Anna
Kendrick Lisa Kudrow Margo Martindale Craig Robinson
Tony
Revolori June Squibb Stephen Merchant Wyatt Russell
This is a strange movie that doesn’t quite get
off the ground. It’s rather
formulaic, as in quick alterations between humor, anger/meanness, tenderness,
and love. It tries to be funny by
being shocking, but the jokes often fall flat, or are even embarrassing—as when
a young man asks a girl he’s never met to go out with him and marry him…and, by
the way, he has a big penis.
Stumbling, pratfalls, and bumping into things and wrecking things are
likewise inserted to be funny.
There must be at least five or six people who fall down, and we’re
supposed to laugh. And the
fighting between couples; this gets very tiresome.
The film takes place at a wedding, and opens
with Eloise (Kendrick) vacillating between accepting or declining the
invitation. This is actually one
of the more clever scenes showing real anguish and ambivalence; Kendrick can be
very funny. She is right to be
torn because she’s bound to run into her ex-boyfriend Teddy (Russell), the
brother of the bride with a new girlfriend. She wants to go because she is a long-term friend of the
bride, and was even helping with wedding plans when she and Teddy broke
up. Of course, in the end she
decides to go, and is seated at Table 19.
We’re informed ahead of time that this is a table of misfits.
The colorful make-up of the guests at Table 19
is a great set-up for a comedy.
Along with Eloise, there is the former nanny of the bride and her
brother, Jo (Squibb); unhappily married owners of a diner (Kudrow and
Robinson); an ex-con (Merchant) who is the uncle of the bride, and a young man
(Revolori) desperately wanting to score, inappropriately egged on by his
helicopter mother (Martindale) whom we only hear over the telephone. This table is supposed to form the
essence of the comedy, and some of their routines are as madcap as they’re
supposed to be, but the filmmakers (writers Jay and Mark Duplass and director
Jeffrey Blitz) never quite succeed in their aim to make this an all-out
screwball comedy. Which is a
shame, since the cast is filled with talented actors.
Table 19 succeeds when it illuminates the
back-stories of the characters, and we feel compassion for what they’ve gone
through. This is especially true
of the ex-con when we hear what he did wrong, which is both funny and extremely
touching at the same time.
Merchant pulls this off like the pro that he is. Revolori (a hit in The Grand Budapest Hotel) plays his part extremely well, but the
lines he’s given, which are supposed to be funny, simply aren’t. Kudrow and Robinson are fine actors,
but there is no chemistry between them, and it’s puzzling how the two
characters could have gotten into a marriage. Kendrick also does well, but it’s a role she has done many
times before in playing characters that I suspect are very similar to her as a
person. I would like to see her
pick up the challenge of roles that will be out of character for her, proving
her great acting abilities.
Table 19 is mildly entertaining, but
doesn’t achieve the sidesplitting screwball comedy to which it aspires.
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