Maggie Gyllenhaal made a commendable transition to filmmaking with 2021’s The Lost Daughter. Getting her to direct a fresh new take on Mary Shelley’s Bride of Frankenstein, fully loaded to a stacked cast and a blockbuster budget, felt like an ascension everyone could get on board with.
But I couldn’t figure out why they added an exclamation mark to The Bride! Then I watched the film and it all made sense.
The Bride! has a lot on its mind and screams everything out. At everyone. In all directions. Jessie Buckley is the film’s proverbial megaphone, a resurrected dead woman possessed by the spirit of author Mary Shelley who’s had enough of subtlety and uses this new zombie vessel to lash out at the injustices befalling women of 1930s America.
While it’s not quite keyboard warrior-ing by way of exorcism, the film’s inability to focus on anything means it speaks deeply on nothing, resulting in a cavalcade of half-baked ideas erupting from overcooked performances. And yet, the film’s refusal to stop snorting its own line of cinema coke might be the very thing that makes it a cult audience favourite.
People will either hate or love The Bride! for being a molten hot mess. Regardless of the inevitable reactions, I wouldn’t blame Buckley for counting herself lucky that the film released on the final day of Oscars voting, where she’s up for an Academy Award for her incredible, heart-tearing performance in Hamnet.
Eddie Redmayne had a far closer call back in 2015 when he won an Oscar for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Not only did he have fierce competition in Michael Keaton, whose irony-laden performance in Birdman proved a career highlight, but Redmayne also had to grin-n-bear his own baffling performance in Jupiter Ascending in the lead-up to the Academy Awards ceremony.
The Theory of Everything
Jupiter Ascending
As the only memorable thing in the Wachowski sisters’ forgettable space epic, Redmayne imbued his all-powerful alien ruler with asthmatic line delivery and a sookie bubba energy that was as menacing as an unburped baby. It took a lot to top the ridiculousness of Channing Tatum’s elf-eared dog man thing, but Redmayne ascended to the challenge.
Nevertheless, Redmayne still got his Oscar. The same couldn’t be said about Naomi Watts and Hugh Jackman in 2013. Nominated for their respective performances in The Impossible and Les Misérables, the Aussie acting pair were but a few of the many who fell under the hammer of Movie 43.
This infamously unfunny sketch comedy feature became notorious for the AAA cast that got sucked into its black hole of critical shaming. Kate Winslet, Richard Gere, Emma Stone, Uma Thurman, Halle Berry, Common, Dennis Quaid, Liev Schreiber, Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks and Chloë Grace Moretz were just some of the other stars who had no business being in this sizeable stinker.
Movie 43
While Movie 43 did no favours to Watts and Jackman in the lead-up to the 2013 Oscars, at least they couldn’t be singled out in a film that did so many dirty. And even before the film’s release, the Academy Awards were pretty much guaranteed to Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook and Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln.
The most convincing case of a “cursed” Academy Award-nominated actor in recent memory would almost certainly be Eddie Murphy. Having won at both the Golden Globes and Screen Actors’ Guild Awards, Murphy was a hot favourite for the Best Supporting Actor award for his excellent work in 2006’s Dreamgirls.
Then, one week after nominees were announced, Norbit came out—a relentlessly crude and shamelessly fat-shaming comedy that saw Murphy in dual roles as a mild-mannered man and his obscene wife. Murphy then became the sympathy guy when he lost to the great Alan Arkin for his performance in Argo.
Dreamgirls
Norbit
While there’s no hard proof that the film directly caused Murphy’s Oscar chances to plummet, the correlation proved potent enough for the term ‘The Norbit Effect’ to catch on. And if it is true, then it would speak poorly to The Academy’s inability to judge a person’s performance for that performance alone.
None of this is to suggest Jessie Buckley will get Norbit-ed at this year’s Academy Awards. The voting window’s too small to make a dent and unlike Jupiter Ascending, Movie 43, and Norbit, The Bride! is just too wild, too self-determined, and too ready to find its niche audience to be that kind of film.
But man, they could have at least opened the film after Buckley got her Oscar.
