AND MRS - Mark Reviews Movies

And Mrs, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 19, 2024

It really all comes down to And Mrs not knowing what to do with its weird but intriguing conceit. That has a woman fighting to have her marriage legally recognized. There is, however, a significant hitch: The would-be groom is dead.

There's nothing untoward or unseemly about this potential arrangement. Gemma (Aisling Bea) was going to marry Nathan (Colin Hanks) relatively soon. The venue was chosen and paid for. Gemma had her dress selected. Nathan insisted that the couple should write their own vows, and given how excited he was to get married in general and to marry Gemma specifically, they were probably prepared in his mind or on paper. For some reason, neither Gemma nor anyone for that matter wonders about those vows, but maybe that's because Melissa Bubnic's screenplay is too busy coming up with random gags to include something that might actually move us.

Plus, it's not as Nathan is really gone from this story after Gemma finds him dead in their apartment one morning. No, he returns by way of assorted flashbacks, showing how the romance unfolded and hit some issues based on an apparent gap in enthusiasm for the relationship between the two partners. Nathan also shows up as a figment of Gemma's imagination, consoling and advising her through grief. It's difficult to tell which element of that is more disingenuous about death: the gimmick itself or the fact that it's yet another thing the movie forgets about while it's coming up with jokes and more complications for Gemma to overcome.

The whole of director Daniel Reisinger's odd romantic comedy is inconsistent. Its tone veers from sentimental to wacky without warning. Its characters come and go depending on the requirements of the plot. Its premise is worthwhile as a study of grief and a strangely sweet reminder that love doesn't end with death, but the movie seems to repeatedly go out of its way to keep those ideas at a narrative and emotional distance.

Whatever this could story have been, in other words, isn't the movie we actually get. What's strangest of all, perhaps, is that the filmmakers seem to believe they've made that movie despite all evidence to contrary, if the sappy ending and the memorial-like credits are any indication.

It all starts with Gemma returning home from a morning exercise routine in the park with a pair of friends. Nathan seems to be sleeping in, but when she touches his arm, she freezes. The aftermath of discovering that her fiancé has died—of an undetected blood clot that killed him while he was putting on his socks—is a blur and whirl of preparation that need to be made, people offering condolences and support, and Gemma being stuck in a state of mourning.

Eventually, she comes up with the plan to marry Nathan posthumously, after discovering an old law on the books that allows for that under certain circumstances. First, though, the movie offers distraction after distraction, from the bumbling ways of Gemma's father Derek (Peter Egan), to the arrival of Nathan's friend (played by Arthur Darvill) and his instant attraction to Gemma's best friend Ruth (Susan Wokoma), and, most notably, to the constant presence of Nathan's slightly estranged sister Audrey (Billie Lourd). She doesn't know her brother has died until arriving from the United States to London, where Gemma breaks the news to her at the airport.

There are several ways that scene could go, and it's most telling about the character and the movie itself, really, that it results in a gross-out gag. Lourd can be very funny in general, of course, and that's the filmmakers' obvious gamble with her character here, as she comes up with dumb schemes (sneaking into a conference to convince a high judge to hear Gemma's plea), says exactly what's on mind regardless of the situation, and, by the way, is also and randomly pregnant, after agreeing to be a surrogate for friends. The character might have been funny, except that she's the most blatant example of how unwilling the movie is to confront its premise with much seriousness and sincerity.

Instead, the jokes keep coming—from a disastrously uncomfortable funeral, to a night out that includes someone having a bathroom-related accident and someone else trying to cover up for it, to Gemma's story going viral online as the "Corpse Bride." When And Mrs does try to take itself seriously (Gemma's skepticism about love, the abandonment issues faced by Nathan and Audrey, and the dramatic tonal shift of the third act), it feels phony and schmaltzy.

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