Margot at the Wedding
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DVD details
Actor: Jack Black, Nicole KidmanBrand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 91 minutes
Published: 2008-02-01
DVD Release Date: 2008-02-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Paramount
DVD Reviews of Margot at the Wedding
DVD Review: "Aw, Go Climb a Tree!"
Summary: 3 Stars
(2.5) Few know the dysfunctional family like Noah Baumbach. Just like `The Squid and the Whale' before it, `Margot at the Wedding' has at least one parent who is a writer and the head of a family constantly at odds with each other.
Our titled heroine (Nicole Kidman) goes to her sister's wedding with her son, Claude (Zane Pais). Sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is expecting, a fact she confides with Margot, but not with the husband-to-be. A few times in the movie, they describe each other as best friends, yet when they return to each other, they quickly keep score of who hasn't spoken to whom and for how long.
Once they meet at her seaside home, their conversations have a see-saw development, going from renewed affection to arguing and resentment. Everything is close to coming to a boil. Whenever they start to fight, they turn the conversation to something more pleasant, avoiding the seething unpleasantness that's just below the surface.
As for the groom, Malcolm (Jack Black, in easily the best role I've seen him play to date), is a psychological disaster. In an early scene, we find a testy man-child who loses his temper over poor play and quick losses in a double-team game of croquet. Besides fluent cussing over the most mundane of circumstances, he expresses infantile needs and pet peeves in spurts and fits. Often after an argument with Pauline, Malcolm blurts out, "Let's..." [well, do it, except in words I won't repeat.]
And everyone has his or her own agenda in this movie. Margot is a writer who hooks up with Dick, someone she has a writer's interview with and for whom she develops a crush. (And like in 'Junebug,' he's conveniently close to the family reunion.) Ironically, her estranged husband, Jim (John Turturro) seems the most grounded of this sordid bunch. He'd like to reconcile with her in Vermont and comes to Pauline's house to coax her back, but she is too infatuated with Dick and too wrapped up in herself to appreciate his thoughtful gift of warm slippers. Meanwhile, Claude is sorting through his particularly difficult adolescence with his cousin, Ingrid, who share some of the most open discussions in the whole movie.
The movie is episodic and has an emotional, forward moving story, but while the pace is admirable, the developments are on a turn organic and haphazard. The Voglers, their neighbors across the fence, seem backward in a way that comes off crude to them, but the contrast is meant to illustrate two different kinds of crude. (Their clashes are almost red-state, blue state in nature.)
Which brings us to manners. Malcolm is self-forgetful as we see him draw pornographic art while conversation ensues at the table. (His rebuke brings about a rare moment when he truly can see his own failings.) Margot takes Claude aside and brow beats him for not offering to help the hosts more often. The boy's resentment pours through at those times when his proud mother is caught in an ignominious situation. She has affection for him, but it seems based on her need for him, rather than a natural love. For her part, Margot is a serial breaker of promises. Her blunt honesty is often uncalled for and goes beyond courage or charity. Without divulging some of those secrets, she comes off as a bit of a snob. (Anyone who chastises her hosts for not filling up the ice cube trays has her own work cut out for herself.)
Yet, honesty does have a mixed effect in this cinematic offering. Margot is right about Malcolm and a few other things I won't go into here, but the angst of alienation comes out on top, just like 'The Squid and the Whale,' which seems to me to be more of an magnum opus compared to this film. However, I must admit that I enjoyed this movie somewhat, even if I objectively feel it is not quite good enough. And to their credit there are plenty of details and developments I've left out. I'm on the fence on this one, folks. How they get us absorbed in such obnoxious characters is quite a feat in itself, but the results are going to be an acquired taste.
(The previews got me into this cinematic adventure. They don't ruin the story either, but, after seeing the film, it surely doesn't give one a reason to see the rest. There`s Malcolm throwing his croquet mallet in the water; Margot's up a tree; and Pauline follows Margot with those great lines, "No, you haven't kept your mouth shut. No, you haven't kept your MOUTH shut!" How could you not want to see this movie?)
(The music is distinctive here, too, but the opposite of 'The Squid and the Whale'. In the former film, we heard the likes of avant-garde classics like Lou Reed's "Street Hassle" and Dean Wareham's version of Pink Floyd's "Hey You". Here on 'Margot...' we are offered delightfully cheesy numbers, such as Steve Forbert's "Romeo's Tune," Gilbert O' Sullivan's "Clair," and parodies of pop music like Stephen Bishop's "On and On". This aspect left me in stitches.)
Description of Margot at the Wedding
Margot Zeller (Nicole Kidman) is a short story writer with a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue. On the eve of her estranged sister Pauline?s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) wedding to unemployed musician/artist/depressive Malcolm (Jack Black) at the family seaside home, Margot shows up unexpectedly to rekindle the sisterly bond and offer her own brand of "support." What ensues is a nakedly honest and subversively funny look at family dynamics.Bestsellers in DVD
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