A One Mann’s Movies review of “The Bride!”. (2026, 2.5*, 15).
“The Bride” has moments of brilliance that impressed me greatly. But it is all rolled up into such a convoluted mess of other stuff. The film really can’t seem to quite decide which genre it is in. Some of the scenes made me laugh, but I don’t think they were the ones I was supposed to be laughing at!
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
It’s Chicago in the 1930’s. Ida (Jessie Buckley) is a hooker who has inside dirt on a Chicago hoodlum Lupino (Zlatko Buric). But possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley (also Buckley) she has no control over her mouth and starts bad-mouthing Lupino in public, an action that gets her killed. But with Frank – a roving monster of a man since 1819 – looking for a bride and Ida being a recently buried corpse, she does not stay dead for long.
Certification:
UK: 15; US: R. (From the BBFC website: “Strong bloody violence, gore, sexual violence, sex, very strong language”.)
Talent:
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal, John Magaro, Matthew Maher, Zlatko Buric.
Directed by: Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Written by: Maggie Gyllenhaal. (Based on characters created by Mary Shelley.)
Running Time: 2h 6m.
Summary:
Positives:
- There are many innovative touches that made me smile.
- The brutal scenes, including Ida’s initial ‘accident’, are well done.
- Jessie Buckley, although having bizarre material to work with, again impresses.
Negatives:
- Thematically, its all over the place.
- Some scenes, particularly Bale’s speeches as ‘Frank’, were hammy to the point of hilarity.
Full Review:
Here comes the mother f***ing bride!
From the get-go, this film is as weird as hell. We have Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley), trapped in some post-death purgatory, coming up with the idea of realising the book she was never allowed to write – “The Bride of Frankenstein” – and then using Ida (also Buckley) as some sort of possessed ‘meat puppet’. In this role she randomly spouts English-isms in a plummy accent like some Tourette’s sufferer! The jarring change between Ida’s drunk Chicago drawl and Shelley’s shouty rants made nearly all of the dialogue in this initial bar scene almost impossible for me to understand.
Mind those stairs!
There follows the demise of Ida (which actually seems like more of an accident than the set-up would seem to suggest, to keep the audience a little bit on John Magaro’s side). But this fall down the stairs is extremely well done and quite wince-inducing in a bone-snapping, head breaking sort of way.
As we proceed into the heart of the film, we are meant to believe that Frankenstein’s creation (Christian Bale) – who has confusingly adopted the name of his creator, Frank and not ‘Monst’ – has roamed the earth for 110 years but has only now got to the point of being desperate for a shag!
His saviour is Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), who just happens to have ‘reanimated’ the odd frog and cat but – curiously – has all the necessary equipment handy in her Chicago lab to reanimate a whole person! These scenes are hammily written and hammily performed between Bening and Bale such that they border on being hilarious… but not intentionally so.
What follows is the traditional ‘dig, dig, zap, zap’ of a Frankenstein movie, that’s not a patch I’m afraid on the style of the Guillermo del Toro “Frankenstein” creation. The result is a frizzy-haired, ink spewing creature who strangely seems to have language and some memory of the gangster’s crimes, but no memory of her own name (which is a bit odd!) Frank calls her Penelope and invents a past for them both to calm her.
A romp through the genres.
What follows is a mish-mash of different genres and styles ranging from brutal horror to slapstick comedy to social satire as Pretty Penny generates a feminist uprising of disaffected woman, with matching facial ink stains, running riot in the streets. The slapstick comedy element comes from a possessed audience (without explanation!) joining Frank in dancing to “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, SURELY a nod to “Young Frankenstein”. (In my review of “Frankenstein” I commented “It’s about this time that “Young Frankenstein” would have got him doing a performance of “Putting on the Ritz”, but sadly that is missing from this film.” I was joking… I didn’t actually expect anyone to do it!)
It’s all way too much!
The film works best when it settles into a homage to “Bonnie and Clyde”, with the odd couple pursued from town to town by dogged detective, and former Ada client, Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and the wannabe detective Myrna Malloy (a strangely miscast and unlikely Penélope Cruz).
Malloy works out that film-musical-star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal) is Frank’s idol and they can track him by finding cinemas across the country showing his films. (But this is after Reed has cruelly put down Frank in a New York nightclub, so would he still be a fan? Just one of the story elements that didn’t quite ring true!)
It is fun though to see the director’s brother hoofing his way through a traditional 30’s musical in a white tux, and one of the innovative features of the film that I enjoyed was when he is replaced on the screen by Frank, and later also Penny, as he imagines living out that dream.
Future Oscar-winner Buckley impresses.
I have yet to place my bet on Jessie Buckley winning the Best Actress Oscar next Sunday, but at the moment I suspect my £5 bet might return little more than £5.10! (I REALLY should have found someone to take my money on coming out of the LFF screening of “Hamnet” back in October, when I first stated this would happen!!) But although it is a bizarrely written performance, Buckley again demonstrates the range of her acting ability and managed to impress me.
Summary Thoughts:
I know this film has divided many of my film critic friends, with the Rev Andy Godfrey for example being carried along by the chaos of it all. But, for me, the lack of consistency in the film made me think that Maggie Gyllenhaal wasn’t quite sure what genre of film she was trying to make. I see there to be a horror/fantasy thriller in here and a screwball comedy in here with the film managing to stumble into the void between them.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer for the film is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhgcUArO3Uo.
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