Drinking Buddies – Film Review

Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson) work together at a Chicago brewery. They drink and flirt with each other. They seem made for each other except that they’re both in relationships. Kate’s playing it cool with her music producer boyfriend Chris (Ron Livingston), while Luke is in marriage talks with Jill (Anna Kendrick), his girlfriend of six years. No good will come of it.

After 90 minutes of seemingly endless chatter, it emerges that they’re the Drinking Buddies of the title, exactly as we were told at the start. This is a bit irritating, as are the performances of Kendrick and Johnson, though to be fair to the performers, that’s how their parts are written, and they’re well cast and do what’s asked of them well.

Writer-director Joe Swanberg’s entirely improvised romantic comedy drama has its downsides but also it upsides. It’s quite witty, charming and appealing, not very, but quite. Wilde is excellent in the main role, and so is Livingston, so much so that the film takes quite a dip when he’s not on screen and he not appear in the last third of the movie.

It’s basically a four-hander, but Jason Sudeikis gets a little space as Gene Dentler. He’s a bit irritating too.

It’s good to see a small indie comedy getting a big-studio release, so it would be useful, and well as reasonably rewarding and worthwhile, to support it.

Swanberg has a director cameo as the man that gets into a fight with Johnson.

(C) Derek Winnert 2013 derekwinnert.com