Hizzoner and HS were big fans of Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale. Follow-up Margot at the Wedding? Not so much. Read on!
Margot at the Wedding
I went to see this film after reading A.O. Scott's review in The New York Times who wrote that the picture is "often mercilessly, squirm-inducingly funny." Regrettably, in advance of going, I did not read Lou Lumenick's review in the New York Post who wrote, "You'd have more fun with a root canal than with this faux French flick." I agree with his conclusion. Margot at the Wedding is a bomb.The plot concerns a Manhattan writer, Margo (Nicole Kidman), going to the wedding of her younger sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Pauline is pregnant and marrying her lover, Malcolm (Jack Black). When Malcolm seduces the babysitter, Pauline decides not to marry him. Meanwhile, Margo is intent on having her androgynous son, Claude (Zane Pais), live with his father, Jim (John Turturro), in Vermont. Each of the three principal characters – Margo, Pauline and Malcolm – is dysfunctional and more repulsive than the other. I couldn't wait to leave the theater.
The script writer, Noah Baumbach, who also directed this outrage, had a huge prior success with his picture The Squid and the Whale. That movie, which I enjoyed very much, was also devoted to emotional stress among family members. Almost every critic commenting on Baumbach's scripts speculates that he puts his own life on the screen, but I do not know that to be true.
When I left the theater a man in his 20's asked me if I liked the film, to which I replied, "No." He said, "Sorry about that." Another man in his 70's accompanied by his wife asked me what I thought of the movie and I said, "Horrible." He said, "Good. You can quote me as saying it sucks." And it does.
HS said: "I really liked The Squid and the Whale and looked forward to this movie. I was enormously disappointed. What is cute in children can be sickening in adults. Watching two spoiled, self-indulgent sisters play off each other made me feel that this theater was one place I did not want to be.
The Queen of Mean is the Nicole Kidman character. Everything she says and does is vicious, insulting or intended to embarrass. She is ruining her pre-adolescent son's life by making him dependent on her mercurial whims and tantrums.
Jack Black is a man-mountain dope and wastrel, but he has a good heart. Jennifer Jason Leigh (Baumbach's wife in what we call real life) is manipulated by her sinister sister who, desperately unhappy herself, is trying to prevent her marriage to the lowbrow giant whose child she is carrying.
The Times is right to call the movie 'squirm inducing,' but the squirms are of anguish, not laughter.
Thanks, as always, to Carlos for passing this along, with the too-apt comment "Oof." Indeed.
