Wild Mountain Thyme
It’s been two years since we saw Emily Blunt as the magical Mary Poppins, time she spent making the big-budget Jungle Cruise and A Quiet Place Part II, both long finished but delayed by the COVID-19 closure of most movie theaters. Meanwhile, she also wrapped up a modest romantic charmer, playing a woman farmer named Rosemary whose favorite song provides the movie’s title, Wild Mountain Thyme.
Blunt is paired with equally cast-against-type Jamie Dornan, the steamy Mr. Grey from the already nearly forgotten 50 Shades movies. Dornan plays an insecure Irishman named Anthony (the actor actually is Irish), running the farm next door to Rosemary’s. She's independent and a bit cheeky, while he's brooding and a bit daft. They're meant to be together, as a childhood prelude establishes, but they just can't quite bring themselves to say so, one to the other.
It's the premise of countless movies and novels, but here's it's in the skillful hands of writer-director John Patrick Shanley, the Irish-American who penned the similar Cher-Nic Cage hit Moonstruck 33 years ago. Based on Shanley's play Outside Mullingar, this film is well-aware of its own corniness. Indeed, Shanley invites us to snicker at its romantic tropes — the endless shots of one windswept tree, the horse that can't be tamed, the sunlit rainstorm — as a way of breaking down our defenses against its emotional core.
Some will just keep laughing dismissively, no doubt, but Shanley takes this "star-crossed" thing seriously, and he weaves in some weighty family drama that separates Thyme from the average Nicholas Sparks adaptation. (No softie, Shanley also wrote the Catholic child abuse play and film Doubt.) There’s a stellar supporting cast, led by Christopher Walken as Anthony's father, who delivers the movie’s most sobering plot threads and at least two Oscar-worthy scenes of quiet confession.
Balancing Walken’s intensity is a frivolous turn by Jon Hamm, well deployed as an egocentric American relative to add conflict and build sympathy for our down-to-earth protagonists. As Hamm's appearance suggests, Shanley also salts in a lot of welcome humor along the way, and the movie generates more laughs than some recent comedies.
Not everything works in Thyme — Anthony’s dark secret is a bit of nonsense — but the arc of its plot bends toward romantic capitulation, and a finale with more than a hint of fantasy confirms the movie is more meta-drama than melodrama. Blunt and Dornan both enjoy themselves thoroughly, and so will most viewers.
Grade: B. Now in theaters.
(Photo: Bleecker Street Media)
