5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘My Mother's Wedding' Review: Daddy Issues
In 'My Mother's Wedding,' three sisters return to their childhood home in the English countryside to celebrate their mother's third marriage. Daddy issues and sororal spats are guaranteed, but the spunk and tragicomedy that fuel similar ensemble family dramas (like 'Little Miss Sunshine' or 'The Farewell') are in short supply in this contrived personal project by the writer-director Kristin Scott Thomas, who plays Diana, the mother.
Scarlett Johansson, sporting a shoddy English accent, plays Diana's daughter Katherine, a Royal Navy captain who lost two fathers. The first, Katherine's birth father, died when she was still a toddler; the second, her stepfather, raised her until his death when she was 12.
Both men were Royal Navy pilots, so you can imagine where Katherine got the motivation to enlist; though her rise in the ranks has also meant reproducing her fathers' mistakes, prioritizing work over time with her girlfriend, Jack (Freida Pinto), and their son. Flashbacks to Katherine's childhood are visualized with crude black-and-white animation, feeding into the film's bland sentimentality.
The other sisters bring a lighter touch: Victoria (Sienna Miller), a Hollywood actress, flirts with an old flame (Mark Stanley) and considers a marriage of convenience to a wealthy Frenchman (Thibault de Montalembert). Georgina (Emily Beecham) has hired a private investigator (Samson Kayo) to find proof of her husband's infidelity.
The girls aren't terribly impressed by Geoff (James Fleet), their mother's fiancé, because they still idolize their fathers. All the while, we're wondering why these accomplished women could be so uniformly stunted by their delusions of paternal grandeur — which could maybe make for a funny setup. In this overly mannered, weirdly flat dramedy, it's not.
My Mother's WeddingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters.
