Drinking Buddies

It's official: watching a bunch of twenty-somethings figure out who they want to date is boring.

"Drinking Buddies" is about two couples who kind of wish each of them were free to hook up with the opposite-gendered member of the OTHER couple but who don't do anything about it. There are many scenes of some combination of these four people drinking copious amounts of beer and talking about nothing that's at all significant. This might recreate the actual experience of going out to bars and staying there long after all of the exciting people have gone home, but it makes for tedious and unengaging dramatic material. I would be tempted to shrug the film off as a total loss, but the final few scenes finally deliver something interesting in the way of writing and acting, so the film's not a complete wash.

Olivia Wilde is the main protagonist, and she's basically a male fantasy come true -- in other words, a dude who just happens to have a vagina. Anna Kendrick is the boring girl who wants her boyfriend to propose to her, and she looks just about as bored to be in the movie as we are by her character.

The film was of particular interest to me because it takes place in Chicago (where I live), but it could have been filmed in any city that has nondescript apartments.

Though I'm not THAT much older (38) than these characters are supposed to be, I felt watching this movie like I might as well have been born in the 1950s. You know you're a parent when you want to tell all the characters to drink some water and eat a vegetable.

Grade: C