Margot Annoys at the Wedding

The estranged sisters at the heart of Noah Baumbach's talky Margot at the Wedding are well portrayed but just too unlikable to win over most critics. Nicole Kidman's short-story writer Margot, who Newsweek's David Ansen calls a  "brittle nightmare," descends on the wedding of her pregnant sister, Jennifer Jason Leigh, who's made the unfortunate decision to marry Jack Black.

Ansen nonetheless praises the film's psychological astuteness and its "darting, spontaneous style," reminiscent of the French New Wave. Lou Lumenick of the New York Post is less enchanted, calling it "a ham-fisted, faux-French" approach to "ugly and annoying" characters, and David Denby of the New Yorker finds the film "sensually as well as dramatically impoverished." (More Nicole Kidman stories.)