For such Reeves and Ryder fetishists, thereâs plenty here to moon over, given that in Destination Wedding, they wedding videographer Tuscany share more screentime than their other three outings combined. For many of us, theyâre an extension of our youth, like absurdly attractive, staggeringly rich popular kids from school we envied from afar. Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder are flexing their comedy in this romantic comedy.
A TV comedy writer once told me that a successful romcom must convince the audience that the lovers are meant for each other, and only for each other. Sustained sarcasm carries no wisdom, but instead feels increasingly hollow as one runs out of material and the targets become more arbitrary. But after a while, their sarcasm grows tiresome, and their cynicism feels trite. A film that feels like a stage play.
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Lindsay and Frank meet at the start of the film. Yes, locations change, but the film still feels like a single scene. Destination Wedding feels like an extended scene from a Woody Allen film.
It is also clear that these are people we should dislike, but I find myself drawn to both of them. Backing up, the premise of the movie is simple â a pair of unlikable cynics meet each other waiting for a flight. It might just be one of the most quotable films Iâve seen with a lot of intellectual barbs. The movie is dialogue driven â a machine-gun like back and forth of verbal jousting â as our overly cynical leads are trapped in a battle of wits. Speaking of the cast, how can a movie go wrong when the male lead is Ted Logan, Johnny Utah, Jack Traven, Johnny Mnemonic, Neo, John Constantine, and John Wick â I just realized that is a lot of Johns â none other than Mr. Keanu Reeves himself. âYes, and some people have six fingers,â he retorts.
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Theyâre horrible to each other from the minute theyâre thrown together on a flight, passive-aggressively jousting over packets of airline peanuts, shared taxis and the awkward rehearsal dinners. Initially, at least, the pair carry this meet-rude premise with some enjoyable anti-charm and a few decent lines. It will require all your love for the pair to hang in there as they take turns to exchange jaded worldviews, between lengthy sessions of carping, bitching and gloomy introspection. Nearly every other character is essentially a cameo or an extra. Ryder and Reevesâ screen presence works every joke as well as they can, and it definitely works more often that it doesnât.
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The pair share an easy, spiky chemistry and Reeves in particular shows himself to be surprisingly skilled at delivering such bile-filled dialogue. Writer-director Victor Levin, who brought similarly astute rat-a-tat dialogue to the underrated TV comedy Survivorâs Remorse, taps into that clandestine thrill of quietly berating those around you with someone whoâs on the same, bitter page. Theyâre appalled to be going to a wedding, let alone a selfishly designed destination wedding, and the ensuing action, or rather lack thereof, sees them slowly bonding over their hatred for the world around them. The nuptials in question are happening at a remote Californian location and the film opens with Frank (Reeves) and Lindsay (Ryder) meeting at the airport, developing an almost instant mutual disgust.
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As the family checks out, Brian receives the bill, it was multiple-pages long for a normal bill and everyone remembers all the spending they did with Brian’s card. Brian goes to Z at the balcony to reconcile, Z makes clear that he is trying to establish his life after a rough upbringing and that he loves Tiffany and would do anything to protect her. The family reunited at a buffet and Brian is told before he joins the table that the investigation into Z led to nothing and Brian decided that just let the marriage proceed without objection. Madea demanded Tiffany to speak up for herself and stop letting her mother control things, but Tiffany insists that she’s marrying Z out of love. During the plane ride to the Bahamas after a family argument over seats, Madea, Joe, and Bam mocked BJ behind his back for attending to his coloring book. Madea fights with her family only to be tricked by Mr. Brown that they’re giving away a free TV.
- Heâs understandably peeved that Tiffany agreed to this scenario without introducing her man first, and thinks Zavier is a sleazy character.
- Victor Levinâs âDestination Wedding,â the third pairing of slacker-era stars Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, is a romantic comedy with the romance desaturated to a brutalist black.
- Peter Jackson did something similar in the original Tolkien trilogy, in scenes where big and small characters conversed.
- Cinema loves a good dose of misanthropic sniping, with memorable characters littered throughout decades of cinema who enjoy nothing more than taking a swipe at their fellow humans, from Bill Murrayâs weatherman in Groundhog Day to every version of Scrooge ever committed to celluloid.
