| Overall Grade: |
B+ |
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| Story: |
B |
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| Acting: |
B+ |
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| Direction: |
B+ |
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| Visuals: |
B |
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My, My, How The Boys Have Grown
by Eric (movies profile)
Sep 7, 2007
8
of
10 people found this review helpful
I think it's safe to say that The Groomsmen will be talked about on the same level with Clerks II. Just two major differences, in my humble opinion. 1) Edward Burns is a much better director than Kevin Smith and 2) this movie is much more consistant and mature. Alas, we have a movie that looks at growing up not so much as a leap but a realization. Where characters don't see the line between youth and manhood untill they've already crossed it.
The film starts off days before Paulie's (Edward Burns) marriage to his long-time girlfriend (Brittany Murphy). They have a baby on the way, which to Paulie's big brother Jim (Donal Logue) is the reason for the nuptuals and a bad reason at that. But Jim himself walks around with a chip on his shoulders. He's Paulie's best man with his childhood friends (Jay Mohr, Matthew Lillard and John Leguizamo) as his groomsmen. During these few days, they drink, fish, play baseball, and talk about the good old days. They've all made sense of their lives with the exception of Jim and Mike (Mohr), who is still in the exiting stage of adolescence, where a baseball card means more than friendship and where peeing in someone's car is a means of revenge. He even makes money off of mowing lawns.
But overall, this is a romantic comedy, but much more mature than anything we've seen this year. It's on the same level as Burns' The Brothers McMullen with dialogue that isn't so much sophisticated, but has a working-man's poetry to it. The only drawback to the film is it's eagerness to dive into melodrama to make up for it's lack of wit. Most of the time, it makes for some great scenes.
Burns casts this movie with characters that feel they come from the block. Inspired choices such as Logue as the brooding Jim and Heather Burns as Jim's wife allows great actors to work off each other. Just watch the scenes with the five main male leads and how you can just feel the comraderie. But especially I liked Matthew Lillard as the wise Desmond, who as a bartender, is capable to nursing your wounds and healing your soul over a beer.
Burns' direction is very natural, allowing his characters to develop the scene. As an actor, he understands that it's his characters that makes these scenes and to take away from their power takes away from the film itself. He proves that flash doesn't make for great filmmaking.
All in all, this isn't a perfect film, but an inspired one. I doubt many will see this film, even those looking for a good date movie (as this most certainly is). But to miss this reception would be to your loss. Good friends are hard to find. |
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