Wild Mountain Thyme (film)

Conflicts in an Irish family arise when the patriarch threatens to hand over their farm to an American nephew instead of his own son.

• Emily Blunt as Rosemary Muldoon
  • Abigail Coburn as young Rosemary Muldoon
• Jamie Dornan as Anthony Reilly
  • Darragh O'Kane as young Anthony Reilly
• Jon Hamm as Adam Kelly
• Christopher Walken as Tony Reilly
• Dearbhla Molloy as Aoife Muldoon
• Danielle Ryan as Maeve

It was announced in May 2019 that John Patrick Shanley would write and direct an adaptation of his play Outside Mullingar, starring Jamie Dornan and Holliday Grainger [4] By August, Emily Blunt, Jon Hamm, Christopher Walken and Dearbhla Molloy were added to the cast, with Blunt replacing Grainger in her role, and Molloy reprising her role from the play.[5]

Filming began in Crossmolina, County Mayo, Ireland on September 30, 2019.[6] It continued in Ballina, County Mayo and lasted over five weeks.[1] Mount Nephin was prominently displayed in the movie, and the Muldoon Family farm filming location can be seen here in Google Earth.

It was scheduled to be released in the United States on December 11, 2020.[7] The trailer was released on November 10, 2020,[8][9] and was criticized for its inaccurate Irish accents and perceived rehashing of hackneyed stereotypes.[10][11][12] Shanley stated that no one would understand the characters if they sounded exactly like his relatives spoke, and "you have to make the accent more accessible to a global audience".[1]

It was the eighth-most rented film on FandangoNow in its debut weekend.[13]

The film will be released as a DVD-only format on February 2, 2021[14] with no Blu-ray or 4K UHD format released.

The soundtrack album was released digitally in December 2020, featuring Amelia Warner's score and an original song by Sinéad O'Connor.[15]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 29% of 100 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Fatally undermined by dodgy accents and a questionable story, Wild Mountain Thyme is a baffling misfire for a talented filmmaker and impressive cast."[16] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 45 out of 100 based on reviews from 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[17]

David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a "C–" and wrote: "Shanley, whose script for Moonstruck suggests that he once had a slightly tighter handle on this sort of thing, brings his play 'Outside Mullingar' to the screen like he's trying to fill every close-up with enough whimsical enchantment to reach the back row of a Broadway theater. The lethal intensity of this effect cannot be overstated; the only logical explanation for what happened here is that someone planted a bomb in Shanley’s editing bay and timed it to explode if any cut of Wild Mountain Thyme dipped below 50 kilohertz of cartoon Irish charm per minute."[18] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film a positive review: "The gentle spirit of Wild Mountain Thyme envelops us early, to the extent that, midway through, even though there is very little left to resolve, we are in its spell."[19]

• Wild Mountain Thyme at IMDb