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Margot at the Wedding
- Review Date: February 18, 2008
- R
- Genre: Drama
- 2007
Common Sense Media says
Well-acted tale of crushing family dysfunction.
Parents say
QUALITY
Kids say
What parents need to know
Parents need to know that this mature, sometimes-uncomfortable drama isn't for kids, even though Jack Black co-stars (this is definitely not one of his over-the-top comedy roles). Focused on the long-repressed conflicts between two adult sisters, its themes include competition, sexual desire and frustration, and passive-aggressive behavior. Several arguments include yelling and crying, and two brief fights show victims (men) getting kicked or hit. There are discussions and images of masturbation, rape, and abuse, and an adult man makes out with an adolescent girl. Language includes many uses of "f--k."
What's the story?
"I can't say I have a whole lot of hope for the whole thing," says Margot (Nicole Kidman) at the start of MARGOT AT THE WEDDING. She and her adolescent son, Claude (Zane Pais), are on their way to Margot's childhood home in the Hamptons, where her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) now lives with her fiancc, Malcolm (Jack Black). Unfortunately, Margot's sense of foreboding influences the film as much as her sister's upcoming nuptials. A successful New York-based writer, Margot repeatedly belittles Pauline's choice of Malcolm while also framing herself as a victim; her own marriage, to Jim (John Turturro), is in trouble, though she hasn't yet revealed this to her son. And though Pauline, who's been estranged from her sister for years, wants to believe that her relationship with Malcolm is the real thing, she worries that her own insecurity and loneliness make her impossible to love.
Is it any good?
At the center of this maelstrom of immature adults and kids who compete for attention and resent one another is Claude. His perspective more or less grounds Noah Baumbach's latest investigation of long-festering family dysfunction, and so his changing attitudes toward his mother, aunt, and Malcolm -- as well as his cousin Ingrid (Flora Cross) and teenage housekeeper Maisy (Hallet Feiffer) -- tend to shape viewers'.
The film turns into a series of arguments and dire revelations; each is well acted, but their accumulation eventually feels crushing. When Margot at last decides to send Claude off alone on a bus, his simultaneous reluctance to go and desire to trust her is heartbreaking. That it's captured in a few moments in which he and his mother are at last not talking, not trying so desperately to order their feelings through language suggests at last that there's hope for them. Smartly, though, the film keeps still at last on Claude's face, letting you imagine his future.
What families can talk about
Families can talk about the ways this family deals with pain and betrayal. Do their interactions and reactions seem realistic to you? Why is it important to deal with tensions between siblings and between parents and children? How does communication help people resolve differences? Would better communication have helped Margot and Pauline? Families can also discuss the movie's open-ended "ending." What do you think of movies like that? Why do most Hollywood movies not end that way?
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AGE
Margot at the Wedding
Absolutely, completely loathed this movie. I generally enjoy dark dramadies about dysfunctional families (Little Miss Sunshine is one of my favorite movies), but this movie was completely unrealistic and torturous. Basically, the film is about a group of some of the most despicable, sad people you will ever see being cruel to each other in sneaky ways. That's it. There's absolutely not point to it, the characters don't change at all through the film, the whole thing is one long waste of time. It actually took effort to sit throught the entire thing.
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Terrible. OK for older teens, but I don't recommend it for anybody.
I don't need all movies to be about happy, functional people - but Margot at the Wedding was just ridiculous. I felt like I was being infected by these aggressively awful, nasty people. The movie feels hugely pointless - it says nothing insightful, just mopes around and makes fun of its grossly self-centered characters. In the end, nothing has been learned, but plenty of time has been wasted.
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Great acting... that's pretty much it
It seemed like this movie was just a showcase for Nicole Kidman and Jack Black and I believe that they did an amazing job with mediocre script they were given. The plot was typical for a dyfunctional family movie; there were some points of brilliance and other times I thought the script could have been edited. I liked how the characters were complex and confusing but in the end it was impossible to connect to them because most of the characters in this movie had serious emotional problems. Of course, this is what makes the movie interesting at the same time, seeing how these people react to each other and different situations. I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone under 14 because I think that it would bore them.
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This was a very uncomfortable film, even for 40+ year old parents. It is very tense, sexually charged and one scene withe mother and her teacher son is just extremely deranged, bordering on sexual abuse (mother in bed with son, masturbates next to him). The mother mistreats her son in general and the whole feel is depressing and heavy. Hated it.
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| Studio: | Paramount Vantage |
| Director: | Noah Baumbach |
| Cast: | Jack Black, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nicole Kidman |
| Genre: | Drama |
| Run time: | 93 minutes |
| Theatrical release date: | November 16, 2007 |
| DVD release date: | February 19, 2008 |
| MPAA rating: | R |
| MPAA explanation: | sexual content and language. |
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