Nearly two years after its 2023 TIFF premiere, comedy-drama My Mother’s Wedding finally arrives in theaters and never quite finds its footing. The film originally premiered under the name North Star and later received a name change.

In My Mother’s Wedding, Royal Navy Captain Katherine Frost (Scarlett Johansson) is preparing to take on a new command when memories of her childhood and her late father, pilot John Frost, begin to resurface. While she sifts through old emails, her younger sister Victoria (Sienna Miller), a glamorous actress, appears on a talk show, candidly recounting their family’s painful history—including their father’s death in the Falklands War and their mother’s marriage to his best friend, Johnny Monson, who later vanished in action.

The story centers on the reunion of the three Frost sisters at their childhood home in Hampshire, where they’ve gathered for the third wedding of their mother, Diana (Kristin Scott Thomas), to the eccentric Geoff Loveglove (James Fleet). As the festivities approach, simmering tensions rise: Victoria’s love life stirs up drama, palliative nurse Georgina (Emily Beecham) grapples with doubts about her marriage, and Katherine faces emotional uncertainty around her relationship with partner Jack (Freida Pinto).

Over the course of the wedding weekend, family secrets come to light, shaking the sisters’ bond. As they confront the past and each other, Katherine is forced to reconsider her future when Jack delivers news that throws her plans into question.

Despite its talented cast, My Mother’s Wedding struggles right from the opening minutes. And it’s not for lack of effort on my part—believe me, I wanted to like this film. But the fact that it sat on the shelf for nearly two years after premiering at TIFF in 2023—only having its North American rights acquired for distribution in February 2025—should have been a warning sign. This is one of those cases where the trailer tries to sell a much better movie than what actually unfolds. Despite the film’s best intentions, it just doesn’t come together. The one saving grace may be the mercifully short 95-minute runtime.

At some point, you begin to feel a bit bad for Kristin Scott Thomas. She’s making her directorial debut and drawing from deeply personal family history, even co-writing the script with her husband. Like the characters in My Mother’s Wedding, her real-life father and stepfather were both Royal Navy pilots who died in eerily similar crashes. Rather than dwell on the grief, the film uses this shared trauma as a jumping-off point for a family reunion narrative: three grown daughters returning home for their mother’s third wedding, each bringing emotional baggage of their own.

There’s plenty of dramatic potential in that premise—unfortunately, My Mother’s Wedding doesn’t make the most of it. One of the more distracting issues is Scarlett Johansson’s performance as eldest daughter Katherine. Try as she might, I just never bought her as British. But that’s only one of the film’s many problems. With three sisters juggling separate storylines—including infidelity, romantic angst, and unresolved grief—the short runtime simply can’t do justice to any of them. Just as things start to deepen, the movie’s already wrapping up, and I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved it was over or frustrated by how much was left underdeveloped.

I watched the press screener knowing little beyond the premise, and in hindsight, maybe I should have turned it off. But I kept thinking it might improve—that something meaningful might land in the final act. It never really does. Maybe watching to the end wasn’t my best decision, but it was made. And now that I’ve seen My Mother’s Wedding, you don’t have to.

DIRECTOR: Kristin Scott Thomas
SCREENWRITERS: Kristin Scott Thomas and John Micklethwait
CAST: Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, Emily Beecham, Freida Pinto, James Fleet, Mark Stanley, Sindhu Vee, Samson Kayo, Josh McGuire, with Thibault de Montalembert and Kristin Scott Thomas

Vertical will release My Mother’s Wedding in theaters on August 8, 2025. Grade: 2/5

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