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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Rachel Getting Married
Sony Pictures Classics


5.4

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 101 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for language and brief sexuality

Starring Anne Hathaway, Bill Irwin, Anna Deavere Smith, and Debra Winger

When Kym returns to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her sister Rachel, she brings a long history of personal crisis, family conflict and tragedy along with her. The wedding couple’s abundant party of friends and relations have gathered for a joyful weekend of feasting, music and love, but Kym—with her biting one-liners and flair for bombshell drama—is a catalyst for long-simmering tensions in the family dynamic. (Sony Picture Classics)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Jenny Lumet
DIRECTED BY:	Jonathan Demme
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: March 10, 2009 Theatrical: October 3, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	114 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A triumph -- Demme's finest work since "The Silence of the Lambs," and a movie that tingles with life.

100

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

It may be painful at times, but Rachel Getting Married sure is one heck of a party.

100

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Intriguing, disturbing, uplifting evocation. In fact, to watch this film is to engage in participatory art -- for better and for worse, through sickness and in health, we're drawn deeply in.

100

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

A film that is both deceptively modest and deeply resonant.

100

New York Magazine David Edelstein

I've never seen a movie with this mixture of fullness and desolation. Rachel Getting Married is a masterpiece.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A friend asked: "Wouldn't you love to attend a wedding like that?" In a way, I felt I had. Yes, I began to feel absorbed in the experience. A few movies can do that, can slip you out of your mind and into theirs.

100

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

True to the characters and their conflicts, the resolution is neither neat nor expected. True to Demme, it's honest and generous and very human.

100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Hathaway carries you on an emotional whirligig that can be horrifying and funny, hopeful and devastating.

Film Threat Matthew Sorrento

As successful as this family drama is, Demme proves himself to be quite a multitasker. With the skill of an ethnographer and the passion of a sentimentalist, he celebrates the traditions of marriage in a handful of tender set pieces.

Newsweek David Ansen

Most of the time, Demme's deliberately unstable mixture of moods and genres produces electric results. Rachel Getting Married takes a familiar subject--the raw nerves of American family life with--and draws fresh blood.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Best and most unexpected of all, Rachel Getting Married dares to mix the bitter with the sweet. It understands that life-altering situations like weddings not only bring out the worst in human behavior but also the finest.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

It’s a small movie, and in some ways a very sad one, but it has an undeniable and authentic vitality, an exuberance of spirit, that feels welcome and rare.

Variety Ronnie Scheib

Brimming with energy, elan and the unpredictability of his "Something Wild," Jonathan Demme's triumphant Rachel Getting Married may just lay the wedding film to rest, being such a hard act to follow.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The acting is of the highest caliber. Winger, magnificent and too long between films, is a volcano of repressed anger.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Jonathan Demme's superb rule-bending, heartrending and family-mending drama - ends with a wedding, it resists conventions as brazenly as does the bride's sister.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A portrait of a family reeling with pain and resentment -- and rising to the challenge of dealing with it head-on.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

As Kym, Hathaway runs an astonishing gamut of emotions, from anger to fragility and from hurt to regret - without ever seeming actress-y, like Nicole Kidman. Start clearing that mantelpiece, Anne.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

A triumph of ambience, Rachel Getting Married is the first narrative feature since the 1980s from director Jonathan Demme that feels like a party--bittersweet, but a party nonetheless.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

The longer it goes on, the more you're swept up into the jet stream of good feeling.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

The sprawling cast, the naturalistic, overlapping dialogue (here by screenwriter Jenny Lumet, daughter of director Sidney) and the swirling action: it seemed pure Robert Altman.

Empire Nick De Semlyen

One of Hollywood's forgotten masters and one of its brightest new actresses team for what could well be an Oscar wild card.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

It's not a terribly disciplined exercise--the rehearsal dinner and wedding ceremony go on so long I felt like I was watching "The Deer Hunter"--but the performances are outstanding, especially Hathaway's and Debra Winger's in a small but devastating turn as her chilly, resentful mother.

