BEFORE: Happy Valentine's Day! I'm kind of pinning my hopes for an appropriate film on this one, which is available on Hulu - that is, if you can call a film being on Hulu "available". But there was an article last year about Winona Ryder considering herself "married" to Keanu Reeves, since they played a married couple in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" years ago. I guess to her, that counts? She doesn't know the difference between getting married in a movie and getting married in real life, it seems. To be fair, Francis Ford Coppola used a real Romanian Orthodox priest in the wedding scene of that film - but maybe Winona didn't realize you also need to get a marriage license? Anyway, at least I imagine they've got some history and thus maybe some on-screen chemistry, too. Keanu Reeves carries over from "Always Be My Maybe".
I'm up early this morning to search for COVID-19 vaccination appointments online - my wife and I both become eligible in New York as of tomorrow, but some centers are taking appointments for people with conditions today in anticipation. I got lucky and got myself in a "virtual line" for appointments out at a racetrack in Queens, so I booked myself for Tuesday at 3 pm, now I'm in another virtual line to schedule something for my wife. I hope this qualifies as a romantic gesture of sorts - who even knows any more, during a pandemic? (Flowers are so last year, same for jewelry - vaccine appointments are the new hip, trendy gift...?)
THE PLOT: The story of two miserable and unpleasant wedding guests, Lindsay and Frank, who develop a mutual affection despite themselves.
AFTER: I think we've got a winner here - I enjoyed this one more than I thought I would, so it's great that this is the film that landed on Valentine's Day, against all odds, and after a schedule change. See, the system works!
It's such a simple formula that I'm surprised there aren't a dozen more films just like this one - two people traveling to the same destination find that they're both connected going to the same event, and though they've never met, there's an instant connection. Lindsay was once engaged to the groom, and Frank is the groom's brother (half-brother?) - so they were once almost in-laws, and since it's not exactly a close-knit family, this explains why they've never met before. Also, since they've heard so many bad things about each other in the past, they immediately hate each other. You couldn't imagine a worse pairing, and they've got to sit next to each other on the plane, in the cab, they've got adjoining rooms at the hotel, PLUS then they have to sit together at the rehearsal, the ceremony, the reception...
It's a recipe for disaster, except you know that Hollywood doesn't make too many of those, so instead it's more like a set-up. Even if their families didn't set them up, a screenwriter obviously did. These are two people who are very negative, so they hate everything, and perhaps counter-intuitively, this is an OK foundation for the start of a relationship. As one comedian put it, as a couple you don't need to like all of the same things - but you do need to hate some of the same things. So there you go - Lindsay and Frank start out hating each other, but given enough time, they're going to find a few things that they hate in common. This starts with Frank's mother, Frank's father, that song being played at the reception, and so on. Given enough material, these crazy kids just might make it work out.
Since they already act like a married couple, bickering and arguing that is, plus in Winona's mind they've been married for years, we're all kind of rooting for them, even though they've developed negative attitudes about relationships - Frank's already played out the whole relationship with Lindsay in his mind, so he's pre-broken up with her, you could say. Lindsay's still got a thing for Frank's brother, even though he broke off their engagement and her heart - she never got closure, but who does? It's simple enough for her to transfer her affections from one brother to the other, but will that solve her problem or just create another one? She's got to take that big leap to find out.
Thankfully, there's a lot to hate at a wedding - immediately after this, I finished watching the Iliza Schlesinger Netflix special "Iliza Unveiled", and it was all about her recent wedding, and how stupid wedding traditions are (the veil, the garter, the bachelorette party...) so that all tied in nicely. A so-called "destination wedding" to Napa Valley is portrayed here as the ultimate expression of self-importance - forcing friends and family to travel hundreds of miles just to pay homage to the happy couple. Get over yourselves! Who the heck wants to go to San Luis Obispo anyway? Nobody goes there by choice, it seems. Could have been worse, I guess, at least there's a lot of wine there and Toblerones in the mini-bar.
Frank and Lindsay both enjoy watching old movies and hate-watching medical dramas, so that's something. But Frank's not completely sold on the relationship, despite a shared life-threatening encounter with a wild animal and a hook-up with Lindsay in the fields behind the vineyard, he's convinced that right after the flight home, he can just go back to his regular solitary existence. But this might not prove to be so easy...
The film is a bit unusual, because only the two main actors have speaking roles - it's a little strange to see other people in the airport, on the plane, and at the wedding who don't have any lines. But it also works, because the story here is JUST about these two people, and their conversations over that weekend, so anything else would just get in the way, if you think about it. And it was all filmed in under ten days.
Also starring Winona Ryder (last seen in "Mermaids"), DJ Dallenbach, Ted Dubost, D. Rosh Wright, Greg Lucey, Donna Lynn Jones, Curt Dubost, Michael Mogull, Scott Andrews, James Gallardo, Sean Sullivan.
RATING: 7 out of 10 little bottles of wine with screw-off caps
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