Review: 'Wild Mountain Thyme' a Honeyed, Melancholy Romance

It's a sad injustice when an artist ends up inextricably linked to one great opus, such that anything else she or he might do is automatically compared to the masterpiece that sticks in everyone's minds. But in the case of accomplished playwright, occasional screenwriter, and three-time film director John Patrick Shanley – who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay at the 1988 Academy Awards for "Moonstruck" – and his new film, "Wild Mountain Thyme," such comparisons don't feel exasperatingly inevitable; they feel invited.

Both films share rich dialogue, romantic triangles, and an emphasis on family that sometimes gets a little obsessive. In this case, Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt) and Anthony Riley (Jamie Dornan) have grown up on adjoining farms, and have always been in love, but somehow Anthony has never managed to work up the nerve to propose. When his American cousin, Adam Riley (Jon Hamm), visits in order to scope out the farm – which Anthony's father (Christopher Walken) is thinking of leaving to him, rather than to Anthony – there's an instant attraction between Adam and Rosemary that even Anthony can't miss. But will that be enough to shake him out of his paralysis and get him to take the plunge? Perhaps not; like Cher's character Loretta in the 1987 hit, Anthony fears he's romantically cursed and destined to remain single.

While plot elements, and even a few story beats, are similar between "Wild Mountain Thyme" and "Moonstruck," there are crucial differences between the two as well: Where "Moonstruck" had the snap and verve of a screwball comedy, and possessed a purely cinematic energy, "Wild Mountain Thyme," which is adapted from Shanley's play "Outside Mullingar," wears its theatrical origins on its woolen sleeve. And while the new film is warm, in a rough and itchy sort of way, it's in the way of a sodden sweater; it's a bit heavy and uncomfortable, and while that mad old moon of love still sails overhead, it's obscured here in an almost perpetually overcast sky.

Tonally, this is less a romantic comedy than a comedic drama. We meet our principle players just as their parents are dying off, one after the next, in quick succession. Mortality was a running joke in "Moonstruck," but here it's a looming presence, its chill breath throwing everything into high relief. There's a palpable sense of time slipping away, and a knowledge that once you've wasted time you can't get it back again.

That makes for a strange bedfellow for the film's other main sensibilities, which are syrupy sentiment and fairytale-style optimism. Those emotional hues tussle with each other, sometimes overtly, as when Adam – who's not just a brash American, but also a rich banker who likes to show off his prosperity – chides Rosemary over dinner for clinging to childish notions such as her longstanding identification with the white swan in Tchiakovsky's classic ballet "Swan Lake." (Cue the next "Moonstruck" comparison: Hamm watching a tearful Blunt take in "Swan Lake" at a New York City theater in exactly the same way Nicholas Cage smiled over at a misty-eyed Cher during a Met production of "La Boheme." Like I say, it's hard not to reference Shanley's earlier work when Shanley himself seems intent on forcing the issue.)

There's more than a touch of kelly-green blarney to the film, but that's counterbalanced by the sheer elegance of Shanley's phrases. What he does wonderfully well is capture a certain style of dialogue, as when Anthony queries Rosemary with the existential musing, "Where do we go when we die? To the sky?" Replies Rosemary, who's clearheaded about such things: "The ground." His response: "Then what's the sky for?" Yes, it's stagey, and it smacks of an unrealistic nostalgia for a mythic Irish motherland, and perhaps it's a bit corny as well, but it's perfectly fit to the film as a whole, and both Dornan and Blunt invest their characters with the sincerity and passion they deserve. (The movie adds a readymade symbol for their untamed, yet pent-up, passion, in the form of Rosemary's horse, a creature that can't be kept confined to the barn.)

Shanley also displays a deft touch as he explores a mixture of reticence and directness in his characters that is innately sweet and endearing, as well as funny. What's strange, however, is how understated the laughter is all throughout the movie. There's a melancholy, elegiac feel to the production that almost makes laughter feel inappropriate. Be amused – be very amused – but keep it down to a soft smile, if you please.

"Wild Mountain Thyme" on DIGITAL and DVD February 2, 2021