I've said it before and I'll say it again, one of my favorite things in the world is when I find a movie I absolutely despise. I feel that writing about these gives me a little more "street cred" when it comes to my reviews. Without these hideous dumpster fires it would seem like I love everything I consume.
So thank you The Bride for being a train that is carrying an infinite number of dumpsters that are on fire that crashes into another train also carrying an infinite number of dumpsters that are on fire creating the ultimate train wreck dumpster fire!
Sadly, The Bride was so bad that I cannot honestly say I watched the entirety of one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It was so bad that it never even crossed all the way into "funny bad". As a result, my wife and I had to fast forward about 30 minutes of the movie in order to maintain our sanity and not completely piss away are entire evening. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of times I was laughing _at _the movie, but even this got tedious after about an hour. When we paused to see what we should do, we found there was still almost an hour left and we just couldn't piss away our time like that. So we hit the fast forward button to see the terrible ending.
Let me get this out of the way. I'm a dude. I get that I may not have been the intended audience. This movie was clearly trying to be a feminist The Joker. Well I happen to believe that "men of quality do not fear equality" so I guess maybe I am a portion of the intended audience. I enjoy many "women empowerment" movies. Heck I enjoy most empowerment movies as I believe in true equality. But there are good empowerment movies and there are bad ones... and there are terrible ones. The Bride is a disastrous one.
Here are the positives: Jessie Buckley is actually very good at playing Ida/The Bride. She definitely channels Golem for Lord of the Rigs, but she does it well. There is a scene after Franky and The Bride become Bonnie and Clyde that shows some newspapers and the headlines. These are puns based on some cool rock bands. And... that's it. There is nothing else remotely good about the movie.
I really like Christian Bale. I have seen many movies where his performance saved an otherwise bad script. He throws himself into every role... usually resulting in the crew suffering from his perfectionism. He definitely threw himself into the role of Frank... it just so happened what he threw himself into was a flaming pile of garbage. Considering what a simple character he plays, it would be almost impossible for a good actor not to over act. Sadly Bale could not help himself and milks this stupid character for every drop of emotion and passion. His taking the role so seriously actually resulted in most of my laughs at the movie.
I also really like Annette Benning. But it seems writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal gave every actor the same instruction: over act as much as possible Play this role as if it is deep and has some meaning. Maybe if you act like the character is well written, the audience will believe it. I did not believe it.
Unlike Bale and Benning, I can't stand Penelope Cruz. In my opinion, she is one of the worst actors I have ever seen. I have never seen her be even mildly passable in any role. She did not break that streak with her portrayal of detective Myrna Malloy. She's terrible.
Actual footage of Bale and Buckley laughing at me for spending time on this movie.
Perhaps the worst thing about this movie is that it never decided what it wanted to be. It started with a cool premise. "What if there were a more modernized version of what happened to Frankenstein's monster set in 1930s Chicago?" But should it be a comedy, a drama, and adventure, a tragedy, or an allegory for women's rights? Apparently the answer to that was "yes". The result was it is none of those. If they had gone straight comedy, the scene that spoofs Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein would have been really hilarious. Instead it was ridiculous. If they had gone straight drama, they could have really explored what loneliness does to a person... or monster. If they fully leaned into the Bonnie and Clyde ripoff, it could have been exciting. If they had kept it as the female version of The Joker with the Bride inspiring women to stand up it could have been... well... inspiring.
But instead it stitches together all of these ideas from other movies to try to make one movie. You know, kind of like Frankenstein is stitched together of other people's body parts (see I can be clever too). But in the end, The Bride is a monster that is simply grotesque.
