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Margot at the Wedding Our rating: Your rating:   MPAA rating: Not Rated (for sexual content and language) Genre: Comedy, Drama Theater release: November 16, 2007 by Paramount Vantage Directed by: Noah Baumbach Runtime: 1 hour 32 minutes Cast: Nicole Kidman (Margot), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Pauline), Jack Black (Malcolm), John Turturro (Jim), Ciarán Hinds (Dick), Zane Pais (Claude), Flora Cross (Ingrid), Hallet Feiffer (Maisy) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Margot at the Wedding is powerfully acted, sharply written, and extraordinary in its character development and detail. But despite all of these strengths, it will leave audiences feeling like they just paid ten bucks to swallow a cup of cold gravel.

It's possible that Margot could be an example of reverse-psychology when it comes to the traditional family movie. By immersing us in one of the cruelest, most hateful families ever to grace the silver screen—and then by holding us under those murky waters for ninety-two minutes—writer/director Noah Baumbach will make almost anyone grateful for the family they have, no matter how damaged it might be.

And it's a shame, really, because Baumbach is an immensely talented storyteller. His 1995 debut Kicking and Screaming (not to be confused with the 2005 Will Ferrell soccer-dad comedy) was an insightful, hilarious, and moving little movie about post-collegiate crisis and the hard work of moving on into a meaningful adult life. Two years ago, he returned with The Squid and the Whale, an observant and heartbreaking comedy about two boys caught in the crossfire between impossibly selfish and cruel parents.

Nicole Kidman as Margot

Where The Squid and the Whale felt like a lament, an exposé of the damage that divorce can do to children, Margot at the Wedding feels almost like an act of revenge. It feels like the artist has opened up a journal where he chronicled all of the evils and ugly misdeeds committed by family members and friends. It may be true-to-life, but the effect of all of this harsh realism is a miserable moviegoing experience.

The title character, played with extraordinary complexity by Nicole Kidman, is a successful novelist who is absolutely insufferable in real life. Her books are ways in which she can vent her own misery, but it doesn't seem to be doing her any good.

When the film begins, Margot and her son Claude (Zane Pais) are off to "show support" for Margot's sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is preparing to marry her fiancé , a loveable oaf named Malcolm (Jack Black).

But Margot's idea of "support" is the movie's idea of a joke. She cannot contain her contempt for Malcolm, nor can she conceal her desire to tear this relationship down. "He's like guys we rejected when we were sixteen," she sneers, doing her best to sabotage the pending nuptials.

And yet, Pauline and Malcolm make a fine match compared to Margot and her lover, Dick (Ciairin Hinds). Margot—who is married—tells everyone that she and Dick are "collaborating," but Dick's an arrogant and cruel man, quick to judge and punish others, and doesn't hesitate to launch a humiliating attack against a friend in front of a live audience.

Jennifer Jason Leigh as Pauline, Jack Black as Malcolm

Pauline and Malcolm are living in the Hamptons estate where the sisters grew up, and chairs for the wedding guests are being arranged in the yard, beneath a grand old tree that a younger Margot used to climb. If you suspect that the tree is a symbol, you're right. And you're likely to guess what will happen to that tree before this storm is over.

As if this family doesn't have enough trouble among themselves, Margot turns a skirmish between Pauline and her creepy neighbors into a full-scale war. She's quick to intervene if she sees a child being mistreated—a clue, perhaps, about the source of her psychological disorders.

But Baumbach doesn't seem interested in investigating where such fractures come from. He just moves from one nasty exchange to the next. There is no variation in tone: It's just characters spewing bile at all available targets and only occasionally collapsing into one another for something like comfort. At one point, Margot looks out the window to see the neighbors carving up a pig in what looks like some sort of cultic practice. They might be carving up animals, but Margot and company are slaughtering each other.

Margot and Pauline in one of the film's few light moments

And when Margot retreats into the house, frightened by the consequences of her own meddling, she starts popping pills that don't belong to her and snooping through her sister's underwear drawers, trying to expose more ammunition to use in her "shock and awe" campaigns against everybody in sight. Then she sits around hating herself—before starting all over again with the same tactics.

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