I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast · Bob Zerull

The Mothering Effing Bride of Frankenstein

·1 hr 28 min·3 clips

The horrifying true story of what happened filming Private Lessons

Sean Patrick and Jeff start with the Mary/Ida problem. They keep coming back to the idea that the movie gets more interesting once Mary comes out of Ida, because that is where it stops behaving like a clean story and starts feeling like something stranger and harder to pin down. Mary gets the best lines. Jeff leans into the idea that Jesse Buckley is basically chewing through every beat she gets, and Sean Patrick keeps steering the talk back to how much fun that gives the movie. The first stretch is messy. They say that plainly, but they treat the mess as part of the film's shape, not a reason to abandon it, which is very much their lane when the material is this odd. Ida stays the anxious half. Mary is the one who looks like she is having the night of her life, and the hosts keep using that contrast to explain why the merged story works better than it first appears. They spend time on the confusion. The discussion admits that the film can feel confounding at first, especially when Mary starts speaking through Ida and the lines between the characters get slippery. Then the wrestling detour lands. Timeless Tony Storm becomes the comparison point, and suddenly the episode has another shared language for talking about a bawdy, over-the-top, old-movie-goddess energy that keeps the whole thing from feeling academic. Oscar talk follows. Demi Moore and Mikey Madison come up in blunt, argument-first terms, with the hosts revisiting why last year's vote still bugs them and why the academy often seems to miss the point. Sean Patrick goes for the blunt read. Jeff pushes back, the way he usually does, and the back-and-forth keeps the conversation moving instead of settling into a tidy verdict. That is the shape of it. A movie review turns into a wrestling comparison, an awards complaint, and a small argument about what counts as the best kind of performance. It stays loose. Listeners who like movie chatter that reaches for old references and trusts the tangent to find the point will get the most out of it.

As heard by us

A talky Bride of Frankenstein episode that finds its spark in Jesse Buckley's Mary.

Sean Patrick and Jeff treat the Mary/Ida split as the movie's real engine, and the talk settles into its best rhythm once it lands on Mary. Each time she shows up, Jesse Buckley sounds like she's having a blast, and the hosts clearly enjoy leaning into that playfulness.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Bride of Frankenstein riff that gets tangled up in a Mary/Ida split, then slides into Jesse Buckley, wrestling, and Oscar chatter.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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