Review: Glenn Close, why put up with this? Thoroughly annoying guests wreak havoc on ‘The Wilde Wedding’
How writer-director Damian Harris (the late actor Richard’s son) wrangled so much talent for a film as inane and underachieving as “The Wilde Wedding” is anyone’s guess.
A dizzying array of surface characters connected by birth, marriage, ex-marriage, pending marriage or friendship gathers at the upstate New York estate of revered, retired actress Eve Wilde (Glenn Close) to celebrate her fourth wedding, this time to a famed, if hapless, novelist (Patrick Stewart).
Lots of bad, annoying or unappealing behavior ensues (though Close’s glamorous Eve largely stays above the fray). A box of chocolate-covered shrooms wreaks silly havoc. People have embarrassing sex. Folks break into song and dance. Someone bakes a cake. I checked my watch.
There’s barely a convincing — or amusing — situation or interaction, including the film’s climactic nuptials, which also turn fatally contrived.
Perhaps least credible is the tangle of relationships, especially those among Eve, her egocentric actor-first husband (a miscast John Malkovich) and their three ill-drawn sons (Jack Davenport, Peter Facinelli, Noah Emmerich), a tossed-together bunch if there ever was one.
The movie also marks a career low for Minnie Driver as an erratic, drug-using, self-dubbed “rock goddess.” A forgettable mix of tweens, teens and millennials take up space as well.
Skip this “Wedding.”
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‘The Wilde Wedding’
Rating: R, for language, sexual content and drug use.
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.
Playing: AMC Dine-In Sunset 5, West Hollywood
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