BEFORE: Well, if I moved yesterday's film (and tomorrow's) out of next year's romance chain into September, then I might as well take this one with it, too - if I leave it in the romance category it doesn't connect to much there, just one film, and two connections are the minimum required. This one feels like the most romance-heavy film of the three, so I'm not totally sold on the idea of moving it, because there's always the chance that another film will turn up to make the connection on the other side, so what to do?
I did a quick pass through the (very rough) plan for next February, after removing these three films and three others that I excised in order to make my September connections - thankfully I'd already highlighted any actors and actresses that appear more than once in bright green, so I'd know all the other possible options for connections, other than the ones I was already using. I can't be sure just yet, because it's still so super early, but it seems like I still have plenty of options - removing these six films from the mix could actually make next February's chain tighter and more focused - and maybe less reliant on finding new films to bridge the gaps. It's an odd concept, like if you knocked out a couple of bricks from a wall and somehow made the wall stronger in the process - but I've seen this happen before with my horror chains. Just a week or so ago I moved "Replicas" to October and used it (along with "Birds of Prey" and "Doctor Sleep") to bridge a gap that otherwise would have required renting 3 films from iTunes that I wasn't crazy about, I think moving these three Glenn Close films from February to September is along those same lines.
Now, next question, because I don't HAVE to move this one with the other two, I could drop this one and the gap would close up around it, and that would free up one more slot for 2020 - so is there any film that's begging to be added, with an actor that I'm already using as a link, so it could be added in right between them? Again, a quick search through my cast lists of the actors I'm going to use as links - and nope, nothing seems like an obvious omission, so I'm going to stick with the plan and proceed. Just for fun, here are my links for the rest of September - after Glenn Close comes Holly Hunter, Vanessa Hudgens, Will Smith, Karen Gillan, Jimmy Tatro, Allison Janney, Tammy Blanchard AND Maddie Corman, Tom Hanks, Karen Gillan (again), Dan Stevens, Will Ferrell, Joe Manganiello, and Chris Hemsworth. If you're ambitious enough to search the IMDB, you might even figure out my September schedule - but why would you want to?
Glenn Close carries over, for the next-to-last time this year, from "The Wife".
THE PLOT: A retired film star's wedding to her fourth husband brings chaos when their families (and her ex-husband) show up for the festivities.
AFTER: I think I made the right call by moving this one out of February - it's not really about romance, well it is and it isn't, I'll get more into that in a bit. It's really about a crazy family, or two crazy families, and a bunch of shenanigans before a wedding. There's relationship-y stuff, but mostly between exes, which would sort of grandfather it in under "relationship" issues, but I think the focus here is on comedy, not some kind of intent to examine the nature of relationships, or instructions on how to maintain proper co-parenting relationships with ex-partners. Plus, as a bonus, this is the third film appearance this year for John Malkovich, Patrick Stewart and Minnie Driver, so they'll all make my year-end countdown now. Another little indicator that maybe I'm on the right track, if there even is such a thing.
But there seems to be a huge divide here between those top stars and, well, the rest of the actors. I feel like I can tell you EXACTLY how many of these actors got their own trailer, and, well, it's four. The other actors feel like they're straight out of central casting, maybe one or two exhibit that "Hey, it's THAT guy" effect, but mostly I've never heard of these actors, and for me, that's saying something. I think there's one actress that I've seen 3 or 4 times, but I mainly know her because my boss follows her mother on Facebook, and she posts something every time her daughter is in a new film, even if it's a tiny role. She means well, but it's also a bit much.
The other problem, and this is sort of tangential to the last one, is that there are WAY too many characters here. Sometimes more is not more, more is just too much - somebody wanted to show how crazy these two families are, and logically more characters means more craziness, only comedy is not always logical. If there are two many characters it can be hard to keep them all straight - if they were all actors I was familiar with it might be a bit easier, but that's not the case. So we have the lead character, her ex-husband and her prospective husband. She's got three sons with the first husband, and two of those sons have daughters, one of those daughters brings a friend (girlfriend?) and then there's another kid on that side, but I can't even tell who his father is, it's unclear. Then one son's ex-wife shows up (the mother of one of those daughters) and she's also got a son, but from a different father. Geez, I'm exhausted already trying to keep this straight, and that's only the bride's side of the guest list.
The groom arrives with two daughters (neither family has met before, so the introduction of everybody to everybody else takes like ten minutes, or maybe it just feels that way) and his daughter's friend who he says is "like his third daughter". Mmm-hmm, that could be important later - it's a bit unclear at first if she's the girlfriend of one of his daughters, or what. This film wanted so badly to be progressive, to act like gay relationships are no big deal, but it just couldn't quite make that leap - was some studio afraid of alienating the conservatives in the audience? Or was this the point, that the twenty-somethings today are more gender-fluid, and don't make a big deal about being bisexual or having casual sexual relationships with their friends? It's unclear, unclear, unclear to the point of being maddening. Or perhaps this is a by-product of having so many characters that there's really no time to delve into the relationships of the minor characters, because we need to focus on the more prominent characters. Or maybe I'm seeing things that aren't really there, these extra guests are just "family friends" and that's all, they're not important to the plot. But if they're not important, then why are they even there? Start trimming away the extra characters, and narrow the focus here.
I'll give two specific examples, to prove my point, and then I'll move on. The groom's best man shows up last, and he's Italian for some reason, and naturally he's also got two daughters with him. There's some weirdness in the car, like he's hesitant to complete the last quarter-mile of the car trip, but finally the journey is complete, he arrives at the big house, is greeted by the groom, and...well, that's it. He seems like he might be an interesting character, like why does the groom have an Italian best friend? What's up with his daughters? Why did he stop the car and seem reluctant to arrive? I've got no idea, because the movie then forgot about him and his daughters (umm, I think, again, too many characters to keep track of...) and in fact they could have cut this whole best man character out of the film, and it wouldn't have made a difference. It might even have made things a bit less confusing. Don't introduce characters late in the game unless you're going to DO something with them, that's a good rule to follow.
