DRINKING BUDDIES: Empty Calories

Director: Joe Swanberg
Writer: Joe Swanberg
Cast: Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston, Jason Sudeikis
Runtime: 90 mins.
2013

Critics have embraced Drinking Buddies as an example of mumblecore hitting the mainstream: a mostly improvised romantic comedy that taps into the charming banality of relationships in an understated way that is rare for the often bombastic, overstated medium of film.

I suppose it is that.  Unfortunately, I also found it to be one of the duller movies I've seen in recent memory.

First let me explain mumblecore, because before this movie I had heard of the genre, but didn't understand it.  From what I can tell, mumblecore is fixated on understatement and realism such that its characters are always interacting in a more or less boring fashion.  I don't necessarily mean that to be pejorative--I mean that you get scene after scene of uncomfortable small talk, or really mediocre jokes.  Dialogue rarely, if ever, advances the plot or stands out in any way.  In fact, there isn't much of a plot to speak of.  Here's an example:

Kate: "Chris is here."
Luke: "Oh, I can't wait to meet him."
Kate: "Yeah, he's with Jim right now."
Luke: "He's talking with Jim?"
Kate: "Yeah, but if I introduce you, will you not be a dickhead and not call me names and don't say anything stupid or mean and don't like punch me in the face?"
…
Kate: "Hey guys, this is Chris… This is Jill."
Jill: "Hi, I'm Jill"
Luke: "Luke, nice to meet you"
Chris: "Nice to meet you"
Kate: "This is Callie"
Chris: "Hi Callie, how are you?"
Kate: "This is Mike"
Mike: "Hey, Mike"
Chris: "Mike, Chris"
Kate: "This is everybody!"
Chris: "It's a pleasure, yeah, nice to see you."
Kate: "This is his first time here."
Luke: "Welcome man, all jokes aside we've heard a lot of great things about you and we're excited to have you."
Chris: "Really? Good! That's great."

Occasionally, a characters is having some real-talk with someone, and they muster up something quasi-insightful, like this:

Kate: "The problem with heartbreak is that to you it's like an atomic bomb and to the world it's just really cliche because in the end we all have the same experience."

This dialogue is realistic, and honest--these are not-that-interesting people talking to other not-that-insightful people (who happen to be abnormally attractive because they are, after all, movie stars).  But there isn't anything more than that.  The plot could be summed up in a sentence and a half.  And none of it meant anything to me.

I'm not saying a movie needs a kick-ass plot to be good.  It doesn't.  One of the neat things about Maniac for me was its atmospheric plotlessness.  A movie doesn't need a moral.  It doesn't even need a message.  I would argue that it does need meaning, because why else would we tell a story?  There is meaning to be found in Drinking Buddies, but it is scant, and it never captured my attention.

I've been using Lost in Translation as a standard of comparison, because it is the only other movie I've ever seen that matches Drinking Buddies with its plotlessness, banality, and cliche-resisting romance.  I find the former to be a much better movie, though, and I'm not sure exactly why.  Maybe the exotic location and deft cinematography of Lost in Translation filled in a lot of the personality and energy that is absent in Drinking Buddies.  Maybe Bill Murray is a much more convincing and sympathetic sad sack than any of the characters in Drinking Buddies, who too often seemed to me like they just needed to get over themselves.  Maybe the relationship at the center of Lost in Translation actually felt more honest because it was distinctive, whereas the characters of Drinking Buddies are playing broad types that I suspect are supposed to be easily-relatable to the audience, such that we fill in our own romantic history in order to connect with the situation.  If that's true, then the film begins to feel less honest and more manipulative.  I know the only time I was starting to connect to the film was when I started playing the fill-in-the-blanks game, but then I immediately closed myself off when I realized what was happening.

I wasn't even the biggest fan of Lost in Translation, but it felt meaningful to me in a refreshing way.  A lot of people felt that way about Drinking Buddies, but the only thing it really made me feel was discomfort at the constant onslaught of sexual tension.  If I want to feel like I'm just sitting in a room and watching real people talking, I'll watch an episode of Louis.  I will say, though, that the leads of Drinking Buddies are charismatic enough and easy to watch.  It all made for a strange viewing experience.  I felt disconnected, as if I was watching fish swimming around in a bowl.  The movie is like a curious little screensaver, in a way; you know that nothing is happening, and you could easily look away if you wanted to, but you can't muster up enough willpower to do so.

1 / 5  BLOBS