TABLE 19

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.

Grade:  C-                                    By Donna R. Copeland

DOPE

--> Shameik Moore     Kiersey Clemons     Tony Revolori     Rakim Mayers     Zoe Kravitz

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Up-and-coming filmmaker Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope is a clever, well written, and directed picture with a fine cast and a plot that is complex and engaging enough to keep the audience pulled right in.  Television and film (Joyful Noise) star Shameik Moore as Malcolm nails his character, a young black high school nerd with a high crew cut (I suppose that’s what it’s called) and a big enough brain to impress/puzzle anyone standing near.  This is all done seemingly unselfconsciously; the words just roll right off his tongue.  He has two perfectly loyal (and entertaining) sidekicks almost as bright as he is.  Diggy (Clemons) is a Lesbian who everyone thinks is a boy.  Jib (Revolori) is Hispanic, but with 14% African-American blood, he identifies as black so, as brought up in the film, he has permission to use the n word.

           Malcolm lives in “The Bottoms” with his single mom in Inglewood, CA, in a poor projects neighborhood, and goes to a school where getting your shoes stolen by the leader of a gang is an everyday occurrence.  Drug dealer Dom (Mayers) stops him on the street one day and instructs him to ask a young woman (Zoe Kravitz as Nakia) to come and talk to him.  Malcolm being respectful of his elders does so and serves as their messenger back and forth, but in the process becomes totally smitten by her.  She’s a tease, and when Dom invites her to his birthday party, she tells Malcolm she’ll go if he does.  Malcolm is leery, but his friends push him to go, and they do, although they have to sneak in since they’re underage. 

           The party turns into a fiasco with the cops raiding the place, and the three students barely getting out, and then the next day Malcolm finds some important objects have been put in his backpack, which Dom has shoved at him before Dom is arrested and put in jail.  Getting the contents to where they’re supposed to go involves more planning and maneuvering than anyone would have dreamed of, but it all comes from Famuyiwa’s creative mind. 

           A good part of the film is its going against black stereotypes, such as the three friends desperately wanting to go to college (Malcolm to Harvard) and willing to make any sacrifice to avoid anything standing in their way.  At the same time, it also delves into the reality of what African-Americans are up against today.  Case in point is an advisor at school point blank telling Malcolm to forget about Harvard—that he’ll never get in given where he has come from and the high school he has attended.

           Shameik Moore surely will have a future in film with his eye-catching looks and delivery, dancing ability, and music talent (he is on several songs in the film which were recorded with Pharrel Williams, and his own new album will be released soon).  He will appear in the second season of Baz Luhrmann's Netflix series “The Get Down”, set to air in 2016.  In Dope, the interactions among the three friends is always entertaining apart from all the intrigue going on around them.

A smart film that young people will love.  Caution:  R-rated.

Grade:  A                                             By Donna R. Copeland