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You can't really trust trailers because of their tendency to flim-flam, but this one for Rachel Getting Married (Sony Pictures Classics, 10.3) persuaded me right away that the finished film may turn out to be Jonathan Demme's most entertaining and commercial entry since The Silence of the Lambs. As far as dysfunctional family comedies go, it looks very smart, engaging and high-grade.
When I said "commercial" I meant primarily the urban blue areas. Because (and I hate to even raise the subject but how do you dodge it?) I would imagine that the more dug-in bumpkins are going to be a little cool to the inter-racial marriage aspect. ("They" will be be going to Beverly Hills Chihuahua on 10.3) If you've ever been to enemy territory...wow, that just came out. My point is that we're really living in a different country than the one for which Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? was made 40 years ago. A dark guy marrying a fair-skinned lady was an "issue" back then, and in Demme's film it's nothing. It's a "yeah...so?" I love that.
Jenny Lumet's script is a family-wedding dramedy that primarily focuses on Anne Hathaway's seriously screwed-up Kym, but it's mainly a dysfunctional- family comedy about the issues of various folks gathering to celebrate a forthcoming wedding between Rachel (Rosemary DeWitt) and Sidney (New York musician Tunde Adebimpe), a sort-of Nigerian-looking guy who's very trim and attractive with a beautiful smile. But we know how some of the reds are going to take this. Well...don't we?
I'm also struck by the fact that Debra Winger, who was born in 1955, is suddenly looking and playing 50ish in her role as Abby, the mother of Kym and Rachel. I don't know if it's makeup or what but she's got what looks like gray-streaked hair. You could almost use the word "matronly" to describe her. It's been 25 years since Terms of Endearment and 26 years since An Officer and a Gentleman...Jesus. The clock just won't stop.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on August 5, 2008 at 12:36 PM
comment #1
Joshua Mooney says ...
I suspect there's more miscegenation in Red states below the Mason-Dixon line than elsewhere. Anyway, it looks good. And am I the only one who prefers "Cousin Bobby" to "Silence of the Lambs"?
Posted by Joshua Mooney at August 5, 2008 2:06 PM
comment #2
JVD says ...
It's good to see that Bill Irwin is in this. He is criminally underused. I still remember his hilarious performance as the clown in an episode of "The Cosby Show" and his rubber-man dancing in Steve Martin's "My Blue Heaven."
Posted by JVD at August 5, 2008 2:11 PM
comment #3
cjKennedy says ...
It lost me with the Buddy Holly cover a little bit, but it still looks solid.
Posted by cjKennedy at August 5, 2008 2:12 PM
comment #4
DotTheEyes says ...
I have mixed feelings. Anne Hathaway's performance seems very strong, but other parts of the trailer have me gagging a bit -- the "...in Heaven" line near the end, for example. And Bill Irwin's performance seems... strange.
Posted by DotTheEyes at August 5, 2008 2:18 PM
comment #5
chicbn872 says ...
Oddly enough, the stuff being written about interracial marriage is all from lefties. If you didn't care or notice, why are you writing about it? There are too many lefties that are so ready to pat themselves on their white backs & tell themselves how liberal they are.
Does anybody recall an episode of "Curb" in which Wanda Sykes' character says how "white producers" will go out of their way to "help out the black man" so they can say "look at me, I'm a liberal". That's what is happening here.
She hooks up with a black dude. Big whoop.
Posted by chicbn872 at August 5, 2008 2:23 PM
comment #6
DotTheEyes says ...
This will sound cheesy and self-serving (perhaps), but when I first watched this trailer on Yahoo! Movies I didn't even 'notice' the interracial coupling. It didn't stick out to me, I just absorbed the fact that they're a couple and moved on. I was also surprised, after watching Run, Fat Boy, Run at the theatre in March, to find a long thread on its IMDb board about the interracial coupling of Simon Pegg and Thandie Newton. I'm just *so* progressive. lol
Posted by DotTheEyes at August 5, 2008 2:27 PM
comment #7
cinefan says ...
