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Sadly Over-hyped

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There is nothing noble, empowering nor transcendent about watching the drama unfold of a female, American addict. There is nothing complex. If you think the self indulgent, self obsessed, sociopath behavior of a typical American woman who feels she didn't get hugged enough is worth watching a film about, here you go. Having met enough of these type of ladies and believe me, they're everywhere, there is no way I can stomach watching a film where actually one is starring in it. Although, because of their narcissism, this makes perfect sense for these characters. They believe that they are the star of the worlds narrative. People go on about Hathaway's performance. Are you kidding? This is an actress just simply being. Any actor will tell you this. Put this in the pile with 'gangsters,' 'coke dealers,' 'professors,' etc. This isn't a grand look at a tour de force role of anything new. Actors riff stuff like this as a warm up exercise in an acting class. Believe it.To those that this description fits. Know this: It must be great being a young woman in the western world nowadays: More education than young men, complete freedom to have sex whenever you want, huge pool of men to choose from, a whole culture watching after your psychological and physical well-being even if you do mistakes and make wrong life-choices. I would be a huge narcissist too, thinking my life is one big movie starring ME as the main role of this epic, beautiful, emotional and deep minded story, that is also wealthy and romantic. Until you wake up and realize you AGE. You will get older every day. And somewhere around 30 years old, you will realize that everybody ages, work and money and good looking tall men are not everything - and might even be a huge exception. Then you realize having children and having a stable loving family might just be the most important thing after all - because as you age, you will also see that a lot of your feminist "sisters" simply went the comfortable way in the end, just getting a normal man as a husband and father, suddenly don't wanna go out with you anymore, because they have to pay bills and care for their children. At this moment, since you realize that no one is paying attention to your putrid, wreck of a life - you have only two choices left: be nicer and shut up or be alone like a whole list of older, bitter women who have lied to you.

Rachel Getting Married is supposed to be a story about a girl's challenge in dealing with the fact her family is moving on with their individual lives while she has to deal with sobriety after getting out of rehab. This happens just as her sister Rachel is getting married. Hence the title. This may have been an acting tour de force for a young Anne Hathaway but unfortunately it was with a poorly cooked script that has zero character development and does nothing to make us like the characters in it. Screen writing 101 tells that you must have the characters do or show something that makes us like them so we can get behind them and cheer for them as they grow throughout the story. If you miss this very important step, you have an audience that is disconnected and does not care about the characters. If the audience does not care, why are you making the movie?Jonathan Demme obviously had a ton of favors to repay when he cast this nag as each scene is filled to overflowing with actors, and non- actors who are delivering lines that do nothing to move the story forward. The Wedding Rehearsal Dinner scene is painful to endure as actor after actor gets up to deliver another inane monologue that is useless. Demme repaid everyone of these non-actors with a part in this film to the detriment of the movie and at the expense of the audience. He also let the scenes run waaaaaaay too long and seemed to not know when to get out of each one. This is a huge mistake and something you expect from much less experienced directors.

There are a few aspects that make this film tedious and almost painful to give your full & undivided attention to, but if you wish to behold a deep exploration of human emotional drama that is rarely witnessed on film, this one does deliver that and more. I agree with the aversion to the hand-held camera style, and the overly long scenes, and the saturation of unusual and unexciting musical accompaniment throughout, (actually portrayed as part of a scene when the actors themselves can't bear it any longer) and the perhaps overdone emphasis on cultural diversity and universal love as portrayed at the rehearsal dinner, for instance. But the core of the film is about nuclear family relationships, and the stress on members in the aftermath of an irresponsible accident that causes the loss of an innocent, all blamed on Rachel's sister, Kym, played by Anne Hathaway. She's a struggling newly reformed substance abuser/addict with a very heavy heart and a desperate need to be forgiven and to be loved by those whom she has hurt the most. Her current addiction is limited to cigs and self-obsessiveness, much to her detriment, and the challenges to sibling and parental love are taken to great lengths during this intense family drama, but with an underlying sense of survival that promises to emerge from the emotionally painful struggles.Not a "happy" movie per se, but one that is full of realism and leaves us with a sense that, in time, the lives of the protagonists will survive the strains on their respective hearts and minds. One aspect of this film I found most interesting is the apparent complete lack of cultural prejudices in all instances, and the total acceptance and loving nature of all those of various racial and cultural backgrounds that permeates the environment around the nuptials. In the midst of such a highly civilized group of such divergence, the focus is shifted to such a small subset of human relationships. It brings a kind of macroscopic focus to the center of the story.

Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married" stars Anne Hathaway as Kym, a young woman who has been recently released from a drug rehabilitation centre. Kym was at the wheel during an accident in which her brother Ethan died. Kym's mother blames Kym for Ethan's death, as does Kym's sister, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt). Guilt-ridden, and in the throes of a severe persecution complex, Kym clashes with her family members, particularly her sister, who blames Kym for "hogging all the attention" in the aftermath of Ethan's death. By the film's end, mother, father and siblings learn to forgive, forget and move past traumas. Cue hugs.Reminiscent of "Ordinary People", "Girl Interrupted", "A Woman Under the Influence" and "Margot at the Wedding", "Rachel Getting Married" also finds Demme attempting an aesthetic evocative of Robert Altman and John Cassavetes. The film has been praised for its "edginess" and "realism", but too often assaults us with contrivances, clichés and overcooked moments in which Hollywood actors contort their faces and strain desperately to convey DEEP EMOTIONS. The film's pretence at being "naturalistic" rubs awkwardly against what is super-charged melodrama. When a daughter punches her mother in the face and crashes a Mercedes into a tree, it's hard not to giggle. Throw in surprise pregnancies, alcoholism, sibling hatred, divorce, anorexia, sexual molestation, two car crashes and dead kids, and you have a movie that plays like a tabloid talk-show. Influenced by Hal Ashby's "The Landlord" (Demme adores Ashby), "Rachel Getting Married" attempts to sketch a portrait of a multi-cultural, post-racial America. And so the film is packed to the brim with whites partying alongside African Americans, Asians, and Indians. Bizarrely, though not surprisingly (America is in no meaningful way post-racial), none of these black characters are given significant roles or input into the film's central drama. African Amerians remain at the level of good-natured, smiling ciphers, Demme portraying them with the same benign attitude (singers, dancers, Bible-junkies etc) common in minstrel shows. "Multiculturalism" is still coded as wallpaper for white, upper-middle-class, suburbanite issues.Demme, incidentally, has throughout his career made an effort to exhibit a certain "sensitivity". He made two documentaries on Haiti, one about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, dealt with African American slaves in "Beloved" and sketched a character in "Philadelphia" whose parents were "totally fine with his homosexuality". In "Rachel", Demme packs his film with whites wearing saris, musicians playing sitars, wedding cakes shaped like Indian elephants, Orthodox Christian icons, Jamaican reggae singers, jazz musicians, belly dancers and people yelling "L'chaim!" whilst making toasts. For Demme, race is "no big deal", and he's right, but the film nevertheless has a certain engineered feel. You're always aware of the forced political correctness, a saintly stance which clashes awkwardly with the film's cold shouldering of Rachel's fiancé (Tunde Adebimpe) and his family."Rachel Getting Married" was written by Jenny Lumet, daughter of Sidney Lumet. It contains several "musical interludes" (and references to Neil Young), some of which recall Demme's many concert films. Like watching the fatal crash of a clown car, it's both riveting and ridiculous.7/10 – Worth one viewing.