40
It’s a visually verdant but emotionally flat film whose confusing friction between two miscast leads frustrates rather than engrosses.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
65
Whether or not the word “whimsy” makes you flinch is probably a fair indicator of whether Wild Mountain Thyme is for you, but if you’re looking for the cinematic equivalent of a hot cup of tea on a blustery day, you might find yourself developing a taste for its particular brand of quirky romance.
38
Jamie Dornan is a stiff whom Jon Hamm immediately upstages, and this dynamic underscores why the film is so tedious and unsatisfying.
42
Shanley, whose script for “Moonstruck” suggests that he once had a slightly tighter handle on this sort of thing, brings his play “Outside Mullingar” to the screen like he’s trying to fill every close-up with enough whimsical enchantment to reach the back row of a Broadway theater. The lethal intensity of this effect cannot be overstated; the only logical explanation for what happened here is that someone planted a bomb in Shanley’s editing bay and timed it to explode if any cut of Wild Mountain Thyme dipped below 50 kilohertz of cartoon Irish charm per minute.
30
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
The light touch, the structural economy and lyrical voice that buoyed the gentle four-character piece on stage become cloying and strained in this clumsy expansion.
42
Take away the gorgeous setting, however, and you’re left with a romantic comedy that’s never romantic and only occasionally funny.
67
Entertainment Weekly by Leah Greenblatt
It almost seems churlish to single out one aspect of the film for unreality, when the whole thing is essentially one Riverdancing leprechaun short of a fairy tale. And when so many dangerous drinking games can be invented to accompany the rise and fall of Christopher Walken’s mystery brogue.
63
The Associated Press by Lindsey Bahr
The writing is wry and occasionally quite funny. It’s not unsurprising that it made for a good play. But on film it moves at a languorous pace. Like its characters, it’s not interested in getting anywhere anytime soon.
38
Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips
The music is drippy and constant, the wobble from comedy to drama feels off, and the dialects have been reamed in the Irish press. Charm resists calculation; even if actors get some going, even if a writer creates an approximation in or between the lines, deliberately manufactured charm curdles so easily. The one success story of Wild Mountain Thyme belongs to Blunt, who has yet to give a poor or lazily considered performance.
63
Chicago Sun-Times by Richard Roeper
Wild Mountain Thyme comes close to winning our hearts based on the performances and the lush County Mayo scenery and the sheer romanticism of it all, but writer-director Shanley keeps us at arm’s distance in the climactic sequences, when we should be swept up in the story of Rosemary and Anthony but we’re left exasperated at the forced eccentricity of it all.