I'm with DotTheEyes on the trailer. There are a few cringe-inducing moments but, just based on the trailer alone, it looks like Hathaway is terrific in the film. I feel that she is an underrated actress - I admired her performances in Brokeback Mountain and Havoc and her solid work in The Devil Wears Prada was completely ignored by a lot of critics.
Posted by cinefan at August 5, 2008 2:29 PM
comment #8
K. Bowen says ...
How did this turn into a political discussion, again?
Posted by K. Bowen at August 5, 2008 2:40 PM
comment #9
Joshua Mooney says ...
The "...this is how it is in heaven" line is meant, I assume, ironically. Or... not. It's Jenny Lumet's first sceenplay? So you know it HAS to be good. She's Lena Horne's granddaughter. Lena Horne spent many formative years in Pittsburgh.
Posted by Joshua Mooney at August 5, 2008 2:40 PM
comment #10
Mr. Blood Vessel says ...
what really bothers me is the spelling of 'Kim.'
Why do all movie that are trying to be something always have to point out the weirdo by a weird spelling of a normal name?
what are they trying to achieve?
Posted by Mr. Blood Vessel at August 5, 2008 2:59 PM
comment #11
Mr. Blood Vessel says ...
whoops, hit the button in mid thought-
"oh we're soo deep look at us, we've got the weirdo spray painted like the bad guy in Mission: Impossible."
Posted by Mr. Blood Vessel at August 5, 2008 3:01 PM
comment #12
Mr. Muckle says ...
Extremely tedious, frankly stupid, neverending insults about people he doesn't understand. As if the POV of an aging, misanthropic, transplanted Hollywood blogger is the answer for humanity. Good God. Tired of it. H-E has no value. Muckle won't be back. Thanks for all the fish.
Posted by Mr. Muckle at August 5, 2008 3:06 PM
comment #13
Rod32303 says ...
Jeff, a lot of "dug in bumpkins" as you put it, HAVE interracial experience. I live in the south (Tallahassee) and there are so many families consisting of mixed marriages...it really is a no biggie deal. Or at least becoming one. Or at least an issue that folk have to deal with. Lots of young white mammas with mixed race offspring here, and most of these children are beautiful. When was the last time you were at a WAL-MART, by the way? As a black man, I will tell you I feel more of a tinge of the "coolness" you speak of from the frosty white liberals I met in an elevator in the hotel I stayed in back in March in Manhattan. And I consider myself a liberal.
I also teach school, as I've said, and this younger generation GETS it - most of them have grown up together and known each other since they were in elementary school. These old assumptions are, thank god...old.
Posted by Rod32303 at August 5, 2008 3:59 PM
comment #14
gruver1 says ...
Wells to Muckle: So sorry for not being more respectful of rural red-state values. Why don't I just shut my damn trap about those beleagured people in the flyover states who've been so unjustly maligned by guys like me and who have so much to offer, and whose example we should all consider following? Tell me -- do all tribal animosities the world over disturb you as much as our own U.S. version? Is it because you're from a red region? Would you be lamenting ethnic hatreds in the former Yugoslavia or the ones between Israeli's, Jordanains and Palestinians, or the ones between the three groups in Iraq or...? Anyway, be well. I may survive your absence. Or at least, I'd like to think I will.
Posted by gruver1 at August 5, 2008 4:16 PM
comment #15
BurmaShave says ...
Am I the only one who thinks, mainstream compromises aside, that PHILADELPHIA is near great?
Posted by BurmaShave at August 5, 2008 4:18 PM
comment #16
The Winchester says ...
Burma, you might be alone on that one, but I'll take the flack for loving Demme's Manchurian Candidate to no end.
(The sarcastic bastard in me wants to say The Truth About Charlie, but I only kinda liked it, and that's because it was 5 AM and the movie I saw right before it was White Oleander)
Posted by The Winchester at August 5, 2008 4:23 PM
comment #17
movieirv says ...
