ViewGuide

Created Aug 23, 2012 09:29PM PST • Edited Aug 24, 2013 11:13AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Nicole Kidman goes to her estranged sister’s wedding. Jennifer Jason Leigh, said brilliant and beautiful sister, is marrying Jack Black, a buffoon who spectacularly overestimates himself. Classic Jack Black.

   Speaking of spectacular, Kidman’s Margot is a spectacularly successful fiction writer returned to her girlhood home for the wedding, spectacular self-absorption fully in tow. More attractive, more capable and more successful than her family, she’s disappointed in everyone except herself. Her son, her sister and her husband all come in for attack, the preteen son destined for a life of severe anxiety as a result. Issues!!!

   Consider it a roast of the Eastern Elite lit set. Smart yet senseless, self-absorbed yet not self-aware, rich without a connection to real commerce, they exist as creatures constantly searching for satisfaction.

   Schadenfreude provides much of Margot at the Wedding’s considerable satisfaction, that’s for sure. However Noah Baumbach’s movie also provides a penetrating look at today’s generation of middle-aged, upper-middle-class hedonists. Beautiful on the surface, he paints them as ugly to the core, and does it well.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Nicole Kidman’s Margot is one more outstanding queen-bee role for the smart and lovely Queen of Australian Actresses. She’s been doing this for decades now, at least as far back as the delightful Flirting.

   Young Zane Pais deserves favorable notice as her sensitive son, a good looking kid easily mistaken for a girl and frequently emasculated by his self-serving Mother.

   Jennifer Jason Leigh delivers a truly appealing performance as an aging silver-spoon party girl who wishes ill on no one, even if she makes one bad choice after another. She was also Noah Baumbach’s wife when he wrote and directed the movie. Speaking of choices…

   Jack Black plays his role fairly straight, yet doesn’t stray out of classic Jack Black territory.

   The great Ciarán Hinds easily inhabits a high powered literary critic with more than fiction on his mind. Halley Feiffer impresses as his sexually precocious daughter.

   John Turturro also makes a strong impression of a weak man in a small role.

   Final acting note: Shawnna Thibodeau and Jodi Michelle Pynn did Nicole Kidman’s stunts, meaning one of ’em climbed the tree. Impressive.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Noah Baumbach films have successfully evaded my view to this point, given how mannered and self-absorbed they’ve appeared to be. Margot at the Wedding reps him very favorably however.

    The scene where Margot climbs a tall tree from her youth is a brilliant metaphor for going home again, only to find the view terrifying once there. Bravo.

    The ending knocks the film down a notch, as it strains credulity and self-indulgence beyond the breaking point. Had Baumbach not stooped that low, he may have deserved a Really Great instead of a mere Great.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Very Good 3.5

    Steve Forbert songs are used, that’s how precious the characters in this film are.

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    A gorgeous Southhampton ocean-side estate is the setting. Thus the film represents everything the Hamptons stand for, smug New Yorkers in particular.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.4

    Love hurts, even when it is familial love that provides the ammunition. After all, who is easier to attack than someone you’ve known since they’ve been on this earth. All their fallibilities are there, for someone so sick as to focus on them, as the sisters do in this movie.

    Margot and her sister are also terrible moms, making parts of the film a bit hard to stomach.

17. Sex Titillating 1.9

18. Violence Fierce 1.7

19. Rudeness Profane 3.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    The movie is apolitical and dates from before Barack Obama’s Presidency. However, these wealthy upper class whities from NYC are prototypical Obama supporters, circa ‘8 and ‘12. While they’d support the Left Wing guy no matter his ethnicity, they’re one of the groups who still focus on the President’s racial makeup, consistent with their blithely obtuse self-absorption.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.4

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0