Rachel Getting Married 2008.avi

Theatrical Review: Anne Hathaway looks like a movie star, but more often than not acts like a studious, earnest head of the class. Rather than filtering characters through some kind of star persona or actorly invention, she does what is required with such technical precision that her performances lose any spark of spontaneity (that's why she didn't get any laughs playing Agent 99 in Get Smart; she somehow managed to play the straight woman role too straight).

But something happens in Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married. Hathaway plays Kym, the black sheep of an upper-middle-class Connecticut family who has left rehab in time to attend her sister Rachel's wedding. This isn't simply a case of an actress obviously playing against type, although she clearly is. Hathaway teases her studiousness out into self-centered, self-destructive prickliness; Kym is like a teacher's pet, begging to be rewarded for her self-aware (but caustic and uncomfortable) humor, and her self-serious (yet somehow pompous) parroting of Narcotics Anonymous wisdom.