Film Review: "Rachel Getting Married" (2008)Director Jonathan Demme (1944-2017) gives into documentary-composed cinematography in this film about the character of Kym, portrayed in break-out fashion and chain-smoking on the plain actress Anne Hathaway, who gives in to every beat to be the black sheep in the herd of a family celebrating the older sister's wedding, title-given character of Rachel, performed by decent appearing actress Rosemarie DeWitt, which stays uneventful through a screenplay originally written by Jenny Lumet, who finds one major tension point for the audience, watching the character of Kym's distress in witnessing honor speeches in a tight stuffed of invited wedding guests before releasing her pressure through sex with a stranger, degrading her sister in public and crashing a car, which may keep the audience going up to 85 Minutes due to a demanding performance by Anne Hathaway, but not for the whole 100 minutes plus running time on this one, where the director of a motion picture classic as "The Silence Of The Lambs" (1991) and even the fairly suspenseful remake of "The Manchurian Candidate" (2004) can not hide the fact that "Rachel Getting Married" has turned out a disappointment in every cinematic sense of the way.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Story and acting are OK but not enough to overcome the amateur cinematography, poor sound mixing as well as poorly written dialogue. The whole film seems forced on every level. The writer obviously struggled for meaningful content so the Director used extended scenes with no dialogue to make the film feature-length. Much of the dialogue seemed ad- libbed and should have been cut. I guess the budget was too low to afford a steadicam but it would have been a great investment because the camera operators were just awful. The DP used some kind of filter that washed out the scenes and created inconsistent texture and resolution. I have seen higher quality productions from high school film clubs. I can't imagine watching this mess on a larger screen. I got dizzy watching it at home.

The delirium tremens that seemed to have afflicted the camera contributed to my total inability and utter unwillingness to subject myself to what would have been almost two hours of cinematic torture had I not opted instead to abandon this failed attempt to capture and sustain my interest. Before that, I did skip ahead a few times only to realize that the shaky-cam footage was a curse that afflicted this movie in its entirety as opposed to only being selectively used for some specific purpose during certain scenes. I realize there's no need to hire a focus puller when there's no concern over staying in focus since this is something that is impossible to achieve when using a dancing camera lens in an attempt to capture photographed frames of light bouncing off moving or stationary objects. And no dollies would have been needed either so that would also reduce the movie's budget. But there is a plethora of good reasons why focus pullers and dollies (and similar rigs) are used by most competent movie directors whether they are rich and famous or just starting out as raw rookies exploring the world of low-budget independent cinema. It's difficult for me to fathom that the same guy who directed this movie directed "Silence of the Lambs"! I'm certain that there are critics out there who actually did like this movie and might attempt to justify the use of the shaky-cam as being some kind of intentionally applied artistic choice that visually enhances some underlying emotional aspect of the leading lady or one of her dramatic counterparts. But by way of analogy, if someone splattered dog feces on a blank canvas and called it "art", I don't care if every single living person on this planet as well as any other planet hailed it as a stroke of artistic genius unparalleled in every intricate aspect of its supposedly creative attributes. To me, it is and would always be nothing more than dog sh_t going through various decompositional stages after being framed in white.

10. Director Demme shot this as if for TV, with an emphasis on close-ups that reveal way more than necessary of Bill Irwin's thinning hair and Anne Hathaway's gums. Close-ups are used as exclamation points on the big screen, which makes this movie all exclamation points. 9. Adding injury to insult, Demme also unwisely used a hand-held camera, which left me vaguely sea-sick, and failed to create what he was apparently aiming for-- a documentary feel. Documentaries have to be about reality; nothing in this movie feels real or honest.8. No subtlety. If there's a core problem, that's it. Everything is spelled out and heavy-handed. Hathaway has bobbed hair that looks like it was chewed off (read: dysfunction). She inexpertly smokes cigarettes (Hollywood's tired way of signaling a troubled or bad character)-- cigarettes which never burn down. No butts for Ms. Hathaway, only long slim white cigarettes as props for her. She is also the only smoker in a film crowded with unnecessary characters. Her character, "Kym," is the center of the movie, and she may be the most relentlessly self-indulgent, self-pitying character since Mildred Pierce's daughter, Veda. Not a character to build a movie on.7. Every single scene, without exception, is too long. The wedding toasts seem endless, as do the AA meetings. Worst: more than 5 minutes devoted to loading a dishwasher-- a contest between groom and future father-in-law. Five minutes. Seriously. I timed it. 6. No one is likable. Rachel comes closest (Rosemary Dewitt), but even she is alternately strident and sentimental-- those are the movie's two notes, and it reels between them without warning. Rachel also suffers for having zero chemistry with her groom, played by Tunde Adebimpe, who is given no distinct character to limn.5. Adebimpe is only one of many black characters who are good-natured, smiling ciphers (see Martin Yu's perceptive review about the cast). The cast is preposterously post-racial, yet presents African- Americans with the same benign attitude that we used to get in minstrel shows.4. The dialog is largely inaudible, and the whole movie depends on speeches. Nothing is advanced visually, except in reaction shots. 3. Horrible nonstop folk/world music. There is one scene with credible jazz combo, but it's not worth waiting for. 2. "I'm pregnant." That line is dropped like a bomb into a scene, allowing everybody to emote yet more, and Veda-- I mean "Kym" to launch into yet another strident, self-pitying attack on her family. 1. It's the kitchen-sink school of drama. Besides unexpected pregnancy, the movie drags in drug addiction, alcoholism, sibling hatred, divorce, anorexia, sexual molestation, and two car accidents, one of which kills a child. The only thing missing is racism, and that would actually have been a breath of honesty in this multi-kulti mess.