Review: 10 Years

It’s school reunion time, where old mistakes and embarrassments will resurface, some new ones will emerge, lies will be told about current circumstances to hide the failures and disappointments of the last decade, bullies and nerds will reacquaint themselves with one another, and spouses will be forcibly introduced with the guy or girl that their other half used to date. Good times. Channing Tatum arrives with his girlfriend (played by real-life wife Jenna Dewan-Tatum), nervously wondering if high school flame Rosario Dawson is gonna turn up, as things ended somewhat messily, it seems. Pssst. She does indeed turn up, with husband Ron Livingston. Hooray for awkwardness! High school sweethearts Chris Pratt and Ari Graynor are married with kids, but Pratt still harbours guilt for his bullying ways in high school and hopes to rectify the situation. It doesn’t go well because Pratt’s a pitiful douchebag who hasn’t really changed. Oscar Isaac went on to become a somewhat successful John Mayer wannabe, but rather than appreciate the fawning groupies, he’d rather reacquaint himself with the one who got away (Kate Mara), who apparently hasn’t even heard his hit song. Aubrey Plaza is shocked to find out that her squeeze Brian Geraghty- get this- liked to hang around black people and listen to that thar hippity hop music! A white guy getting’ jiggy wit’ it, OMG! OMG! Shocking, I know. Anthony Mackie plays Geraghty’s likeable former best friend who fills Plaza in on all the details. Justin Long and Max Minghella are pretentious yuppies looking to hook up with the former class hottie (Lynn Collins), who has some surprises and truths of her own for them, whilst they are clearly lying their arses off, even to each other.

 

Written and directed by Jamie Linden (in his directorial debut after having scripted “We Are Marshall” and “Dear John”), this 2012 film takes a basic and relatable concept, a bunch of familiar B+ faces and names, and manages to give us 90 or so minutes of entertainment, truth, and a few laughs. Of the cast, for me the most impressive, entertaining and funniest was Chris Pratt. Others seem to find him the sore spot in the film, but I for one recognised this guy. It’s a pretty accurate (well, to people I’ve known or heard about at any rate) characterisation of a guy who genuinely wants to make up for past mistakes as a bully, but he’s so full of self-loathing and an inability to hold his liquor that he ends up repeating those same damn mistakes ten years later and making a complete arse of himself. He’s at turns pathetic, sad, and hysterically funny, especially when he takes the mic at karaoke and drunkenly singing ‘Lady in Red’, the highlight of the film. Everyone has known a douche like this, and most of us would cross the street to get away from them today. I don’t normally have much time for Ari Graynor, but she feels similarly authentic (if far less amusing) as the kind of girl who would wind up marrying and popping out kids for this overgrown idiot of a man-child.

 

Next best for me was the storyline involving supposedly rich yuppies Justin Long and Max Minghella trying to score with the school hottie grown up, Lynn Collins. The guys are very funny (though the twist with them is transparent from the beginning), and the Collins character actually reminded me of someone I went to high school with, whose life journey has been somewhat similar. She gets the best line in the film when she scolds the guys for pulling a juvenile prank on her they’re too old for. In fact, she probably steals the second half of the film from everyone except Pratt.

 

None of the other characters really resonated with me as much, I must say, though Rosario Dawson is still one of the most charismatic, beautiful, and wasted talents in cinema (I just don’t understand why she’s not a huge star), and Anthony Mackie is quite good in his underwritten role. The whole storyline with him, former white rapper Brian Geraghty and the lovely Aubrey Plaza, though, did nothing for me. So Geraghty used to be a white rapper…and? Is that meant to be something? ‘Coz it’s not. At all. I also thought that lead actor (and producer) Channing Tatum bizarrely looked like he’d rather be anywhere else but in this film. It fit the character somewhat, but it didn’t make for much entertainment or audience investment. He’s one lucky dude, though, to have snagged on-screen co-star Jenna Dewan-Tatum. Meanwhile, as much as Oscar Isaac proves in this film that he can sing, he doesn’t sing anything worth listening to (typically indie singer-songwriter tedium), and his storyline with Kate Mara is pretty dull, despite Mara’s very fine performance (The character is probably the closest to me, as there’s certainly not much photographic evidence of my existence at school, either, though that’s because I tried to avoid the camera, in full honesty).

 

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and some of it works better than other parts, but it’s better than most reunion films, at least. Every generation needs a reunion film with an all-star cast, and although these stars aren’t A-listers, it’s still an easy watch.

 

Rating: B-