It’s inevitable to have specific hopes for certain films which come your way. Maybe it’s because it’s so rare these days to find a film that’s centered around thoughtful characters with grounded problems in a ponderous setting, or perhaps it’s the fact that this critic is going through a similar situation to that of the main character’s, that my hopes for the comedy/drama Table 19 more than showed. I trust I’m not alone in saying that most people who wander into Table 19 would expect the film to be the kind of thoughtful comment on life and relationships that mixes humor and pathos in poignant and telling ways which resonate on some level with the audience. I’m convinced that the film so wanted to be that almost as much as I did. Unfortunately, it couldn’t.
Table 19 centers on a young woman named Eloise (Anna Kendrick), who is attending the wedding of a longtime friend. Once the intended maid of honor until a breakup with Timmy (Wyatt Russell), the bride’s brother, who also happens to be the best man, Eloise is relegated to the status of low-priority guest now seated at the last table in the reception hall. When Eloise arrives at her designated seat she encounters the other members of table, which include the bride’s former nanny Jo (June Squibb), married restaurateurs Bina and Jerry (Lisa Kudrow and Craig Robinson), former convict cousin Walter (Stephen Merchant), and awkward teen Renzo (Tony Revolori). Throughout the course of the wedding, Eloise bonds with the group of troubled misfits, as well as a handsome wedding crasher named Huck (Thomas Cocquerel), while trying to constantly hold it together.
There’s nothing wrong with the set-up or any of the individuals in Table 19. The film has a great premise and an assortment of characters who are properly conflicted and accessible. All of this alone does make the film worth checking out, but certainly not worth revisiting. What makes each of the characters so worth an audience’s time is that all of them are decidedly grey in their principles and ideologies; this is a film with no perfect people to be found. There’s always been something great in cinema when it comes to the idea of fate bringing together a variety of strangers; the undesirables of society, specifically, for a finite amount of time in their lives. Watching complicated people become enriched by other complicated people will always make for a cathartic moviegoing experience, and Table 19 exploits this very idea to no end.
Unfortunately for the film, and everyone involved in it, Table 19 is saddled with one of the lousiest scripts to come out of Hollywood in quite some time. Every bit of the film’s dialogue is so trite, cliched, and rehashed over and over again that it becomes beyond overwhelmingly dizzying. Moments of characters confessing, venting, or pondering are all approached with about as much depth and honesty as a greeting card. As a result, most of the characters flounder, such as Timmy, the aforementioned ex-boyfriend/best man. The film tries to paint him as not just a selfish former lover, but rather as a three-dimensional person genuinely torn. However, the movie gives him lines that never let him be anything other than cardboard, proclaiming how much Eloise hurt him by declaring him “ridiculous.” Had the dialogue been more profound, the characters and the whole affair wouldn’t have seemed so sad. As it stands, it’s almost impossible for anyone to come away from this film feeling any better than when they walked in.
The totally useless script wreaks havoc on the majority of the cast, who are left stranded with only their natural acting devices to carry them along when their lines fail them. Among the survivors of the abhorrent dialogue, it’s Kudrow, Robinson (their problematic marriage could make a sweet indie all it’s own), Squibb, and Revolori who manage to somehow make things work. Meanwhile, Kendrick resorts to looking hapless and cute, Merchant comes off as lost, and Russell (the biggest victim of the film’s ridiculous script) struggles while trying to make his scenes work.
The screenplay for Table 19 was written by Mark and Jay Duplass, the filmmaking brothers whose past work has earned them a reputation for crafting stories which never fail to be both deeply human and incredibly involving. Their best work remains the 2010 Jason Segel/Ed Helms/Susan Sarandon effort Jeff Who Lives at Home, which told the story of two brothers and their mother who re-evaluate their lives in the course of a single day. That film’s script was captivating and alive while also remaining quiet and intimate, with an ending which remains realistically hopeful. It spoke volumes about finding yourself all of a sudden after being forced to examine the past and the present under the most unorthodox of situations. The fact that the same minds crafted Table 19 is downright unthinkable and will forever remain a depressing fact in its own right.
