4/5 Not a popcorn movie
  by Jonathan Walz
I want to start by saying that Rachel Getting Married isn't a movie for the faint of heart. There is conflict and lots of it with very little in the way of resolution. Honestly, I don't quite see how anybody could *enjoy* this movie if they didn't get anything cathartic out of it; but I have a number of friends who couldn't directly relate and still appreciated what they saw. That's the first thing you need to know about Rachel Getting Married: despite its seemingly innocuous title, it is not a movie made to entertain. It's a movie made to express.

A possible side effect of this is that Rachel Getting Married isn't a movie for people looking for a strong narrative. This is an exercise in voyeurism. You get to be a fly on the wall at this wedding and the events surrounding it. You get to sit through the highs and lows the the borderline disgustingly schmaltzy ceremony. You get to be put in the almost painfully awkward scenario of a visitor sitting in a room with a fighting family -- emotionally removed from the conflict but unable to escape it and unable to not form your own sympathies.

I ought to close by saying that, if you come from a family that doesn't confront its difficulties, or if you've never been to an intensely hipster wedding; then you may, like many other reviewers, think that this movie is in no way representative of reality. Well, I've attended multiple weddings almost exactly like this one for friends of my family, and the general motion and flow of the family conflict is absolutely spot on. It may be an extreme case, but it's meant to be.

1/5 So boring I couldn't get through it
  by T. Johnson (Portland, OR)
I'm afraid I can't give an in depth review for this movie because I couldn't stay interested long enough to keep watching it - still, that in itself is a very clear review in a way. I tried to get through the whole thing, I wanted to like the movie, I'm open minded to various kinds of movie experiences, but honestly this movie bored me to death. Apologies to those who liked it.


3/5 A transitional period in a family's life...
  by Edmonson (Canada)
Despite the title of the film, this movie revolves around Kym (Anne Hathaway), who's recently out of rehab on the eve of her sister's (Rosemary DeWitt) wedding. It's a rather serious drama dealing with Kym's difficult transition back into the real world, and specifically, into family life. It marks something of a departure for Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) with its intimate portrayal of a family's pains, joys, and turmoils. As the film develops we learn about some of the reasons for the dynamics in this family, specifically the accidental death of Kym's brother in a car accident in which Kym was the driver. This is where a lot of Kym's guilt lies, but we also learn of another's negligence, that of the mother (Debra Winger), which was partly to blame for the boy's death. There is a lot of underlying hurt and pain that revolves around these people just as they are about to celebrate this union between Rachel and her soon to be husband. Shot with the feel of a home movie, given its jerky, hand held camera technique, this film successfully conveys the life of a family trying to cope with their tarnished history just as a new and brighter chapter is seemingly beginning for them.

4/5 driving away the ones you should love?
  by R. Bagula (Lakeside, Ca United States)
Rachel can't deal with her younger sister having emotional
problems and drives her away. This movie seems to show the
dysfunctional American family as the drug problem has produced it.
The movie is hard to watch, probably because it isn't a romanticized
chick flick but a real plot dealing with real issues
that have been hard to face.
The side issue of an interracial marriage seems drown in the general problems?
The end shows that
something bad has resulted from the lack of understanding
by Rachel the psychological Phd.

2/5 A marriage I'm glad I wasn't invited to
  by Muzzlehatch (the walls of Gormenghast)
I'll start right out by saying that Jonathan Demme's vérité-for-the MTV generation RACHEL GETTING MARRIED looked for its first half at least like it was going to be the worst film of the year. I should have known better, I suppose, than to go into this with high expectations, despite the overall ability of the director. Movies about weddings - and weddings themselves for that matter - have never been something I've particularly liked, and movies about withdrawal or rehab are not high on my list of priorities either. This is both. Kim, younger son of Rachel, gets out of rehab a couple of days before Rachel gets married and goes to join her sister and their kind of ridiculously ethnically diverse family and friends at the huge old country house in Connecticut to make an ass of herself, cry a lot, and generally disrupt everybody's good time.

This film might make a good sociological test - if an educated film-geek liberal from an upper-middle-class family (me) can be so annoyed with the characters that he supposedly should identify with, what would someone who is completely alienated from East coast liberalism feel watching this? A bunch of rich and beautiful people - honestly I don't think there is a single person in the film who isn't better looking, much better looking, than you and me - whining about their problems and not getting along, and the lead character being so petulant you want to kill her.

I know, I know, it's about someone trying to get through a difficult experience - I know drugs and feelings of low self-esteem are a toxic mix, and combine that with forcing yourself to be happy for someone who seems to have it much more together than you - I personally can identify with that - but it all seemed phony and constructed here, particularly in an absolutely atrocious scene where a hairdresser spills the beans about Kim's past in front of her sis for no apparent reason and that all leads to much more shouting and crying and Kim totaling her mother's car but apparently being forgiven by everybody the next day.

Strangely though in the last half hour I grew to tolerate it all more, maybe it all started to gel or something, perhaps the fact that against all odds including ones the movie has deliberately stacked, everybody seems to sort of get along at the end and put aside their squabbles as they are supposed to at a wedding. The cast isn't bad, but I'm not sure it's good either apart from Debra Winger as the mom who seems like she belongs in a better movie. Still on the whole this struck me as a bad blend of John Cassavetes and "The Real World" that ends up being more like a too-long and boring version of the latter while lacking all of the depth and soul of the former.