The Bride is a reimagining of sorts of The Bride of Frankenstein. Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, this new version is no doubt going to polarize its target audience, but I found it to be a wacky, campy, audacious mess.
Jessie Buckley stars in dual roles as Ida the Bride as well as Mary Shelley from beyond the grave. As Shelley, she admits she wanted to tell another story after Frankenstein, but couldn’t because of her death. But that doesn’t stop the movie from giving us the story anyway.
As Ida, she’s a woman in Chicago in 1936 who intends to expose the criminal activities of a boss, but his gangsters get to her first and have her murdered.
Christian Bale costars as Frankenstein’s monster, who works with a scientist (Annette Bening) who specializes in reanimation. Frank is desperate to find a mate, and so he and the doctor exhume the corpse of, you guessed it, Ida, and through a scientific experiment, they bring her back to life. There’s only one catch: She has no memory of who she used to be.
Frank and Ida, whom he now calls The Bride, become a couple, but then their whirlwind romance turns into a Gothic incarnation of Bonnie and Clyde after Frank saves her from being assaulted by a couple of thugs. They now have to go on the run.
Penelope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard are a couple of detectives trying to track them down. Their investigation leads them to check out every movie theater in a few states, as that serves to be their favorite pastime.
As I mentioned, the movie takes a wildly campy approach to the material, and part of that approach is Gyllenhaal allowing both Buckley and Bale to play their roles beyond the ceiling. To call their performances overacting would be putting it mildly, as their energy knows no bounds.
The Bride may work as unabashed camp, and on that level, I admit, I was thoroughly entertained when I shouldn’t have been. There are some bizarre musical sequences that only further reinforce its eccentricities. It may seem murky, but it’s not boring. The plot is surprisingly straightforward and stays afloat thanks to Buckley and Bale. This movie provided the level of goofiness and audacity that I looked for and missed in Wuthering Heights.
Some plot elements feel as though they belong in a different movie and distract from the central story between the two main characters. Scenes involving the mob boss, along with moments featuring the detectives, appear throughout the film but don’t contribute much to the overall plot.
Still, Buckley and Bale are hard to resist, and they make The Bride come to life when it shouldn’t. Their performances make it worth recommending on a campy level.
Grade: B+
(Rated R for strong/bloody violent content, sexual content/nudity and language.)
Reviewer’s Note: I saw this movie at the Historic Strand in Jesup.
