Much like with The Woman In The Window, the latest from writer/director John Patrick Shanley feels like a film that wants to immediately let the audience know how much of a shambles they’re in for right from the start. Here, that takes the form of opening narration from Christopher Walken as an Irish farmer talking about how he’s already dead, but will stick around because he died in the middle of telling a story. This is the first piece of dialogue we get at about two minutes into this hour-and-a-half feature, and it’s an apt introduction for a film where I am struggling to figure out how anyone even reached this point, let alone thought it was a good idea.
What Then Came You did for Scotland, Wild Mountain Thyme ends up doing for Ireland, as it’s a conspicuously American perspective on the country and what are assumed to be its traditions. While Irish actors take up a fair amount of the supporting cast, along with Jamie Dornan as the male romantic lead and Dearbhla Molloy as the mother of the love interest, there’s also Emily Blunt and the aforementioned Walken and their attempts at the accent to contend with. Blunt admittedly does okay, if dipping into Welsh a few too many times, and as someone who knows the struggle first-hand, her singing the song that gives the film its name in an Irish accent works pretty well; always good to hear her sing on-screen.
Walken, though? He’s an actor who famously sounds out of sorts in his own native language and vernacular, so not only saddling him with this accent but introducing the entire film with it wasn’t the best idea. And yet, part of me wishes that he went even more ridiculous with it, as that would at least give this film some semblance of entertainment value. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there’s more than enough treacle to go around and the final reel contains a conversation between Blunt’s Rosemary and Dornan’s Anthony that feels like a private bet on how much ludicrous nonsense could be squeezed into a single exchange. It’s just that, outside of a few stray blips of unintentional chuckles, this is so bloody drab that it makes standing out in the rain seem like the more exciting prospect.
Beyond how stale the main ‘conflict’ is, involving Walken and who he’s going to leave his farm to, between Anthony and Jon Hamm as the American cousin, the main romance that is the main drive when the film feels like it is quite bereft of chemistry between the actors. I refrain from saying it’s the worst I’ve seen from Dornan as far as unconvincing romance goes, but between the bizarre ‘she thinks she’s a swan, he thinks he’s a honeybee’ attempts at connection and how Dornan’s natural accent just highlights how out-of-place the visitors are, there is no passion or even believability that this relationship is worthwhile, either to make official or even to witness from the sidelines.
For a filmmaker whose catalogue ranges from Doubt to We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story, I can’t say I’m surprised at how all-over-the-place this turned out (along with how this is his first feature since Doubt back in ’08), but it’s not even the fun kind of messy. It’s a hell of a trick to establish yourself with Christopher Walken doing his best fiddle-dee-dee, and have that lead to disappointment because wrongheaded laughs are about as good as this film’s reception could possibly get. Only under the influence of certain herbs not mentioned in the title could I ever see this being watchable, and even then, nodding off would be damn-near unavoidable.
No comments:
Post a Comment