Anne Hathaway is getting a lot of praise for her role in this movie, and that was my primary reason for watching this movie.
She deserves the praise and indeed she is good in this role, but this is a review about the movie and not about Anne so: The movie's not bad, it's basically a hand-held camera point of view of Kim (Anne Hathaway) getting out of rehab for her sister's wedding. My problem with this movie is Kim's not in it enough. What I mean by that is there are many scenes (long scenes) that exclude her character, trying to bring the atmosphere for the wedding to the movie, reminding the viewer that Kim's not the most important thing in the world and that everyone else exists in this wedding mode regardless. The problem is they take you out of the movie pretty much every time, they go on for too long, there's about 10 minutes straight of music and dancing at one point.
I understand the point of reminding the viewer that life exists out of Kim's world and thus scenes without her make sense, but the movie would have been better if it were almost entirely portrayed from Kim's point-of-view and some scenes capture it perfectly, such as Rachel taking her father to another room to talk, or scenes with people crying after Kim has left the room etc.. but there are a few scenes that just don't fit.
This movie isn't the best thing ever, the hand-held cam - while it works for these point-of-view type movies - takes you out of the movie at points, where the camera is watching a character (usually Kim) and then decides to start roaming around.
There's a particular scene that is done really well where Kim is watching a car leave, and instead of the standard effect of a camera focusing on the car with the character's head and neck out of focus but still taking up a large amount of the screen, perhaps with a soft focus onto the character at the end of the scene, in this particular scene they focus solely on Kim's neck while the camera continues to track the car leaving. I think this scene is what I would have liked from all the scenes I didn't like, where instead of people dancing and singing for ages and ages after Kim has left the scene, instead if it were more from Kim's point of view it might have fit more.
Anyway, this movie is still decent, and definitely worth a watch, but if the hand-held was used a little less, and the scenes mentioned above were removed or done differently, it would have gained an extra 2 start from me.
She deserves the praise and indeed she is good in this role, but this is a review about the movie and not about Anne so: The movie's not bad, it's basically a hand-held camera point of view of Kim (Anne Hathaway) getting out of rehab for her sister's wedding. My problem with this movie is Kim's not in it enough. What I mean by that is there are many scenes (long scenes) that exclude her character, trying to bring the atmosphere for the wedding to the movie, reminding the viewer that Kim's not the most important thing in the world and that everyone else exists in this wedding mode regardless. The problem is they take you out of the movie pretty much every time, they go on for too long, there's about 10 minutes straight of music and dancing at one point.
I understand the point of reminding the viewer that life exists out of Kim's world and thus scenes without her make sense, but the movie would have been better if it were almost entirely portrayed from Kim's point-of-view and some scenes capture it perfectly, such as Rachel taking her father to another room to talk, or scenes with people crying after Kim has left the room etc.. but there are a few scenes that just don't fit.
This movie isn't the best thing ever, the hand-held cam - while it works for these point-of-view type movies - takes you out of the movie at points, where the camera is watching a character (usually Kim) and then decides to start roaming around.
There's a particular scene that is done really well where Kim is watching a car leave, and instead of the standard effect of a camera focusing on the car with the character's head and neck out of focus but still taking up a large amount of the screen, perhaps with a soft focus onto the character at the end of the scene, in this particular scene they focus solely on Kim's neck while the camera continues to track the car leaving. I think this scene is what I would have liked from all the scenes I didn't like, where instead of people dancing and singing for ages and ages after Kim has left the scene, instead if it were more from Kim's point of view it might have fit more.
Anyway, this movie is still decent, and definitely worth a watch, but if the hand-held was used a little less, and the scenes mentioned above were removed or done differently, it would have gained an extra 2 start from me.