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Writer-director John Patrick Shanley’s old-fashioned, at times transporting, romantic comedy “Wild Mountain Thyme” has a lot going for it, which makes it a shame that it’s not a wholly stronger film. That said, as a stress-free chance to take in the lush, gorgeously green Irish countryside, you could do worse.
Based on Shanley’s Tony-nominated 2014 play, “Outside Mullingar,” the movie works hard to feel lyrical and enchanting, yet it frequently proves too fanciful for its own good. As a result, we often remain on the outside looking in on the lead characters’ blarney-infused fears, foibles and quandaries.
Review: Love, Irish famer style, in Wild Mountain Thyme | National News ottumwacourier.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ottumwacourier.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In Theaters and Streaming on Video Demand” 12.11
It’s hard for me to write about anything made by John Patrick Shanley, the man who wrote
Doubt, without reflecting upon his eclectic career. And by that I mean: What the hell was up with
Congo? I’m aware that it’s been 30 years, but I have not yet even begun to heal from that experience, or to comprehend what happened, other than to postulate the theory that Shanley wrote a deliberately and dumbfoundingly awful draft of the script and presented it to director
Frank Marshall as a joke, and Marshall was too nice and too grateful to have a prestigious writer of Shanley’s stature attached to the project to say anything.
‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ Film Review: Relentless Charm Offensive Makes Irish-Set Rom-Com Hard to Resist
Writer-director John Patrick Shanley pivots back and forth from sweet to sticky, but Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan help make the concoction palatableAlonso Duralde | December 9, 2020 @ 4:00 PM
Kerry Brown/Bleecker Street
“Wild Mountain Thyme” opens with fiddles playing over a narrator saying “Welcome to Ireland” before promptly announcing that he’s dead and that’s just the beginning of the bottomless pot of Irish charm that writer-director John Patrick Shanley dips into for this breezy romantic comedy.
Audiences may find themselves captivated or irritated or, more likely, some combination of the two over the hundred or so minutes that follow, but the film takes such a circuitous route down a familiar path, and does so with such wit and eccentricity, that the experience as a whole becomes harder and harder to resist.