I'm wishing Mr. demme th best, so why I am concerned this reminds me of "Margot at the Wedding" so much?
Posted by movieirv at August 5, 2008 4:39 PM
comment #18
Rod32303 says ...
"White Oleander" rocks.
Posted by Rod32303 at August 5, 2008 5:40 PM
comment #19
K. Bowen says ...
Again, how exactly did posting a trailer end up in this discussion?
Posted by K. Bowen at August 5, 2008 6:19 PM
comment #20
btwnproductions says ...
Good, bad, or indifferent, I can't imagine this breaking out of the urban arthouse bloc.
Posted by btwnproductions at August 5, 2008 6:20 PM
comment #21
lipranzer says ...
A critic friend saw this and loved it, but the last Demme movie I really liked was BELOVED (I think I'm in the minority on that one). Oh, and Jeff, I have to agree with others who say one of the places attitudes towards interracial relationships hasn't changed much is so-called "liberal" Hollywood. Demme may present the relationship itself in matter-of-fact terms (good for him), but most in Hollywood still seem skittish about it.
Posted by lipranzer at August 5, 2008 6:27 PM
comment #22
MartyGras says ...
Yeah, I liked this movie the first time I saw it when it was called "Margot at the Wedding." This trailer is pretty much exactly the same, right down to the mellow 60s song at the end. ("Margot used "Our House," didn't it?) Hathaway might be good, but she's no Nicole Kidman.
Posted by MartyGras at August 5, 2008 7:11 PM
comment #23
Rob says ...
Margot featured Kidman's best work since To Die For. It's a tougher, funnier and more interesting movie than Squid and the Whale, and I don't know why it got lost the way it did.
Posted by Rob at August 5, 2008 7:44 PM
comment #24
frankbooth says ...
Burma,
I'd imagine it's pretty lonely in the Philadelphia fan club - for good reason, I'd say.
I just can't bring myself to care about another Demme film. He's like John Carpenter to me now. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Pull the football out from under me half a dozen times, and well...if I want to be masochistic, there are much more fun ways to do it.
But Melvin and Howard is still great.
Posted by frankbooth at August 6, 2008 12:16 AM
comment #25
Aladdin Sane says ...
White Oleander would only be good if it were the first movie you'd ever watched and the only movie you'll ever watch. I was so disappointed in that film - and I can usually divorce the book from the movie experience.
As for this Rachel movie...it looks like a New York movie - see Igby Goes Down or Squid and the Whale...Hathaway looks good in it though.
Posted by Aladdin Sane at August 6, 2008 1:22 AM
comment #26
Aladdin Sane says ...
White Oleander would only be good if it were the first movie you'd ever watched and the only movie you'll ever watch. I was so disappointed in that film - and I can usually divorce the book from the movie experience.
As for this Rachel movie...it looks like a New York movie - see Igby Goes Down or Squid and the Whale...Hathaway looks good in it though.
Posted by Aladdin Sane at August 6, 2008 1:23 AM
comment #27
Aladdin Sane says ...
Whoops. Sorry about that.
Posted by Aladdin Sane at August 6, 2008 1:23 AM
comment #28
hcat says ...
I have a soft spot for the Truth about Charlie. Thought Wahlberg was not up to the task but otherwise it was the pretty people doing silly things in a glamorous place type of movie that Demme intended. A little gem placed in the heavy handed Philadelphia, Beloved, and Manchurian phase.
Posted by hcat at August 6, 2008 6:47 AM
comment #29
hcat says ...
and it is always terrible when filmmakers repeat themselves. This project looks identical to this earlier project. http://www.impawards.com/1976/fighting_mad.html
Posted by hcat at August 6, 2008 9:54 AM
comment #30
Terry McCarty says ...
Re Jenny Lumet:
People moan over Sofia Coppola's performance in GODFATHER III, but Jenny's nonperformance in a pivotal role in Sidney's Q AND A was worse.
Hoping that Jenny Lumet is a much better screenwriter.
Posted by Terry McCarty at August 7, 2008 1:14 PM
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