As The Bride!, hits the big screen this Friday, it has been branded a ‘catastrophically poor misfire’ and a ‘divisive fever dream’ in scathing reviews by critics.
A selection of film buffs have branded Maggie Gyllenhaal’s latest project as ‘one of the absolute worst movies’ they have had to watch – and not even leading actress Jessie Buckley can save it.
The eagerly anticipated movie, starring Buckley and Christian Bale, has been met with a slew of shocking zero and one-star reviews while The Guardian has stood out from the crowd with four stars.
The New York Post’s zero-star takedown claims the film is ‘slathered in ineptitude’ as the viewers ‘never believes Buckley and Bale in their poorly constructed roles or sympathise with their us-against-the-world plight’.
The Hollywood Report’s review of the ‘wretched mess’ of a movie features an onslaught of fury aimed at Jessie, just as the Irish actress is hoping to bag an Oscar for her role in Hamnet.
Meanwhile The Times’ one-star takedown blasts the leading actress’ work as ‘astonishingly poor’ and claimed her work in ‘Hamnet might be viewed in a new and unflattering light’ following The Bride!
The reaction has not been entirely negative however, with the BBC branding the movie ‘exhilarating’ while The Guardian claimed ‘without Jessie, the film would have been lacking an enjoyable spectacle of married bliss’.
As The Bride!, hits the big screen this Friday, it has been branded a ‘catastrophically poor misfire’ and a ‘divisive fever dream’ in scathing reviews by critics
A selection of film buffs have branded Maggie Gyllenhaal’s project as ‘one of the absolute worst movies’ they have watched – and not even leading star Jessie Buckley can save it
The Bride! follows Mary Shelley (Buckley) as she appears to influence, and occasionally possess, a woman named Ida (also Buckley), a Depression-era sex worker who dies in an impressively gnarly stair-fall.
She is buried in a pauper’s grave, in the dress she expired in, but is resurrected thanks to Frankenstein’s Monster (Christian Bale), known here as Frank, who convinces Dr Euphronius (Annette Bening) to create him a bride (Buckley again).
After a violent encounter with one of the many men that attempt to sexually assault the titular Bride, the reanimated pair become Bonnie & Clyde style criminals and go on a road trip in order to evade law enforcement (Peter Sarsgaard, Penélope Cruz) and continue their unconvincing love story.
Alongside a shocking zero-star review, New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski wrote: ‘The Bride!, one of the absolute worst movies I have had the displeasure of watching in this job.
‘It’s a struck-by-lightning shocker to see a big Hollywood studio’s riff on a story as old and overexplored as ‘Frankenstein’ — starring an Oscar winner and two nominees, no less — be so slathered in ineptitude.
‘Bale and Buckley’s acting is committed, oh yes. To a fault. Never do you believe them in these poorly constructed roles. Buckley especially needed to be reined in. When she can’t think of anything else to do, she throws her head back and laughs maniacally.
‘Bale blends Batman and Gollum.’
The Hollywood Reporters’s David Rooney states: ‘The very capable ensemble, all of whom have done impressive work elsewhere, mostly gets smothered by the over-conceptualized, over-intellectualized approach to the material.
‘There’s a glimmer of pathos, nicely played by Bale, but pretty much everything here feels like it’s being done for effect rather than to convey real emotion.
‘That’s the case especially with Buckley’s shouty performance in the title role. What a strange quirk of timing that the Irish actress will likely be winning an Oscar for Hamnet just as this wretched mess is unleashed upon the world.’
In another withering takedown of the movie, Empire’s Leila Latif said: ‘Ultimately what the film most exudes is incompetence. Despite flashes of glory, the editing is chaotic. Character appearances and costumes appear out of sequence.
‘The Bride! is a crushing disappointment that almost obscures the brilliance and sensitivity director Maggie Gyllenhaal displayed in The Lost Daughter.’
Meanwhile The Telegraph’s Tim Robey penned: ‘So much talent has been wasted here.
‘It could have explored the idea that the dead Ida has been non-consensually exploited. Or Shelley’s fury at the patriarchy could have exploded out of Buckley’s fizzing Bride. What happens instead is humdrum, generic and all the more unsatisfying.’
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman has been put off watching another Frankenstein movie again following reviewing The Bride!
He wrote that the ‘feminist take-off on the Frankenstein myth could have used more storytelling.
‘The movie was all baroque production design and no pulse. It was so top-heavy with lavish retro pomposity that it made me never want to see another ‘Frankenstein’ movie again.’
In another withering one-star takedown, George Simpson’s review for the Express described the movie as an ‘absolute shocker’.
He wrote: ‘It’s difficult to fathom just how The Bride! was greenlit, considering the self-indulgent nonsense I had to withstand over its two-hour runtime.
‘To be frank(enstein), I’d already had enough of this film by the end of the opening sequence.’
Despite the sea of negativity, The New York Time’s Manohla Dargis claimed Gyllenhaal’s movie is ‘relatable for women’.
She wrote: ‘The whole thing is exhausting, at times wincingly self-indulgent, entirely heartfelt and yet also relatable, perhaps especially for women who, when confronted with unrelenting monstrousness, need to give birth to their own monsters.’
On a more positive note the BBC’s Caryn James, who gave the movie four-stars, wrote: ‘Buckley gives a ferocious performance, but it takes a while to believe in the Bride’s character, not because she doesn’t know herself but because Gyllenhaal’s stylistic shifts keep us at a distance.
‘For much of the film the Bride is more an idea of female empowerment than a person, and the presence of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, doesn’t help.
‘The film is gigantic in scale, and throughout, even when The Bride! is short on emotion, its bold vision is exhilarating.’
The movie, starring Buckley and Christian Bale, has been met with a slew of shocking zero and one-star reviews while The Guardian has stood out from the crowd with four stars
Despite the poor reviews, it has been revealed that Gyllenhaal was met with studio pushback on the film’s depiction of sexual violence.
The writer/director noted that what is depicted in the movie, is ‘a little bit pulled back’ from the original script after Warner Bros ‘asked to take some’ of the sexually violent scenes out following test screenings.
She told The New York Times: ‘There’s sexual violence. There’s violence, because it’s a big studio movie, we tested and tested it. We had big screenings in malls, where people came to see it, which I had never been a part of as an actress or a director before. So fascinating.
‘And one of the things that they brought up was the violence: Is it too violent? And I was talking about it with a girlfriend, who said, ‘I wonder if you had been a man making this movie, if you would have had the same response.’
She added: ‘I am sure that I have been thoughtful about this particular subject, and yet it will be hard to watch. I think we can take it.’
Read the full article here
