Movie Review: 'Table 19'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Table 19 is every wedding-reception-from-hell anecdote invited to one movie premise.
It's a wedding comedy that has its moments, but is ultimately too divorced from reality to keep the smiles and laughs coming.
Anna Kendrick stars as Eloise, who was scheduled to be the maid of honor at the particular wedding ceremony under the microscope.
But she was relieved of her MOH duties because she was just dumped by the best man, who just happens to be the bride's brother – via text, no less.
But she still intends to attend and she is still on the guest list.
So arrive she does and is seated at the dreaded nineteenth table at the very back of the ballroom along with five other invitees who comprise a disparate group of quirky strangers, none of whom completely fits in, now parked at the reject table.
This is where the bride and groom have placed them either because they don't really care about them or because they couldn't find anything even farther away from the action.
As Eloise puts it at one point, this is the table "that could disappear in the middle of the wedding and no one would even notice."
What the table-mates have in common is that each was expected to send his or her regrets and stay a merciful distance away.
But everyone has a story, it turns out, and a surprising secret or three may be revealed as the reception proceeds.
And who knows? Not only might a new friendship emerge, but even a new romance could be on the horizon.
Will wonders never cease.
What writer-director Jeffrey Blitz (Rocket Science, Spellbound), most of whose background has been in television, has going for him is the game supporting cast that includes Lisa Kudrow, Craig Robinson, June Squibb, Stephen Merchant, Wyatt Russell, and Tony Revolori – all of whom seem to be having a royal good time.
But the script that Blitz co-wrote with brothers Jay and Mark Duplass doesn't support the characters deftly enough to engage us sufficiently and absolutely underserves the clever and likable Kendrick, first among ensemble equals, who does what she can with the thin material, but disappears for stretches when we miss her affecting line readings and graceful movements.
There are a few well-timed slapstick gags, but the film meanders so badly in the third act that it nearly turns into another film entirely.
And there are far too many scenes in which two characters argue – loudly – while all the others just sit or stand there silently, listening intently as if they're paying customers at a small-scale play.
What planet are we on again?
As for the obligatory wedding romcom clichés and conventions, they're on their usual display -- and why shouldn't they be? – but the film fails to wring much rollicking comedy out of them.
So we'll marry 2 stars out of 4 for Table 19, an uneven wedding comedy that's neither a slice of life nor a slice of cake.
