Wild Mountain Thyme (2020)
Directed by John Patrick Shanley
Headstrong farmer Rosemary Muldoon has her heart set on winning her neighbour Anthony Reilly's love. The problem is, Anthony seems to have inherited a family curse, and remains oblivious to his beautiful admirer. Stung by his father's plans to sell the family farm to his American nephew, Anthony is jolted into pursuing his dreams.
4 connections found
View:
4 films that influenced Wild Mountain Thyme
What critics say influenced Wild Mountain Thyme
“Wild Mountain Thyme” has some parallels to the John Ford classic “The Quiet Man” with its much locally debated marriage and an American looking to buy into his birthright, but with the exception of the strong female determining its outcome, it’s better to stick with the old ways.
When the trailer for “Wild Mountain Thyme” hit a few weeks ago, it was largely derided as looking like nothing more than a cartoonish portrayal of Irish lives with all the actors sporting ridiculously unconvincing accents (even co-star Jamie Dornan, who actually is Irish) while spouting blather that made “The Quiet Man” looks restrained by comparison.
“Wild Mountain Thyme” is John Ford’s “The Quiet Man” re-imagined as an even more cliched and sentimental Gaelic rom-com.
That is until Emily — who’s damned tired of his wishy-washy vacillations — pushes him into a corner (during a fierce rainstorm that mimics the one in “The Quiet Man”) and demands that he reveal his feelings for her.
A remote farming community congregates around the church, a cemetery and a pub where you almost expect The Quiet Man ’s Victor McLaglen to be ordering a pint.
At the Kendall and available on demand, the film is set in an Ireland so green your eyes may bleed – it was shot in the County Mayo countryside with an opening flyover along the Cliffs of Moher – and in general has a blarney quotient to make “The Quiet Man” look like a documentary.
Derisive reaction to the film's trailer in the Emerald Isle suggests it's less likely to be remembered alongside The Quiet Man than Far and Away , the 1992 Hollywoodized Oirish epic with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, secretly dubbed by wags on the production crew as Fartin' Away .
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Far and away, these are the worst Irish accents since Far and Away .
That gives it an automatic cache of precociousness, but after Richard Curtis blew up this cottage industry with increasingly ambitious projects like Four Weddings and a Funeral , Notting Hill and About Time , there’s less value in exploring the idiosyncrasies of accented lovers in contemporary pastoral settings like the Irish countryside in which this film takes place if they’re not melded with some detailed and meaningful character study.
Moreso than its pedigree as the latest film by the Oscar-winning writer of Moonstruck , Wild Mountain Thyme follows in the estimable tradition of quaint UK imports that tag into universal laughs or tug enough at the heartstrings to earn a worldwide audience, like Waking Ned Devine , The Full Monty , Circle of Friends , and The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain .
Shanley won an Oscar for penning Moonstruck , and drew a nomination when he adapted his stage play Doubt for the screen.
That said, if Shanley’s previous romantic fantasies, “Moonstruck” and the great “Joe Vs. the Volcano,” have shown, he is not one for subtlety or half-measures when it comes this kind of storytelling.
But, much like Shanley’s other star-crossed lover rom-com, Moonstruck , tradition is a hard thing to break free from.
Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley (“Moonstruck”) and based on Shanley’s stage play “Outside Mullingar,” this is an odd duck of a movie, set in present day but firmly rooted in a near-mythical, old-timey Ireland where everyone speaks as if they know they’re characters in a fable and there’s nothing they can do about it, so why not just embrace the utter Irish cliché-ness of it all, and how’s about another pint and maybe a song?