PREMISE
In 1930s Chicago, Frankenstein asks Dr. Euphronius to help create a companion. They give life to a murdered woman as The Bride, sparking romance, police interest, and radical social change.
THE GOOD STUFF
JESSE F****** BUCKLEY- Nothing shocking here, Buckley, the newly minted Oscar winner (yes, I know the Oscars are a couple of days away at this point, but I’m going to go ahead and say what we all know is going to happen) is as amazing as she always is. As a performer, she is gifted enough to make such an overwrought, dialogue-heavy film as engrossing as it can possibly be. She makes every single cringe-worthy and eyeball-rolling moment in this film almost dignified with how hard she’s working. This is a very physical and manic dual performance as both Mary Shelley and The Bride. It’s not easy to steal scenes from Christian Bale. But she does with every scene that she’s in with him. In a vacuum, what she does here is amazing.
Sarsgaard and Cruz – Perhaps the most entertaining performances in this movie come from these two legends, who are playing two private investigators chasing after what soon becomes the Bonnie and Clyde type romance of Frankenstein’s monster and The Bride. Whereas The Bride’s side of the story is heavy-handed, preachy, overtly poetic, and visually messy, the story of the two detectives who chase them explores the gender dynamics of the time in a much subtler and more precise manner. It’s like two different films are going on, and Maggie Gyllenhaal really cares about the one where she gets to go artistically crazy. Peter Sarsgaard has always been an unsung hero-type supporting actor in a lot of the films he is a part of, and that’s very much the case here. But I love that Penelope Cruz has turned into an actress who rocks these unflashy supporting performances lately (ferrari, the invite, murder on the Orient Express), and she is more often than not the best part of the movies she’s in. That is certainly the case here.
THE BAD STUFF
THE BRIDE – The Bride is a character who is both feral and schizophrenic. The duality of her personalities leads to many abrasive traits in both Mary Shelley and The Bride. The Bride likes to scream a lot, talk in a high-pitched Midwestern accent, and use exclamation points. When the Mary Shelley side of her personality tends to take over, this turns into multi-syllabic, literary-sounding, drastically overwritten monologues in an aggressive British accent.
On more than a few occasions, these two personalities clash in one barrage of supernatural word vomit that The Bride tends to have. There’s so much rambling dialogue in this film. So many scenes exist where a character could have said two or three sentences and gotten the point across about what the point of the scene was, but instead jumps to a monologue. The Bride, as a film, has so much going on that I understand why it exists. But this was not entertaining in any way, shape, or form.
THE UGLY STUFF
AN UNNECESSARY REMIX – IMO the best movie to compare this with is the 1995 film natural Born Killers. A film that I thoroughly detest. Watching this film, I was reminded of why I detested that film. It’s one of those movies that really think they’re telling a deep story, when really they’re just insinuating deep ideas in a film. I do believe there’s a difference.
This movie does, in fact, suggest that societal change occurs, given the journeys of the Frankenstein monster and The Bride. I would assume that would be the point of the film to see how much their journey is affecting the corrupt world society around them, but other than a very brief montage early in the second act of the film, we kind of only get told that through other characters briefly, and whenever people decide to slim newspapers on the table that have headlines and big bold letters saying that there is societal change happening around them. I think there would have been a lot more power behind both NATURAL BORN KILLERS and THE BRIDE in showing just how that change manifests in the world instead of showing the main two characters in various montages of cuddling and kissing. At the same time, pop music plays in the background, and the cameras spin around them.
Artistically speaking, this is nowhere near as self-aggrandizing or artistically masturbatory as natural Born Killers was, but aside from that, there’s a lot of s*** that’s the same.
**************
Ultimately, I’m disappointed. I wasn’t exactly expecting this to be like one of the 10 best films of the year or anything like that, but given this cast, this story, that trailer, and this director… There was justifiable hype. Yes, it’s Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second feature, but so what? The Lost daughter was not an accident in how great it was. I still believe that. I don’t believe this is a case of Gyllenhaal biting off more than she can chew when it comes to directing something.
I think this is the cinematic equivalent of a really good-looking steak. It looks good coming off the grill, and it smells great, only to find out that it’s overcooked as hell, way too salty, and barely edible.
THE BRIDE! is in theaters now
