Wild Mountain Thyme: Starry Misfire from Oscar Winner Marred by Silliness, Bad Accents

By Linda Barnard

Rating: C-

Oh, but they’re a quirky lot, so they are, in Wild Mountain Thyme, which arrives December 22 stuffed with blarney, Irish clichés, and a head-scratcher of a plot about an odd yet spectacularly attractive pair who just can’t seem to get their romantic act together.

Anthony Reilly (Jamie Dornan) and Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt) live on neighbouring family farms in County Mayo, where Rosemary’s father takes pot shots at hated crows and Anthony’s misunderstood mother trills the traditional love song “Wild Mountain Thyme” by the fire.

Rosemary has pined for Anthony from childhood. He’s never given her a second look, which is strange because she’s Emily Blunt, for heaven’s sake, wearing a belted designer cape and looking like a pink-cheeked Irish superhero giving it the full, headstrong-redhead Maureen O’Hara treatment.

Pity about her precarious Irish accent. Which brings us to Christopher Walken.

Walken plays Anthony’s father, Tony Reilly, with a car wreck of an Emerald Isle brogue that sounds like Tony Soprano auditioning for an Irish Spring commercial.

Reilly is reluctant to leave the family farm to his son because he shows no inclination to marry and produce the legacy-continuing next generation. He may also be suffering from the family curse (on his mother’s side) that causes people to be a bit mad, so it does.

Instead, Tony is considering his slick American nephew Adam (Jon Hamm), a Manhattan money manager who knows nothing about rural life aside from the importance of acreage amounts. He’s an enthusiastic flirt, so marriage might be in the offing, if only he could meet the right woman — who also happens to live on the farm next door. Wink, wink. Hamm’s spirited back and forth with Blunt gives Wild Mountain Thyme its best moments.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, the film is based on his 2014 play, Outside Mullingar.

Shanley is known for writing compelling screenplays. He won an Oscar for Moonstruck and a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for his play Doubt, along with an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. He also directed the film.

So how did he miss here? He lets Hamm steal every scene and appears to have given Dornan (whose accent is great but then, he was born in Northern Ireland) one task: look morose. Mission accomplished. Christian Grey has been stripped of every bit of sexiness. The rambling story often leans on slapstick and repeating bits, like when a character tries out an awkward proposal out on a donkey.

Anthony’s final reveal about the nature of the emotional torment that makes him unable to fall in love is just bonkers.

When Shanley steps back and lets the story flow, there’s magic to be found in Wild Mountain Thyme. The dialogue is poetic and occasionally lovely. When Rosemary sings “Wild Mountain Thyme” a silent Tony’s emotions rise in a simple and poignant moment.

In these housebound days, Wild Mountain Thyme will make anyone who’s been to Ireland long to return, while inspiring the rest to make travel plans. The film opens with a thrilling aerial sequence that swoops across green fields and the Cliffs of Moher, scenes that will set hearts on finding a way to fly across the Atlantic as soon as COVID-19 makes an exit.

Shame about the film’s final, ridiculously sappy scene with all the cast in a pub. That made me feel a bit airsick.

Wild Mountain Thyme. Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley. Starring Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, Christopher Walken and John Hamm. Begin streaming December 22.