But the movie means every minute of it - the dewy songs, the earnest salutes, the rambling toasts to the young interracial newlyweds Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe). All that goodness is ultimately contagious, since Demme makes you feel like you've been cordially invited to sit at the table.
The director's style here is fly-on-the-wall realism, with the digital camera wandering, hand-held, through a big Connecticut house where musicians tune their instruments, somebody is always washing dishes, and a stranger has just walked in. Her name is Kym (Anne Hathaway), and she's the force of hurt threatening to ruin her sister's - and Demme's - party. Kym's nine months in rehab have left her brittle, sardonic, and with a short, sharp haircut typically worn by women in Japanese anime.
Her initial reunion with the outside world leads the film into wonderfully eerie territory. Kym trudges through a convenience store, and the girl behind the counter has a flash of recognition: "Hey, didn't I see you on 'Cops'?" At her family's house, she produces the opposite effect, going from room to room without so much as a "Welcome home."
"I just saw a ghost," somebody says as Kym drifts by. For a moment, it feels as if Demme and Lumet are trying to conjure the supernaturalism of the unhappy Danish family get-together in 1998's "The Celebration." But the movie slips out of its lovely ambiguity and back to emotional earth.
As the weekend rolls on, Kym attends recovery meetings, has sex with the comical best man (Math er Zickel), who is also an addict, confronts her divorced parents (Bill Irwin and Debra Winger, both very good), and blows up at Rachel who, among other offenses, has chosen her best friend (Anisa George) to be the maid of honor instead of Kym.
