Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ on VOD, a Confounding Mess of Quasi-Romance and Awful Irish Accents

Hopefully you know by now that the trailer for Wild Mountain Thyme was skewered by the National Leprechaun Museum of Ireland for its stars’ dodgy Irish accents — it’s the true stuff of legend, I tell you. The movie now hits VOD among the chemtrails of half-non-apologies by its non-Irish stars (“you just do your best,” says the unfailingly effervescent Emily Blunt, and I’ll buy that), and with audiences already putting up their dukes. It’s written and directed by John Patrick Shanley of Moonstruck and Doubt fame, based on his stage production, Outside Mullingar, so it has some cred behind it. But when the National Leprechaun Museum of Ireland jumps on your shit, you’re probably in trouble.

WILD MOUNTAIN THYME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It begins with a steaming heap of blarney: “Welcome to Ireland. My name’s Tony Reilly. I’m dead!” exclaims Christopher Walken in voiceover with a thoroughly mangled Irish accent, assuring us that this probably is One of Those Movies. His son is Anthony, and we first meet him as a child, sniffing a flower. Two neighbor girls, Fiona and Rosemary, vie for his attention. Fiona wins, I think, although Anthony might not care either way, and Rosemary comes home and laments her lot in life. “I have no purpose. I’m just a girl. The world is full of girls,” she moans.

A couple-few decades later, Anthony (Jamie Dornan) is grown, and his da, Tony (Walken), is not dead yet, but don’t worry, it’s coming. We all got it coming. Maybe even before this movie ends. Anyway. Father and son live together, tending the cows and whatever needs to be done on the farm, which is as green as a photograph of Ireland on a greeting card. Rosemary (Blunt) and her mother live on the adjacent very green farm, and they tend horses, possibly grow things. I’m not sure. But it’s a f—ing farm, and please let it be known that farming is f—ing happening here. Rosemary, too, has yet to move out of her parents’ house. Please don’t ask why. I have no answers, and I’ve seen the entire movie.

Two gates cut across the Reilly property, because years ago, Tony sold Rosemary’s family a strip of greenery that, if I recall correctly and am not currently buried under an avalanche of Irish twee, also happens to be the same strip of greenery where Fiona was chosen and Rosemary was shunned. Notably, Fiona moved away, and who can blame her? This place is insane, and I haven’t even gotten into the half of it. For reasons I can’t recall because I must’ve directed them into a volcano upon hearing such blasphemies of logic, Tony decides he’s not going to leave Anthony the farm he loves and has worked his whole life. Instead, he’ll give it to Adam (Jon Hamm), a rich cousin from New York City in America, where nobody gives a shit about anything except being able to brag that they own a farm in Actual Ireland.

Rosemary has pined for Anthony ever since she was a heartsick zygote. Anthony senses this, and decides to put his late mother’s wedding ring to good use, possibly pointing it in Rosemary’s general direction and mumbling things. Have they RELATIONSHIP’D before? Who knows, but the plot needs it to happen, I guess. Anthony gets down on one knee in front of a donkey to practice, prompting a nosy witness to start spreading rumors about the guy and the no-doubt mortified donkey. He then loses the ring and never proposes and spends an inordinate amount of time being emotionally obstinate with a metal detector. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IN IRELAND YOU KNOW.

Some other stuff occurse. Rosemary’s mother gets ill and dies and now she’s alone. Cousin Adam has eyes for Rosemary, but she still, against all human sense, yearns for Anthony next door, who has all the charisma of a zero-leaf clover. She’s tempted by Adam, though. She could go to New York and see him and check out the ballet, because she’s always been the white swan in the lake — er, LOCH — for some reason. By the way, The Universe has been a character in this movie the whole time, although its actions are coincidentally quite reminiscent of a bored screenwriter, e.g., making dead characters perform vexatious voiceovers. The Universe appears early in the film but gets distracted until the third act, because it sure takes its damn sweet time pushing Anthony and Rosemary together in spite of their impenetrable opacities. If any of this makes sense to you, godspeed.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Far and away, these are the worst Irish accents since Far and Away.

Performance Worth Watching: Blunt guts this one out reasonably well across from a DOA Dornan and woefully miscast Walken.

Memorable Dialogue: I’ll reiterate: “I’m dead!” says Tony, and we all envy him.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Wild Mountain Thyme is one of those “Am I missing something here?” movies in which large chunks of its characters have been stuffed in a sack and tossed in the lake to drown. The gross lack of romantic chemistry between the protagonists seems like an existential joke. Anthony is a void, Dornan’s performance a slack jaw looking for a cushy bit of Irish moss on which to land; Rosemary’s interminable desire to mate for life with him is like watching a person leap into a bottomless pit. These people are mysteries wrapped in engimas wrapped in half-assed brogues. Speaking of which, yes, the accents are as awful as the trailers promised. No, they didn’t overdub all the dialogue during the last month. It wouldn’t have helped. In fact, the film is probably better with them, contributing to the general disorganization of its themes and characters and situations and to the bafflement we feel watching it, and possibly distracting us from the horrible truth that we’re watching a romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor comic.

If I may be so foolish as to surmise the filmmaker’s intent, Shanley may be attempting to craft a timeless fable of sorts, in which Ireland itself is an overbearing force in these peoples’ lives, a force unleashed upon them in all its stereotypical haggis-and-Guinness-and-melancholy-folk-songs glory. I’m at a loss for further analysis, and therefore defer to describing my experience of watching it: I was confused, then bored, then confused again, listening to these characters say and do mystifying things in scenes that linger until we fidget. The world seems to be moving around and past the static figures that are Rosemary and Anthony — and then the final sequence bludgeons us with a revelation that goes beyond whimsical and absurd to Mad Libs randomness, a thing so asinine that cast members who show up on set and see the dialogue they’re about to recite should be allowed a legal loophole so they can immediately void their contracts, walk off and join the Ancient Mystical Order of Latter-Day Flat Earthers. To call this movie a daft mess is a generosity I cannot abide. To call it one of the worst movies of the year is bullseye.

Our Call: SKIP IT. No. No no no no no. No.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Wild Mountain Thyme