Customer Reviews

A Wedding [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Altman's technique of interweaving plots is perfectly suited to weddings, one-time events where participants, all with their own axes to grind, clash. Filmed in pre-politically correct 1978, this film simply gets better with age. The all-star cast is a joy, especially Lillian Gish and Mia Farrow, who plays a pubescent nymphomaniac.

Unlike Short Cuts or Ready to Wear, but like Nashville and Gosford Manor, this is an Altman film where it all comes together and works. Good stuff.

It is. I could go downstairs right now and watch "A Wedding"--for the upteenth time--and enjoy it all over again. I LOVE this film--even more than Altman's masterpiece, "Nashville". I saw "A Wedding" in the theater when I was a teenager--and, of course, I adored Carol Burnett (still do), so I had to see it. And I believe it was the first Altman film I ever saw, and from that moment on, I was a devoted fan of his.

"A Wedding" has over 40 main characters and lots of plots and subplots, but in a nutshell, it's about a young couple's wedding day that brings together both their families. Ms. Burnett plays the mother of the bride, Tulip, and she's just perfect in the role, which allows her to be hysterically funny and very dramatic. The legendary Lillian Gish plays the dying matriarch who remains upstairs in her bedroom throughout the entire film as various family members pay her a visit. Mia Farrow--in one of her best roles--plays Carol's daughter (the sister of the bride)--she's a mute troubled girl who causes major problems for her family. Desi Arnaz, Jr. (Lucy's handsome son) plays the groom, Pam Dawber (before "Mork & Mindy") plays Desi's ex-girlfriend and the delightful Geraldine Chaplin plays the frantic wedding coordinator--she's comic perfection in this film. Those are just a few of the many terrific actors in "A Wedding", which is very dark, very funny, very disturbing and very entertaining.

Does that sound like a good time to you? If so, then you're invited to attend "A Wedding". I think you'll enjoy yourself.

Altman's follow-up to NASHVIILE (after having done THREE WOMEN in between) promised to do for the American family and the class system what NASHVILLE itself did for pop culture and democracy. The film doesn't live up to the standard of the earlier film by a long shot, and is much too wild and woolly to suit its topic. Yet it does have some great moments of redemption.

The film explores an afternoon at the home of one of the great wealthy old families in Chicago--the Sloans--as Dino Corelli (Desi Arnaz, Jr.), the grandson of the family's elderly matriarch Netty (Lillian Gish), marries "Muffin" Brenner (Amy Stryker), the brace-faced daughter of a newly wealthy Kentucky trucking company owner. The scenes near the beginning of the wedding guests frantically trying to find bathrooms in the Sloan mansion after the ceremony are as good as anything Altman's ever done. But the film loses a great deal of focus after that: it seems to be missing a center (not enough is done with either the groom or the bride--despite Stryker's promising performance--to make you care enough about either of them). And some of the bits, such as those involving the crazy security team hired to protect the wedding gifts, belong in another film altogether. The film's great redemption is Carol Burnett's performance as Muffin's mother Tulip, a deeply conventional (yet very likable) middle American woman whose life is turned upside down when the groom's wealthy uncle tells her he's fallen in love with her at first sight. At first shocked and (literally) nauseated, Tulip becomes slowly intrigued as she begins to see a possibility for her life she never imagined before. The emotional arc her character takes in the film is amazing: although Burnett's performance has some similarities to her work on her comedy show, it is much more subtle and fleshed out. Her Tulip Brenner, like the best characters in NASHVILLE, is someone you wonder about long after the movie is over: she seems like a real and fully developed person.

I got a copy of "A Wedding" when it was included in the Robert Altman Collection. The packaging included in the collection had the original artwork from the movie poster with the three cherubs doing the "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" bit. But the artwork on this individual release has individual pictures of stars that are suppose to correspond to their names. But Vittorio Gassman's picture has Howard Duff's name above it! Tacky and careless!..... Love the movie, but glad I have the original artwork.

This movie is a little slow the first half hour, but if you like altman's comedic style, this will be one of your favorites. I've seen this movie about 30 times. It's gets better and better.

I had not seen this movie for 32 years. It was very timely since my own wedding was a few months away, and I was also
from Louisville, KY. Since I also was a big fan of Robert Altman, the movie was always very special to me and I enjoyed
watching it again.

A Wedding is as useful a preparation for a large family gathering (wedding, funeral, anniversary, grandparent birthday) in its way as, say, "Mr Blandings Builds his Dreamhouse" is for a would-be remodeler. It won't make the experience you live through any better, but you may be humoured to know you are not alone in having had to go through it.

-dB

Altman chose a site just a couple of miles from my home in Lake Bluff, Illinois for the location of the mansion in this film. So naturally I was very interested in how it would turn out. The director's touch is unerring here. I was very quickly drawn into the subtley of its approach. He surprised me once or twice with outrageously funny moments. Lauren Hutton is a delight. Less overt storytelling than in the better known Altman classics perhaps, but no less an artfully crafted film. The ending is a quite effective. Worth multiple viewings, this one could sneak up on you.

I never thought I'd say this about an Altman film, but there is way too much busyness going on in A Wedding. Unlike Nashville -- an unfair comparison for sure since it may be my single favorite movie -- A Wedding has too many peripheral characters, who not only are hard to keep straight -- not uncommon in an Altman film --, but also are in the end not worth the effort. The front and center ones like Carol Burnett as the bride's mother and Geraldine Chaplin as the wedding coordinator determined to make a success of the failing day work pretty well, but the whole ensemble doesn't jell until dangerously close to the end of A Wedding. And, unlike in many Altman films including even the middling ones, there is no single scene or two that stuns you with its easy brilliance -- think the outdoor rainy ballet scene in The Company as the umbrellas go up one by one in the audience while the troupe continues its flawless performance despite the sudden storm. The near final shot with Chaplin ruminating at the front of the house on how a wedding always changes things comes closest to that peak Altman style.

I thoroughly enjoy Robert Altman's style of film, where he throws between 10 and 20 rather odd characters together and then watches them interact. This film is not great, but there are some truly classic lines and situations! An interesting cast, and definitely offers a humorous / black comedy slant on attending a wedding. Carol Burnett is a hoot!