Drama)), returns to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), she brings a long history of personal crises, family conflict and tragedy along with her. The wedding couple's abundant party of friends and relations have gathered for a joyful weekend of feasting, music and love, but Kym - with her biting one-liners and flair for bombshell drama - is a catalyst for long-simmering tensions in the family dynamic. Filled with the rich and eclectic characters that remain a hallmark of Jonathan Demme's films, Rachel Getting Married paints a heartfelt, perceptive and sometimes hilarious family portrait.

Description of Rachel Getting Married:
Pitched between Robert Altman's A Wedding and Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding--but more cautiously optimistic than both--Rachel Getting Married marks a change in course for director Jonathan Demme. Granted, few Oscar winners have walked a more diverse path. After a series of documentaries and remakes, the Silence of the Lambs helmer tries his hand at the intimate chamber drama. With the help of actress Anne Hathaway and screenwriter Jenny Lumet, daughter of filmmaker Sidney, he pulls it off. The festivities kick into high gear once Kym (Hathaway, with smeared eyeliner and unkempt hair) takes a break from rehab for her sister's big day. It soon transpires that Kym, who hides her wounded soul behind a veil of sarcasm, serves as the Buchman's resident black sheep. The problem goes deeper than drugs to a tragedy in which she played a part. As Kym, bride Rachel (Mad Men's Rosemary DeWitt), their parents (Bill Irwin and Debra Winger), groom Sidney (TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe), and the rest of the bohemian Connecticut brood struggle with the past, the nuptials continue, graced by performances from past Demme collaborators like Sister Carol East (Something Wild) and Robyn Hitchcock (Storefront Hitchcock). The hours between reception and after-party contain humor, affection, and painful revelations. In the press notes, Demme claims that he and cinematographer Declan Quinn (In America) attempted to make a film that looked like "The most beautiful home movie ever made." Using handheld cameras and believably flawed characters, they've done just that. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from Rachel Getting Married (Click for larger image)

Rachel Getting Married Reviews:
An Interesting Study in Communication within Broken Families.
2009-12-28 - Taken for what it is meant to be; an attempt to create a cohesive film that mimics a family's home video, it is fairly impressive, but when measured a an overall good film, it just falls flat.

Jonathan Demme's attempt to examine a family candidly, at times can be very one-dimensional and would have been one of the years worst movies were it not for Anne Hathaway's honest and raw performance as Kym the black sheep of the family who is out on leave from rehab for her sister's wedding. There is not a great deal amount of story in the film because of the film's aim at just portraying a family who is still hurting from a great tragedy; in terms of portraying the underlying pain of the family it does do very well.

The main character Kym is definitely the most compelling character in the film thanks to Hathaway's performance. The rest of the characters, at least to me, really come off as normal white upper middle class snobs, Kym's sister and title character Rachel is very vain and shallow and lacks the ability to truly understand Kym and she gets very angry at her father whom she feels baby's Kym too much. Kym is also quite self-centered although, in my book she is a little more justified as she is still in rehab learning to be a non-addict, she still lacks a lot of social graces and when she means well, it just really comes out as self-centered, though certainly not malicious as it often does with Rachel.

The most painful part of the movie had to be the excruciatingly long rehearsal dinner scene, it was had to be around 20 minutes of speeches and people talking, and none of it all that pivotal or important to the film except for Kym's speech to her sister (which punctuates Kym's lack of social graces).. There were a lot of bits like this scattered throughout the movie, but this was the only scene that was so long that it really felt like watching a bad home movie.

The main problem with the film is that its characters don't really grow much or change accept maybe Kym, but it seems this might also be part of the point of the film as again, it is more a study of human emotions and family dynamics, and in this way the movie is very intriguing and it really takes off when it focuses on those two things. When the film tries to take a broader focus it really bogs the film down and in a way a wedding wasn't really the best place to present these kinds of interactions or emotions though it certainly punctuates some of them, it was just more distracting than it was an asset to the films central content.

The film only works because of Hathaway's performance even though her character is essentially rude and selfish. It is very much worth looking at for that reason and for anyone interested in the studies of how humans interact or the study of listening and understanding within families, especially troubled familes.

One of the best in years
2009-12-27 - Just saw this and have no great insights to add to the positive reviews up front, but don't believe those who give it one or two stars. This is a strong piece of work, well filmed, really fine nuanced script, incredibly well acted and it feels like a real family. Now if you hate going home for Christmas because of the tension, maybe you need to get ready for the intense dynamic of this semi-functional family or maybe just watch the Waltons instead. Not a light comedy, not an action special effects bubble gum flick. Just a great movie

I wouldn't buy it
2009-12-26 - The movie was not bad, but it was not too either. It was pretty boring to watch. There was no interesting scenery or anything. The story plot was good, but it was not executed in any way that would keep most people's attention. Some scenes were interesting, but not enough to make the movie watchable.

One Irritating Family
2009-12-20 - Anne Hathaway plays Kym, the scapegoat daughter of a wealthy Connecticut family, who gets a pass from rehab to come home for her sister's wedding. Director Jonathan Demme captures perfectly the claustrophobic atmosphere that reigns in dysfunctional families. It's no wonder many of the reviewers here found the film hard to watch. It's hard to be around the dishonesty that lurks beneath the self-consciously elitist, multicultural members of this extended clan. Bill Irwin is excellent as the ineffectual dad who is the family enabler. Anna Deavere Smith is sadly underutilized as his well-meaning but bewildered second wife. And Debra Winger aces the role of the teflon mom whose inadequate parenting ends up demonizing Kym. As an earlier reviewer here pointed out, this film is also about wealth and privilege. The film presents the family's wealth as some kind of a norm; maybe for Demme and screenwriter Jenny Lumet, this IS their world, but it certainly doesn't represent the way most Americans live. The movie goes on too long and I fast forwarded over the interminable wedding reception. During the closing credits, we see the now-married sister Rachel, happily alone after Kym goes back to rehab. Could it be that now that the disruptive Kym is gone, she and her dad can go back to their blissful state of denial? Kym's left carrying all the family's problems.

Focus, people, focus
2009-12-15 - All of you who reviewed this from points of view like "I'm a recovering (fill in the blank)" or "dysfunctional families are like that" or any such "it's sooooo relative to my experience" are missing the point, in my opinion. I would hope that a review of a movie would be about reviewing the movie as a movie. That said, my two or ten cents worth follow.

1) Everyone who hated the hand-held camera work is correct. For this movie it was just an excuse to be lazy in never actually composing a shot. It doesn't help and it doesn't represent anyone's internal reality - good dialog would have done that or a better script.
2) Everyone who thought the "multi-culturalism" was bizarre, overblown and useless to the movie in terms of driving the story or providing context is correct. It was at the best silly and at the worst irrelevant which, for a movie, is deadly - there's only so much time and attention and wasting it is a very bad idea.
3) The idea that Kym wouldn't push past her father to confront her mother is not supportable - this is a woman who will confront her with the awful truth and slap her but won't force a conversation? C'mon now. Inconsistency in characters with no reason is not supportable either.
4) Everyone who thought there was insufficient development of any single part of the backstory is correct - the music mania is just one such element.
5) Everyone who thought the screenwriter can't write is also correct - just one of too many unresolved scenes should suffice. The one in which Rachel declares, "I'm pregnant", just tails off into nothing - the only good part about it from a movie/movie point of view is that it's consistent with everything else about this mess. EVERYTHING just tails off into nothing.
6) Everyone who thought the more than capable actors were wasted in this movie was correct.

Yes, I sat through every frame of this thing, wasting valuable HD time and it was profoundly disappointing.