Rachel Getting Married

"Rachel Getting Married" is a drama film, released in 2008. It stars Anne Hathaway as Kym, a relapsing drug addict who has been trying relentlessly to get clean. At the start of the movie, she returns home to attend her sister, Rachel’s wedding. Upon arriving, there is still the unresolved tension from Kym’s previous conflicts, one of which ended in the death of her brother. It is evident that her family still weighs heavily on the fact that her drug abuse led to her killing her brother in a car accident. Aside from family tragedies, there is also a war going on for which of the sisters gets the most attention. Rachel is sick of Kym getting fussed over, just because of her drug problem, and would like her parents to focus on her for once, since it’s her wedding. While Kym claims she hates the attention, she’s almost always finding some way to bring the spotlight on herself and her own recovery

“Rachel Getting Married” seemingly aims to illustrate how much havoc a drug addict can have on a family. However, the movie seems quite choppy at times, and has a lot of distractions, which results in it becoming more like a soap opera than a movie. The characters, I felt, were not as developed as they could have been. The family confrontational scenes were far and few in between. The wedding, dancing, and the well-wisher scenes went on and on and on, perhaps taking up almost half of the movie. Adding to the damage is the film’s handheld camera effect. Perhaps it was used to create an authentic feel, however it mostly makes for a dizzy and distracting sequence.