The Bride!
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s overly ambitious The Bride! presents a wealth of intriguing ideas that quickly wear out their welcome under the writer/director’s scatterbrained guidance.
Unable to do much with an all-star cast and a creative twist on a well-worn story, Gyllenhaal shrugs off good judgment throughout this interminable but allegedly two-hour experiment in which precious few collaborators escape unscathed.
Continuing the long tradition of dubious films with exclamation points in their titles, The Bride! gets off to a bumpy start with the odd but compelling concept of Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley) stuck in an ambiguous purgatory, suddenly ready to continue her Frankenstein story in the 1930s by possessing a random woman named Ida (also played by Buckley) in a Chicago restaurant.
The dual roles are of course a nod to Elsa Lanchester’s work as Shelley and “The Monster's Mate” in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), one of many homages to past iterations of the source novel that never quite gel or reveal much of note via Gyllenhaal’s direction.
Ida’s possession awkwardly manifests as two voices competing for space in a woman we know nothing about, resulting in Buckley switching between Shelley's loud, motormouthed British nonsense (and disruptive bodily movements) and Ida’s desperate pleas for help — all of which plays like a bad Robin Williams stand-up bit.
No sooner is this ill-conceived creation introduced than Ida dies in an accident, which may or may not play a part in none other than Dr. Frankenstein’s century-plus-old monster (Christian Bale) making his way to the Windy City. His objective is to have Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (a borderline catatonic Annette Bening) make him a mate, which leads them to Ida’s corpse and its resurrection as the good doctor's quirky-for-quirk’s-sake maid Greta (Jeannie Berlin) wonders what the heck is going on.
Though Ida sports a cool black splatter on her cheek — the result of spitting up blood after being reanimated — there's otherwise nothing engaging about her or her relationship with her forced partner, whom she dubs Frank. Desperate to experience society together, they inevitably cause trouble and go on the run like a Kmart Bonnie and Clyde, weaving in more influences that torpedo the already skimpy feminist message Gyllenhaal is attempting to convey.
Among them are references to Young Frankenstein, which hit with such obvious thuds that one wishes she'd simply left the Mel Brooks classic alone. Ida mispronouncing “Frankenstein” is one thing, but a sudden, inexplicable homage to the comedy classic’s “Puttin' on the Ritz” sequence ranks as one of the most ill-advised and cringe-inducing choices in 21st century cinema — if not longer.
Impressive period production design by Karen Murphy (Elvis) and nifty effects work as movie-obsessed Frank imagines himself on the silver screen offer some distractions from this trainwreck. But Gyllenhaal's direction is so shoddy that not even cinematographer Lawrence Sher (Joker; Garden State) can save it on a visual level.
Somehow out of this mess arises Det. Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his whip-smart assistant Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz), whose wise-cracking banter offers a much-needed respite from whatever the hell Buckley and Bale think they’re doing. Their involvement in the case and whether or not they have jurisdiction also doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but their chemistry is legit and suggests Gyllenhaal may have missed her calling as a crafter of gumshoe tales.
However, after this dud and the wildly overrated The Lost Daughter, it's going to take some time to trust any project with her name attached as writer and/or director. Perhaps it's time for Gyllenhaal to return her focus to acting, where she's long excelled, and leave filmmaking to artists who know what they're doing.
Grade: D. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hill 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.
(Photo: Warner Bros.)