Slate Dana Stevens

Hathaway transcends her usual complacency in this role and resists the temptation of using Kym's (and her own) wounded-bird appeal to let the character off the hook.

The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young

A film whose lightness of touch rides a wave of family conflict to perfectly balance smiles and tears.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The life that swirls around Kym before, during and after her sister's densely populated, wonderfully detailed wedding seems to have been caught on the fly in all its sweetness, sadness and joy. (In its free-form style the film constitutes an elaborate homage to Robert Altman.)

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

The upshot to a ticking bomb is that it only explodes the once, but Rachel's sister, Kym (Hathaway), goes off again and again.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The movie's few false notes come from Lumet's script, which can be overly explanatory. Because Demme is opting for present-tense realism, the characters are forced to fill us in on who did what when to whom, why, and how.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

At times, the movie gets bogged down in minutia but the emotions evoked and captured are as honest and brutal as one is likely to find on film.

USA Today Claudia Puig

At its best in scenes featuring Hathaway's mercurial character. It's a triumphant and darkly nuanced role for her and a departure from the more lighthearted comedic performances she has given.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

With a minimum of actorly fuss, Winger shows us the rage and hurt inside this overcontrolled woman. It's a great piece of acting – high drama at the service of the highest talent.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The picture may end a little too breezily, but Demme knows we have to be left with some hope for these wandering souls. Someday, they'll find their way home; it just may not be the same thing as going home.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Alfred Hitchcock once said, "Drama is life with the dull bits left out." Well, Rachel Getting Married is drama with the dull bits left in.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

A middlebrow domestic drama beating its wings against an experimental frame.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

A minor work, but so menaced by distress that the characters take every opportunity to dance the dark away.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A fine ensemble piece, but a maddening and unjustified length.

Time Richard Schickel

The result is a mess. Kym, in Hathaway's unsympathetic performance, is an annoyingly sour observer of the proceedings, a time bomb everyone hopes will not explode before the marriage is completed.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.4 (out of 10) based on 101 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Hanna S. gave it a9:
I loved this movie- the characters, the tension, the exuberance of the wedding. Anne Hathaway and the supporting actors were magnificent.

aideen M gave it a10:
Excellent acting. Anne Hathaway is memorable in a difficult role. Her experiences with a dysfunctional family, during her sister's wedding weekend, are heartbreaking.

Nick gave it a0:
Just horrible!

jacksfilmblog.blogspot gave it a7:
Director Jonathan Demme and his cinematographer Declan Quinn do a great job creating the atmosphere of a real wedding video. The whole film is shot in a hand-held, home-movie style, with characters often acknowledging the camera and sometimes the other cameras in the room even getting in the shot. However, this style is often at odds with the random bursts of melodrama that Jenny Lumet’s screenplay delivers. Such criticisms do little to ruin the great multi-cultural spirit that the entire cast and crew work to create, however. To her credit, Hathaway doesn’t shy away from the unlikeable aspects of Kym’s character, of which there are many. The screenplay asks us to do as her family does, and if we can’t like her or understand her, we at least have to accept her. And it is this spirit that will resonate with you long after you have left the cinema. The film may have its flaws, but it is so forgiving and understanding of the flaws of its inhabitants that you can’t help but respond in kind.

Andrea B. gave it a0:
This was like one, long form acting class exercise and an embarrassment for all involved. I kept thinking that there might be an epiphanal moment, which was the only reason we didn't walk out. Not even a glass of wine could ease the boredom and pointlessness of this waste of film.

R O. gave it a0:
First, let me say that Rose Mary Dewitt is every bit as good as Anne Hathaway. Nevertheless the movie is every bit as excrucitaing as most weddings. If Demme was out to irritate us, he exceeds all expectations. Only when the 2 actresses were squared off was the movie mildly believable - the rest of it is just a mess. Stay home and watch paint dry.

linda d. gave it a10:
Never have I been so frightened for a main character in a movie or so wanted to hug her and make it all okay. Great actors, great direction who would long for more!

Rachel Getting Married Sony Pictures Classics

Rachel Getting Married
Sony Pictures Classics