Monday, February 25, 2008
It's meant to be funny?
By Edward Copeland
At one point in Margot at the Wedding, a frustrated Malcolm (Jack Black) tells his fiancee Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that both she and her sister Margot (Nicole Kidman) are "fucking morons." When Jack Black is the voice of reason, you know you are probably in trouble and Noah Baumbach's film is the most excruciatingly bad moviegoing experience I've had among 2007 releases.
I can't imagine how much time Baumbach has spent in therapy in his life, but the bills must be astronomical. (If he hasn't been in therapy at all, The Squid and the Whale and this piece of shit are strong evidence that perhaps he should be sent forcibly to a mental health facility.)
While Squid worked to some extent thanks to the solid acting by Laura Linney, Jeff Daniels, Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline, there is no such luck with Margot at the Wedding. Baumbach even manages to drag down the talent of his wife, Leigh, whom we don't see that often anymore.
Kidman is flat-out bad and Black seems as if he dropped in from another film, a film I certainly would have rather been watching.
Ciaran Hinds shows up as Kidman's lover and as much as I disliked There Will Be Blood, I hoped that somehow Hinds could teleport the cast of Margot back to Daniel Plainview's bowling alley.
Few films I can recall have created such an array of repulsive, hateful and boring characters such as those Baumbach assembles here. The motivations for what they do don't seem to spring from their characters' inner wounds but solely from a desire on Baumbach's part to drag audiences into his own dysfunctional misery.
I have to ask Baumbach, "What did we ever do to you to deserve this?" I didn't think that anything could top Colour Me Kubrick as the worst 2007 film I saw, but Baumbach managed to pull that off with Margot at the Wedding. It's really the only superlative this film deserves.
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At one point in Margot at the Wedding, a frustrated Malcolm (Jack Black) tells his fiancee Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that both she and her sister Margot (Nicole Kidman) are "fucking morons." When Jack Black is the voice of reason, you know you are probably in trouble and Noah Baumbach's film is the most excruciatingly bad moviegoing experience I've had among 2007 releases.
I can't imagine how much time Baumbach has spent in therapy in his life, but the bills must be astronomical. (If he hasn't been in therapy at all, The Squid and the Whale and this piece of shit are strong evidence that perhaps he should be sent forcibly to a mental health facility.)
While Squid worked to some extent thanks to the solid acting by Laura Linney, Jeff Daniels, Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline, there is no such luck with Margot at the Wedding. Baumbach even manages to drag down the talent of his wife, Leigh, whom we don't see that often anymore.
Kidman is flat-out bad and Black seems as if he dropped in from another film, a film I certainly would have rather been watching.
Ciaran Hinds shows up as Kidman's lover and as much as I disliked There Will Be Blood, I hoped that somehow Hinds could teleport the cast of Margot back to Daniel Plainview's bowling alley.
Few films I can recall have created such an array of repulsive, hateful and boring characters such as those Baumbach assembles here. The motivations for what they do don't seem to spring from their characters' inner wounds but solely from a desire on Baumbach's part to drag audiences into his own dysfunctional misery.
I have to ask Baumbach, "What did we ever do to you to deserve this?" I didn't think that anything could top Colour Me Kubrick as the worst 2007 film I saw, but Baumbach managed to pull that off with Margot at the Wedding. It's really the only superlative this film deserves.
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Labels: 00s, J.J. Leigh, Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Nicole Kidman
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Totally agree with you here. I found Margot Zeller to be one of the most despicable movie characters in recent memory. What a horrible chore of a film!
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