THE ROMANTICS 2/4 stars
Paramount Pictures, Rated PG-13
With its marriage of neo-screwball and gabby two-timing love triangles, the wedding comedy The Romantics may be part of a dubious new direction in movies: small-talk cinema. In other words, mostly all talk and no action, a recipe that may tend to leave viewers feeling more than a little left out of the conversation.
A down-in-the-dumps wedding ceremony gathering with an all-star celebrity cast, The Romantics is a class reunion of sorts, when former college roommates reconvene at an upscale suburban seaside McMansion for the marriage of fretful, whining airhead Lila (Anna Paquin) to ambivalent groom Tom (Josh Duhamel). It seems Tom is still secretly carrying on a longtime affair with Lila’s best friend, love rival and appointed maid of honor, Laura (Katie Homes), and is perfectly willing to continue stringing her along.
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While relatives, arriving house guests, ex-roommates and siblings squabble about outstanding quarrels and fuss over ceremonial preparations, a drunken, rowdy outdoor mass gathering gets into full swing. All the happenings allow fickle fiancé Tom and still smitten Laura to sneak off into the woods for a presumably undetected erotic encounter. At the same time, a perpetually inebriated Chip, the bride’s scornful gay brother (played by Elijah Wood), seems more alienated than anyone else, in search of an elusive comfort zone at a strictly breeder wedding.
Back at the lavish dwelling, Lila gets nearly homicidal over a torn wedding gown, while Candice Bergen, as a traditional, neurotic sour mom, sets women’s liberation way back into the last century when she conversely reigned as leading small screen feminist on Murphy Brown.
Josh Duhamel and Katie Holmes star in The Romantics
Directed and written by Galt Niederhoffer (Prozac Nation, Six Chicks in a Kitchen) and adapted from her novel, The Romantics is explained in the course of the movie as the “incestuous dating history” defining these characters. It’s not unlike a kind of marriage, as everyone is apparently into “falling in and out of love with each other for the rest of our lives.”
And while the nuptials between Lila and Tom pose the eternal question “Do you take…” there’s an equally daunting question posed during these giggly yet monotonous proceedings that moviegoers have to answer: Would you be friends with any of these people in real life? If the answer is no way, this movie may not be for you.
