Margot At The Wedding

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Margot At The Wedding - 3/3/2008 8:16:01 PM

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Post #: 1

Hmmm - 3/3/2008 8:16:01 PM

RJNeb2

Posts: 87
Joined: 30/9/2005

This is a strange one, indeed. Parts of it are quite funny and the characters are sketched well but it's a film that's almost impossible to warm to. Obviously most of the attention is focussed on Nicole Kidman, playing an absolute monster. She plays her well and it's a part that totally suits Kidman's icy demeanour. I was more taken with Jennifer Jason Leigh as her sister, a warmer, more elemental but just as fucked-up version of the same person. Jack Black is, well, Jack Black. The film has a very meandering tone to it and has been compared to the works of Eric Rohmer. Now I don't for a minute think that many multiplex goers are terribly familiar with the oeuvre of said French director, so to them, this just comes across as a plotless, wobbly camera account of a dysfunctional family coming together, not doing too much, not being terribly funny about it and generally being horrible to each other. Oh, and one gets to shit in her pants. Putting it all like that, makes you wonder why anyone would go see it at all!

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Post #: 2

RE: Hmmm - 5/3/2008 8:59:32 AM

Lightfoot

Posts: 350
Joined: 17/12/2007

From the writer/director of The Squid and the Whale, a thoroughly enjoyable film. Margot is also about fragmenting, dysfunctional families, but is a whole lot nastier and a lot less enjoyable. It start Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh as two thirtysomething sisters. Leigh is marrying an unemployed manic depressive deadbeat (a subdued and thus enjoyable Jack Black) while Kidman is a New York writer about to divorce her husband and resentful of her pubescent, somewhat androgynous son.

It's funny and bleak, two qualities I like in my films, but just gets too much after a while. You can only listen to two barmy middle-aged bints screaming their frustrations at each other for so long before you tire. It meanders, refuses to climax, suddenly someone chases after a bus and bang, end film.

3.5/5

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Post #: 3

RE: Hmmm - 7/3/2008 8:29:52 PM

mackey

Posts: 337
Joined: 15/7/2007

Loved 'The Squid and the Whale' so was looking forward to this one. Thought is was good, much darker than the previous film, quite a layer of nastiness running through it which made it a bit of an endurance test for me but overall a very well made film. Definitely worth watching.

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Post #: 4

Dull - 23/8/2008 1:08:55 PM

Caster

Posts: 5608
Joined: 30/9/2005

I thought Squid was overrated but this is plain bad. You know everything you need to know in the first scene where the son screams in frustration on the train. Margot is a bitch and kids end up as weird as their parents. There, I just saved you 90 mins of glum family squabbling.

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Post #: 5

Margot At The Wedding - 9/11/2008 5:14:22 PM

Indio

Posts: 7132
Joined: 3/10/2005
From: London

Thought all the performances were good (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black in particular), its just a shame the script doesn't amount to much, too many plotlines just end up going nowhere (the neighbours, Margots husband, and her relationship with Dick).

I think Baumbach really needs to find a different scene to explore outside the NYC literary circle in future.

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Post #: 6

Some people don't get this movie - 17/7/2010 2:57:45 AM

monkeyhumour

Posts: 254
Joined: 12/2/2006

Michael Phillips did from the Chicago tribune and so did Luke Goodsell from empire

And some who write in on the IMDB. I understood it, a great feel-bad comedy that makes me feel good on the inside, well done!

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Post #: 7