October 29, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Daniel Reisinger
Culture Representation: Taking place in England and in Oregon, the comedy film “And Mrs.” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: After her American fiancé suddenly dies of a stroke, an Irish woman, who was skeptical about marriage, changes her mind, and goes to great lengths to get legally married to her dead fiancé.
Culture Audience: “And Mrs.” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and far-fetched romantic comedies.
“And Mrs.” overloads on schmaltz in an outdated concept that a woman can’t feel fulfilled unless she’s married. Everything looks fake in this messy romantic comedy about a woman who wants to marry her dead fiancé. This is a movie that tries too hard to be funny but ends up being mostly irritating and not very funny at all.
Directed by Daniel Reisinger and written by Melissa Bubnic, “And Mrs.” is the feature-film directorial debut of Reisinger. The movie takes place in England and briefly in the U.S. state of Oregon. “And Mrs.” is built on the flimsy premise that an obscure law in the United Kingdom allows someone to marry a dead person if a valid marriage license already exists for the two people, among a few other requirements.
The protagonist of “And Mrs.” is Gemma Fitzgerald (played by Aisling Bea), a sassy Irish redhead. In the beginning of the movie, Gemma is engaged to an American named Nathan Petruchevsky (played by Colin Hanks), who has a mild-mannered personality. Gemma and Nathan live together in an apartment in London.
They have an “opposites attract” relationship: Gemma is a cynic who’s suspicious of marriage, while Nathan is a romantic who fully believes in marriage. A flashback shows how Nathan proposed marriage to Gemma when they were in a pub playing a movie trivia game, and he played his phone ringtone of the Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You” before he proposed. This song is featured again later in one of the movie’s corniest scenes.
Don’t expect to hear anything about what Gemma and Nathan do for a living. Those are details that get in the way of the movie’s tired and sexist premise that it’s hilarious to see a woman who’s desperate to get married. It’s a rom-com stereotype that is stretched to annoying levels in “And Mrs.,” which has another over-used rom-com cliché: a female protagonist who thinks she’s an independent and modern woman, but deep down she’s old-fashioned in believing that her self-worth is dependent whether or not she’s married.
How sassy is Gemma? In an early scene in the movie, this is a conversation that Gemma has with a neighbor named Mrs. Chen (played by Pik-Sen Lim), who tells Gemma that she’s going to buy a gift that’s listed in Gemma’s wedding registry. Mrs. Chen comments, “Everything on your list is a little pricey, I must say. But then, I listen to you having sex, so why should I be embarrassed?”
Gemma replies to Mrs. Chen: “Well, maybe next time, you can come over, and it can be an immersive experience.” That’s actually one of the saltier lines of dialogue in the movie, which rapidly becomes sappier as the story goes along. Most of the dialogue and actions are forced, like half-baked sitcom conversations and scenarios, and not how real people talk or behave.
Gemma isn’t cynical about marriage because her parents are divorced or had an abusive relationship. Her parents Lorraine (played by Sinéad Cusack) and Derek (played by Peter Egan) have actually been happily married for several years. Gemma is cynical about marriage because she thinks marriage is stifling and can make people boring. She says to friends, “The highlight of my mum and dad’s marriage is my mum picking my dad’s blackheads.”
Shortly before the wedding is supposed to happen, Nathan suddenly and tragically dies of a stroke (brought on by a blood clot in his heart) while he’s alone his bedroom and changing his socks. Gemma is devastated, of course. And her skepticism about getting married to Nathan (or getting married to anyone) soon turns into an obsession to carry on with the wedding.
Gemma becomes fixated on the idea of becoming Nathan’s wife after she finds out about a little-known U.K. law that allows someone to get married to a deceased person if there’s a valid marriage license and if it can be proven that the deceased person had intended to get married shortly before dying. The deceased person’s next of kin also has to give consent to this posthumous marriage. No one has been granted such a marriage in the United Kingdom since 1816. Gemma thinks that she can be the exception.
Nathan’s eccentric lesbian sister Audrey (played by Billie Lourd), who has an outspoken personality, shows up in London for what she thinks will be Nathan’s wedding but is actually his funeral. Audrey is so flaky, she doesn’t even know Nathan is dead until Gemma and her parents see Audrey at the airport and tell her because Audrey didn’t listen to her voice mail messages. Obviously, this movie thinks these characters are too stupid to send text messages or email.
Audrey is pregnant as a surrogate for an unnamed gay couple in the United States. She ends up getting involved in Gemma’s quest to still go ahead with marrying Nathan, even though Nathan is dead. Gemma also hallucinates and sees the ghost of Nathan, who talks to her. Yes, it’s that kind of movie.
Meanwhile, Gemma’s parents (who dislike Audrey) think that Gemma is mentally unwell to go through with this wedding to a deceased person. Gemma’s determination to marry someone who’s dead makes the news and causes even more controversy. It leads to one of the worst parts of the movie, where certain characters become political activists for the right to marry a dead person.
Other characters who are part of this disjointed movie include Gemma’s two best friends: flight attendant Ruth (played by Susan Wokoma) and gay Mo (played by Omari Douglas), who have mixed feelings about Gemma’s determination to marry a dead person. Mo has been chosen to be the wedding officiator. Gemma’s pals think it’s morbid and strange that Gemma wants to get married to Nathan after Nathan has died. However, these friends don’t want to completely alienate Gemma about this issue because they think she’s not in her right mind due to extreme grief over Nathan’s death.
Nathan’s awkward American best friend Dylan Campbell (played by Arthur Darville) arrives in England for the funeral, and he shows an immediate attraction to Ruth. There are some silly shenanigans involving getting legal approval of the marriage, which needs to be signed off on by a lord chief justice named Amanda Vaughn (played by Harriet Walter), a prickly judge who has a condescending attitude toward her gay assistant Alan (played by Samuel Barnett). There’s also a poorly written subplot about Nathan’s estranged mother Margaret Cahill (played by Elizabeth McGovern), a widow who lives in Oregon.
“And Mrs.” isn’t the worst romantic comedy you can ever see. However, the people in the movie come across as caricatures instead of believable characters. The performances are adequate and probably would have been better if the cast members had a great script to work with in the first place. It’s the type of movie that wastes a lot of good talent on a very shallow and predictable story.
Vertical released “And Mrs.” in select U.S. cinemas on September 20, 2024. The movie was released on digital and VOD on September 27, 2024. “And Mrs.” was released in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2024.
