A film
review by Michael Phillips for ChicagoTribune.com on August 21, 2013
A short
glass of 3.2 beer, Joe Swanberg's Drinking Buddies has the advantage of a name cast that happens also to be
talented: Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson as employees of a Chicago
microbrewery, at work and play; Ron
Livingston and Anna Kendrick as
their significant others, though as in all Swanberg films the significance of
all the relationships at hand is up for debate, for grabs and for a halfhearted
change of partners.
The
casting advantage is also a disadvantage, in that the skillful quartet at the
center of Drinking Buddies reveals
the weaknesses in the material. The occasional honest moments emerge
nonverbally, as when the camera catches a few seconds of second thoughts
flitting across Wilde's face, for example. The skeletal storyline engineers an
attraction between her character, a hard-drinking key player in the
male-dominated craft brewery, and Johnson's fun-loving colleague. It's clear
they like each other. It's clear, too, that their partners are mutually attracted.
The only question in Drinking Buddies
is who's going to transgress first and to what degree.
Chicago-based
Swanberg shot the film last year in various Chicago locations and on the beach
in southern Michigan, where the two couples spend a weekend together. Like a
lot of indie filmmakers, Swanberg, who wrote, directed and edited, encourages looseness
on set, leading to plenty of improvised variations on whatever was written. Now
and then, a sharp bit of casual-sounding dialogue spices things, as when
Livingston, sampling a microbrew at a tasting, is asked to describe the
combination of flavors and comes up with jelly
sandwiches… dark clouds of puberty on the horizon…
What
happens in Drinking Buddies isn't a
matter of surprise or insight; it's more a matter of four people, plus a
handful of side characters (Jason
Sudeikis, Wilde's squeeze off screen, plays a co-worker), beering their way
into passive-aggressive compromising situations and then avoiding the Big Talks
that might prove difficult or messy.
The male
leads aren't particularly differentiated; both feel undeserving of their good
fortune. I probably spent the first month
wondering what was in it for her, Livingston's character confesses to
Kendrick's.
The
chemistry between Wilde's character and Johnson's, meantime, is established
through their high jinks (smearing cold cuts on each other's faces, etc.) and
the way they crack each other up. Drinking
Buddies has a cleaner structure than Swanberg's earlier wanderings, but
after several projects I still don't know what compels him as a filmmaker or if
he has anything to suggest other than Women
Are Hard to Figure Out and Relationships
Are Hard to Sustain. My favorite moment, ironically, belongs to Swanberg,
the sometime actor; his few seconds of rage as a motorist blocked in the street
on moving day is funny and nicely unexpected, especially after all the
inconsequential mutterings in between rounds.
Labels:
drama, romance
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