Rachel Getting Married
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: October 3, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
32
Mixed:
3
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah Young
A film whose lightness of touch rides a wave of family conflict to perfectly balance smiles and tears. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
A triumph -- Demme's finest work since "The Silence of the Lambs," and a movie that tingles with life. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
It may be painful at times, but Rachel Getting Married sure is one heck of a party. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The life that swirls around Kym before, during and after her sister's densely populated, wonderfully detailed wedding seems to have been caught on the fly in all its sweetness, sadness and joy. (In its free-form style the film constitutes an elaborate homage to Robert Altman.) Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
A film that is both deceptively modest and deeply resonant. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Intriguing, disturbing, uplifting evocation. In fact, to watch this film is to engage in participatory art -- for better and for worse, through sickness and in health, we're drawn deeply in. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
I've never seen a movie with this mixture of fullness and desolation. Rachel Getting Married is a masterpiece. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
A friend asked: "Wouldn't you love to attend a wedding like that?" In a way, I felt I had. Yes, I began to feel absorbed in the experience. A few movies can do that, can slip you out of your mind and into theirs. Read full review
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
True to the characters and their conflicts, the resolution is neither neat nor expected. True to Demme, it's honest and generous and very human. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
It's not a terribly disciplined exercise--the rehearsal dinner and wedding ceremony go on so long I felt like I was watching "The Deer Hunter"--but the performances are outstanding, especially Hathaway's and Debra Winger's in a small but devastating turn as her chilly, resentful mother. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Hathaway carries you on an emotional whirligig that can be horrifying and funny, hopeful and devastating. Read full review
90
VarietyRonnie Scheib
Brimming with energy, elan and the unpredictability of his "Something Wild," Jonathan Demme's triumphant Rachel Getting Married may just lay the wedding film to rest, being such a hard act to follow. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Best and most unexpected of all, Rachel Getting Married dares to mix the bitter with the sweet. It understands that life-altering situations like weddings not only bring out the worst in human behavior but also the finest. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
It’s a small movie, and in some ways a very sad one, but it has an undeniable and authentic vitality, an exuberance of spirit, that feels welcome and rare. Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Most of the time, Demme's deliberately unstable mixture of moods and genres produces electric results. Rachel Getting Married takes a familiar subject--the raw nerves of American family life with--and draws fresh blood. Read full review
90
Film ThreatMatthew Sorrento
As successful as this family drama is, Demme proves himself to be quite a multitasker. With the skill of an ethnographer and the passion of a sentimentalist, he celebrates the traditions of marriage in a handful of tender set pieces. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The acting is of the highest caliber. Winger, magnificent and too long between films, is a volcano of repressed anger. Read full review
88
New York PostLou Lumenick
As Kym, Hathaway runs an astonishing gamut of emotions, from anger to fragility and from hurt to regret - without ever seeming actress-y, like Nicole Kidman. Start clearing that mantelpiece, Anne. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
A triumph of ambience, Rachel Getting Married is the first narrative feature since the 1980s from director Jonathan Demme that feels like a party--bittersweet, but a party nonetheless. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Jonathan Demme's superb rule-bending, heartrending and family-mending drama - ends with a wedding, it resists conventions as brazenly as does the bride's sister. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
A portrait of a family reeling with pain and resentment -- and rising to the challenge of dealing with it head-on. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
The longer it goes on, the more you're swept up into the jet stream of good feeling. Read full review
80
SlateDana Stevens
Hathaway transcends her usual complacency in this role and resists the temptation of using Kym's (and her own) wounded-bird appeal to let the character off the hook. Read full review
80
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
The sprawling cast, the naturalistic, overlapping dialogue (here by screenwriter Jenny Lumet, daughter of director Sidney) and the swirling action: it seemed pure Robert Altman. Read full review
80
EmpireNick de Semlyen
One of Hollywood's forgotten masters and one of its brightest new actresses team for what could well be an Oscar wild card. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
The upshot to a ticking bomb is that it only explodes the once, but Rachel's sister, Kym (Hathaway), goes off again and again. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
At times, the movie gets bogged down in minutia but the emotions evoked and captured are as honest and brutal as one is likely to find on film. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
At its best in scenes featuring Hathaway's mercurial character. It's a triumphant and darkly nuanced role for her and a departure from the more lighthearted comedic performances she has given. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
With a minimum of actorly fuss, Winger shows us the rage and hurt inside this overcontrolled woman. It's a great piece of acting – high drama at the service of the highest talent. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The movie's few false notes come from Lumet's script, which can be overly explanatory. Because Demme is opting for present-tense realism, the characters are forced to fill us in on who did what when to whom, why, and how. Read full review
70
SalonStephanie Zacharek
The picture may end a little too breezily, but Demme knows we have to be left with some hope for these wandering souls. Someday, they'll find their way home; it just may not be the same thing as going home. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Alfred Hitchcock once said, "Drama is life with the dull bits left out." Well, Rachel Getting Married is drama with the dull bits left in. Read full review
60
Village VoiceElla Taylor
A middlebrow domestic drama beating its wings against an experimental frame. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
A minor work, but so menaced by distress that the characters take every opportunity to dance the dark away. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
A fine ensemble piece, but a maddening and unjustified length. Read full review
30
TimeRichard Schickel
The result is a mess. Kym, in Hathaway's unsympathetic performance, is an annoyingly sour observer of the proceedings, a time bomb everyone hopes will not explode before the marriage is completed. Read full review
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