Movie #245 - The Groomsmen

The Groomsmen
2006  Rated R - 1 hr 38 min
Director: Edward Burns
Starring: Edward Burns. Matthew Lillard, Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo, Donal Logue, Jay Mohr, Shari Albert

My biggest beef with this movie is the misleading marketing.  The poster pictured here reads "The boys are back in town."  The DVD box reads "Till death do they party."  But this isn't The Hangover. That movie might be better served by those one-liners than this one. 

This movie is good, but it's not a party flick.  This groom and his groomsmen have a lot of things to sort out with each other.  There's a lot more drama than there is partying.  It annoys me that they didn't trust in the movie's validity as a romance/drama and tried to make it sound like something it isn't.

You won't laugh that much when you watch it.  But you will find yourself drawn in to these barely-functioning relationships. Brothers struggling to accept each other, men in various stages of their own relationships trying to remain friends, a gay son reconciling with his dad.  Doesn't sound like a party movie, does it?

Movie #230 - Go

Go
1999 - Rated R - 1 hr 42 min
Director: Doug Liman
Starring: Katie Holmes, Sarah Polley, Desmond Askew, Nathan Bexton, Scott Wolf, Jay Mohr, Timothy Olyphant, William Fichtner, Taye Diggs, Breckin Meyer, James Duval, Jane Krakowski, Melissa McCarthy

Here's a favorite from college. A tale of a would-be drug dealer and her assorted disaster-facing friends.  The cool thing about this movie is the multiple perspective approach, rewinding the film to tell the tale from many points of view.  The would-be drug dealer, the "bait," the drug user (which affords an awesome grocery store dance scene), the actual drug dealer on his Vegas vacation with friends, and a pair of actors who wind up trapped in a sales pitch.  It's weird, it's random, and it's probably better on drugs, but I've always liked this movie for it's unconventionalness. (Is that a word? ... says the writer)

So it may not be intellectual but it will make you laugh. Or possibly scare you that the future of my generation is not a hopeful one.  I think enough time has passed that we've redeemed ourselves from these kind of antics and proven that we're not all on drugs. 

Anyway, a great ensemble cast piece that's just fun to watch... like a train wreck, you just can't look away.