Wild Mountain Thyme

When I saw the trailer for Wild Mountain Thyme I thought it sounded really familiar.  It turns out that it is an adaptation of the play Outside Mullingar by John Patrick Shanley.  I absolutely loved this play when it was performed at PTC a few years ago so I decided to see the movie last night (even though it was the second romantic drama this week).  Tony Reilly (Christopher Walken) and Aoife Muldoon (Dearbhla Molloy), who live on adjoining farms in Ireland, are both getting old and are contemplating their mortality.  Tony, especially, is concerned about leaving his farm to his son Anthony (Jamie Dornan) because he shows no sign of getting married and won't have any children to leave it to when he dies.  Tony briefly considers selling it to his nephew Adam (Jon Hamm), who visits from America, but Tony eventually realizes that he just wants it for an investment.  Tony then decides that the best solution would be for Anthony to marry Aoife's daughter Rosemary (Emily Blunt) because she has been in love with him since childhood.  However, Rosemary is too caught up in her romantic notions of love to approach him and Anthony is seemingly oblivious to her feelings.  Will they ever get together or will Adam's interest in Rosemary ruin Anthony's chances?  I did not enjoy this as much as I hoped I would.  Much has been made about the laughable Irish accents but that didn't bother me as much as the portrayal of the two main characters did.  In the play, Rosemary and Anthony are funny and eccentric people who are clearly meant to be together but just haven't realized it yet.  In the movie, they are angry in their interactions with each other (without the witty back and forth banter that I loved so much in the play) and they come across as totally unlikable.  I can't decide if this is because of how the characters are written (the playwright also wrote the script) in the movie or if it is just how Dornan and Blunt chose to portray them.  When they finally do get together, it is so sudden that it doesn't seem at all believable (it doesn't help that Dornan and Blunt have zero chemistry).  One minute they are screaming at each other and the next they are kissing in the rain.  Anthony's reason for keeping his distance from Rosemary, which is sweet and charming in the play, is just bizarre in the movie because the characterization isn't there to support it. The addition of Adam, a character who is only alluded to in the play, as a love interest who comes between Anthony and Rosemary lessens the impact of their romance because it takes the interference of someone else for Anthony to finally realize that he loves Rosemary.  Unfortunately, something that I really loved on the stage falls horribly flat on the screen so I would recommend giving Wild Mountain Thyme a miss.