- Yes, they are at a wedding and we see the guests in the background, but we never actually see the main characters have any interaction with them.
- They’ve been miserable with everyone else, and because misery loves company, it’s logical that Lindsay and Frank’s miseries will cancel out into bliss.
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Quality control is low even by his hit-and-miss, too-many-movies-a-year standards. Sometimes people walk up and stand there in plain view while the others remain oblivious to their presence. Little thought has been given to how people end up where they need to be to overhear something they shouldnât or interfere in a conversation that was supposed to be private. Joe convinces the pious and clean-living Leroy that itâs a gospel-themed party, practically a church service. Thereâs a scene in a gift shop where lots of stuff is added to their bill, and scenes in the casino where Joe gambles and tells the house to add his tally to the bill.
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â âClose,â replies Frank, âI believe thereâs nobody for anyone.â Clearly, the film is more in love with the characters then they are with each other. Speaking of dialogue, theyâre the only people in the film with any (and they have a lot of it). I suggest giving it a chance, hate the characters, get to know them, and grow to love them, just as they grow to love each other.
If you missed our full post on this beautiful destination wedding this morning, donât forget to take a look. And I love that Nastasia was still wearing her veil as she danced into the night! P.S. Look out for the moment Nastasiaâs dad gives her away to Johnny â not a dry eye her in BM HQ â itâs just gorgeous! At 18 minutes, itâs a little longer than the wedding films we normally feature â but itâs well worth the watch â Marco Caputo is one talented film maker. And while we spent our morning swooning over spectacular images by Aljosa Videtic Photography, now itâs time to be captivated all over again with this epic wedding film by Marco Caputo Films. Weâve pulled together the best group of people and this is sure to be a trip of a lifetime.
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Writer-director Victor Levin (5 to 7) only gives us two characters in this one-act play disguised as a movie. It doesnât help that both are among the most negative people anyone could expect to encounter anywhere, making it truly puzzling why anyone would invite such apparent losers to their nuptials. An enjoyable enough 85 minutes which has a certain amount of sparkle, this comedy of two people who hate the world has ample charm but little in the way of story. The fact that Reeves and Ryder fail to interact with any other characters makes the film a little claustrophobic and constricting, despite the bright and colourful visuals.
It would be interesting, if it were at all possible, to do a study to determine which era of romantic comedy had the best talkers. If itâs Final Destination or the world of the Hallmark Channelâs Destination Wedding, crank up the John Denver. In fact, âdestinationâ in a title has often meant âyou will be stuck in a tiny space with a bunch of men in uniform and no one will have anywhere to go, making the word âdestinationâ seem like a cruel joke, at least from the perspective of you, a fictional character in this movie.â Yes, Reeves and Ryder have to share a small airplane to get to the wedding. Itâs too early to tell if the film earns the trailerâs Bringing Up Baby-style encounter with a large catâthatâs a pretty bold marker to throw downâbut Destination Wedding looks like, at the very least, a solid middle-of-the-road romantic comedy.
While the thought of adventuring around the world to celebrate their love sound amazing. Kelly and Tom and fifty members of their family and friends flew from to US, to Ireland, to celebrate Kelly and Tomâs wedding day at Rahinnane Castle. Reeves is pretty great at making Frank as unlikable as he claims to be, down to a weird throat-clearing tic that suggests someone who doesnât spend much time in public. Perhaps itâs telling that Reeves is absent from that scene. â There was all the kooky coquettishness, the brainy charm that made her a star to begin with, not simply reproduced, but smartly transposed to this particular characterâs neuroses.
(A lot of filmmakersâeven the great Martin Scorsese, who once wanted to be a priestâare more exciting to watch when theyâre depicting bad people.) Perry, as usual, is the credited writer and director in addition to playing multiple characters from Madeaâs family, the Simmons, including Madeaâs wild-haired, shambling, rascally brother Joe and their earnest son Brian, a prosecutor (played by Perry without special makeup). It doesnât introduce any story complications, much less any real stakes for the characters, until more than halfway through its running time. Even though itâs the latest in his series about his most famous character, the combative but goodhearted grandmama Mabel âMadeaâ Simmons, and is, like nearly all of the rest, fitfully amusing but slovenly and easily forgotten.
