Where to watch Holy Matrimony
1 Star
A young couple, Havana & Peter, rob a county fair of its daily receipts and escape to Canada to hide out in the Hutterite community where Peter was raised. While there, they get married to satisfy the conservative elders in the community. Peter hides their loot in a secret hiding place, but then soon dies in a car wreck. His much younger brother Zeke is called upon to replace his brother and marry Havana. Zeke already hates Havana because he believes she is what changed his brother. She begins looking through everything that was Peter’s, and Zeke rightly deduces that Peter hid something from her. He finds the money, along with a newspaper article that mentions Peter as the prime suspect in the robbery. Zeke initially uses the cash to trick his bride into doing housework. Later he shows it to the elders, who deem that it should be returned to its rightful owners. Zeke and Havana (who claims innocence of the source of the money) are sent on a quest back to the US to return the money.
Holy Matrimony is one of the strangest mainstream movies I’ve ever seen. The trailers for the film made it appear to be a high-jinks comedy in line with Sister Act and Milk Money, but that is inaccurate marketing. Leonard Nimoy is responsible for directing Holy Matrimony, and I can’t imagine what attracted him to this project; it surely wasn’t the script, which is both unfunny and offensive.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Patricia Arquette are both superb in this movie, which is beneath their collective efforts. Holy Matrimony’s commercial appeal was going to be limited, but its outright failure to find an audience, even on home video, is due to it being such a feathered fish. Levitt is an excellent child actor who sells the outlandish plot developments of the film’s screenplay. Holy Matrimony is a footnote in the filmography of its main cast, but it’s so weird I’m almost positive I’ll never forget it.
Directed by: Leonard Nimoy
Written by: David Weisberg, Douglas Cook
Starring: Patricia Arquette, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Armin Mueller-Stahl