Drinking Buddies

DRINKING BUDDIES

Director : Joe Swanberg

Year : 2013
Genre : Romantic Comedy
Rating : ***

Directed by indie king Joe Swanberg, 'Drinking Buddies' is a quite charming but rather unremarkable romantic comedy starring Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingstone. The movie premiered at South By Southwest, which is the main film festival for upcoming directorial talent and is the latest mumblecore production; a sub genre of independent film making where the actors on screen are not generally known to multiplex audiences, the production values are low and the screenplay is centred around naturalistic, almost improvised dialogue. 

'Drinking Buddies' follows the love, square I suppose of four friends who end up falling for their respective best friends partners. Mostly centred on the relationship between two beer factory workers played by Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson who end up falling head over heels in love, despite both being in seemingly happy relationships.

Light on ideas but heavy on wandering, noodly dialogue, 'Drinking Buddies' follows the script conventions that have become synonymous with the mumblecore subgenre. As with many mumblecore productions, the dialogue is mostly improvised by the actors on set and while this sometimes produces realistic and completely believable conversations, it also allows a lot of uncomfortable pauses and dead air to take up a lot of screen time. When there is very little to hold our attention but the dialogue, it is important that the speed and the energy of the narrative isn't lost by actors trying desperately to think of something funny but also realistic on the turn of a dime. Thankfully, both the talents of the actors and Swanberg's adept editing skills help to disguise a lot of the awkwardness and many of the conversations in 'Drinking Buddies' are touching, realistic and very, very funny.

The cast while not exactly memorable do a pretty good job of working in these difficult circumstances and Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson are extremely watchable in the roles of the central couple trapped by undying but forbidden love. It is clear watching 'Drinking Buddies' that all of the actors are on and off screen friends and I bet the blooper reel for the film is just as long as the actual picture itself! Thanks to the aforementioned dialogue, the cast are given free rein to comedically bounce of each other and this creates great chemistry and extremely watchable moments of laughter and moving truths. 

Overall, 'Drinking Buddies' is nothing special at all and the mumblecore conventions can become somewhat overbearing at times. But for a micro budget romantic comedy, it isn't bad at all. The cast are very, very likable and Swanberg's direction while basic and relaxed is demonstrative of what the undervalued and sometimes maligned mumblecore movement can acheive, which is evidently quite a lot.