'Rachel Getting Married' review

Anne Hathaway (Credit: Sony Classics)

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Black sheep Kym (Anne Hathaway) returns home for the marriage of her older sister Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt) to the patient and loving Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe of the band TV on the Radio). Much to Rachel’s displeasure, Kym’s troublemaking ways promptly emerge as she sleeps with the best man (Mather Zickel), demands to be maid of honor, delivers a drunken toast and fights with her estranged mother (Debra Winger).

The buzz: Well received in its screenings at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, this latest film from “The Silence of the Lambs” Oscar winner Jonathan Demme has been hailed as a return to the comedic humanism of his early work like the classic “Something Wild.” And Hathaway’s performance has already been generating Oscar buzz.

The verdict: Despite the hype, Demme’s very loosely plotted film is often as interesting as watching the wedding video of a total stranger. Events that would normally provide momentary color—an AA meeting, rehearsal dinner toasts, musical serenades and wedding dances—are pushed into the foreground and drag on interminably. The result is well-acted but self-indulgent—the kind of film where everyone on screen is having a lot more fun than the audience.

Did you know? This is the first film for screenwriter Jenny Lumet, but she has a famous Hollywood connection. Her father is legendary director Sidney Lumet, the man behind “Network,” “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.”

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