Margot at the Wedding

Nicole Kidman really needs to stop making bad movies. No, really. She is a GOOD actress. Think Dead Calm, The Hours, Cold Mountain. Who makes lots of BAD movies. Like Birth, Eyes Wide Shut, Birthday Girl and this piece of crap. Nicole, I implore you. Read the script and Just. Say. No. Or - if you'd like to streamline your life - don't even read the script if it's from, say, Noah Baumbach. For God's sake, he wrote The Life Aquatic!

Margot at the Wedding follows Margot (Kidman) - our resident borderline personality - as she heads off to wreck havoc at the nuptials of her long suffering sister, Pauline (played unhappily by Jennifer Jason Leigh.) Pauline is about to wed a loser named Malcolm (Jack Black, who is also in the habit of Making Bad Films) because she's in the family way. Let's not mention that Margot's dragging around her nearly grown son in a decidedly Oedipal way and cheating on her husband. Add some neighbors that seem out of Deliverance and I think you're getting the picture. Really Bad Movie.

Hollywood got all swoony over Baumbach when he wrote and directed The Squid and the Whale. For the record, I hated that one, too, but I'm not always willing to watch miserable people behave badly for the sake of art. This film was supposed to have something to say about family, I believe, but I must have missed it while I was observing the miserable people behaving badly. I mostly found it incredibly dull. And no matter how luminous her milky skin, Nicole as passive-aggressive psycho bitch is not all that amusing. Worst of all, the trailer seemed to imply that this was supposed to be comedy. Yuck. Click here for the website, if you must.