To bee or not to bee…that is the question in Wild Mountain Thyme (pronounced theme, so why the y? more pertinent, why this film?). This romantic triangle about an Irish landowner with Daddy issues who thinks he is a bee—yes, you read right, a bee, a madhu-makhi—is so abstruse in its romantic fervor, it’s like weaning honey from the bee combs.
Hands are likely to be stung. And that’s not all the pain this film leaves you with. First of all, there is the impossible Irish accent which slips in and out of Emily Blunt’s dialogues like mists from a mysterious mountain. Ms Blunt—and I shall put it bluntly—seems to have slipped in the role at the last minute. There seems to be no preparation. When towards the end her neighbour Anthony(Jamie Dornan) whom she has set her heart on makes his big ‘stinging’ confession she looks confused, not like the character unable to process the information but the actress not ready to accept such a ridiculous premise.
The film lacks faith in its own tenability. You can’t sell gold to a prospective bride whose groom has changed his mind.
The rest of the film is about Christopher Walken as Jamie’s father threatening to sell their farm to Jamie’s cousin Adam(Jon Hamm) in America who looks very very amused right from the start of his role when he meets a very interesting woman on his flight to Ireland. We all know she’s going to be the love of Adam’s life, as the heroine is reserved for the principal hero (some filmic traditions never change). Then why the charade of Hamm hamming his romantic feelings to Blunt while she chases Dornan relentlessly.
There is a lengthy, marginally interesting sequence in Rosemary’s home where she literally bullies Jamie for a visit, then force-feeds him some beer, then some romantic talk, then a kiss. This is the one romantic encounter in the farcical farmland fable that is engaging, albeit mildly. The rest of the film is almost always unbearable. There are either old women saying undecipherable things in a thick Irish accent or younger men struggling to keep afloat as all around them, their bucolic world land, horses and pigs threaten to collapse.
It’s all done in a tone of lingering mischief as though writer-director John Patrick Stanley meant it all to be a joke but somewhere in the meadow and mountains he changed his mind. This is a love story that never needed to be told. The couple’s journey is borderline unacceptable as she pursues her neighbour with the single mindedness of Sharon Stone.
And to think this writer-director’s last film Doubt 12 years ago was such a monument! Even a trivial diversion to Wild Mountain Thyme doesn’t work. Perhaps some other ‘tyme’. I'll go with 2 stars.
Image Source: Instagram/wildmountainthymemovie, youtube/bleecketstreet
Image Source: Instagram/wildmountainthymemovie, youtube/bleecketstreet