Second example - Mackenzie, the granddaughter of the bride, is the one talking directly to the audience, and she's also making a film (using a video-camera, not her phone for some reason, very 1990's) by interviewing the guests on their thoughts about love. Though I'd say the film is very erratic, it's got no focus, and comes to no conclusion, and about halfway through the film, it feels like the director forgot that this is something Mackenzie does. Mackenzie is attracted to her cousin, which she acknowledges is wrong, but he's not really her cousin, or is he? This is the grandson that I couldn't track, I wasn't sure whose son he was, and it seems maybe Mackenzie's not sure either. Here's the problem - what's his appeal? There's no time to even give him any distinguishing characteristic, so I don't even understand why she's attracted to him. Is it just because he walks around without a shirt on? He barely even talks - OK, maybe she likes the silent type, but this is another casualty of the "too many characters" issue. How did he rise above the crowd in this house to even catch her eye in the first place?
The one thing that the big crowd in the big house does create is plenty of opportunity. There's one son on the bride's side who will screw anything in a dress, and there's so many girls to choose from that he barely even needs his box of chocolates with drugs in them. If he gets turned down, he just moves on to the next random girl. Another one of the bride's sons is more focused, he apparently did a lot of research on the groom's daughters, and showed up knowing about her book award nomination, and she did the same with him, because he's a former rock star and she's a fan of his music. This relationship I could keep track of, but for the most part, there's almost too many romantic pairings that are possible, especially when they lose track of that box of chocolates and it starts getting passed around. So much drugs and so many bottles of wine and those inhibitions start coming down - for a while I thought that things were going to get so crazy that Husband #1 was going to sleep with Husband #4. That didn't happen - but I suppose it could have.
(There's definitely a sort of "bedroom farce" to this whole thing. I'd like to see one of these comedies with a lot of partner-swapping where somebody sleeps with their own spouse, and it's a total accident. That would feel sort of Shakesperean in a weird way. Maybe it's the presence of Patrick Stewart here, but with elements like drugged chocolates and free-flowing wine, I was reminded of plays like "A Midsummer Night's Dream", where there are magical love potions and such.)
Something does happen, and I don't really want to give it away here, because I always try to be spoiler-free, but I don't think it's a spoiler to say that "something goes wrong". If there was a film about a big family wedding and you tuned in and everything just went according to plan, that could be a very boring movie, right? So something goes wrong, and it has to be addressed. Unfortunately, the solution is one that appears all too commonly in movies that simply can not happen in real life - it's a problem in fact that people who write movies think that this is the way that weddings work, and, well, they're wrong. I've said too much, but if you're a fan of a certain classic Hollywood movie from 1940 that got re-made as another classic Hollywood movie in 1956, maybe you know what I'm talking about.
I think the larger point here is that famous people are more screwed up than regular people - the bride is a famous but retired actress, her ex-husband is a famous actor, and her intended groom is a well-known author. One of the bride's sons is a former rock star, and his ex-wife is a currently famous pop star. They operate by different rules than regular people, so for this reason it's somehow acceptable for them all to be on their second, third or fourth marriages. But all their kids are divorced or otherwise relationship-challenged, too, so is the point that nobody these days is able to sustain a relationship? And the younger generation is the most confused of all, they're crossing gender lines and even hot for their own cousins - so let's face it, nobody really knows anything about love and marriage, everybody's just making it up as they go along, and that means making a ton of mistakes. I guess each generation is trying to avoid the mistakes that the last one made, but I fear that means they're just going to make all new mistakes of their own. Oh, well.
Reading between the lines here, the film's box office is conspicuously absent from the IMDB - so that means it bombed, right? I can see why - too many characters and too many plot points that don't connect with the others and are just left hanging there. One last example - in one notable romantic coupling, perhaps under the influence of those drugged chocolates, one of the young women decides to make a plaster-cast mask of that son who sleeps around a lot. Um, OK, except this process is not a romantic thing that horny people do, in fact it's pointless unless you're a make-up artist and you're going to create a monster-mask for that actor. The gag is that he falls asleep with the plaster on (umm, where did SHE go?) and he stands up and walks straight into a wall, knocking himself out. Well, I guess that's one thing to do with a character, but it's a prime example of a bit that comes from nowhere, goes nowhere, and serves no practical purpose at all. It's sort of a metaphor for the entire film.
Also starring John Malkovich (last seen in "Supercon"), Patrick Stewart (last seen in "Charlie's Angels"), Minnie Driver (last seen in "Hard Rain"), Jack Davenport (last seen in "Kingsman: The Secret Service"), Grace Van Patten (last seen in "The Meyerowitz Stories"), Noah Emmerich (last seen in "Fair Game"), Peter Facinelli (last seen in "Riding in Cars with Boys"), Yael Stone, Lilly Englert (last seen in "Little Women"), Brigette Lundy-Paine (last seen in "Bombshell"), Tim Boardman, Kara Jackson, Rob Langeder, Paulina Singer (last seen in "The Intern"), Joe Urla (last seen in "Hands of Stone"), Jake Katzman, Victoria Guerra, Juan Castano, Camila Perez, Marsha Stephanie Blake (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Elizabeth Wood, Cher Cosenza, with a cameo from Edward Hibbert (last seen in "Father Figures")
RATING: 4 out of 10 oversized bedrooms in this house, apparently
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