The Film Reports

2.5 stars

Comedy, Drama, Romance

Table 19 is a comedy/drama about Table 19 – the table at a wedding that has the unimportant people, the ones that the bride and groom don’t even remember. The film takes place over the wedding day and delves a surprising amount into each character’s background.

Anna Kendrick is arguably the protagonist as Eloise, the best man’s ex-girlfriend and the bride’s former best friend. She was moved to table 19 at the last minute after Teddy dumped her over text. Kendrick is sweet and charming, as per usual, and her friendship with Jo (the bride’s childhood nanny) was touching. Lisa Kudrow and Craig Robinson play the Kepps, a married couple with issues. This pairing was unexpected but worked really well, and was probably one of my favourite parts of the film. The last two on the table is Walter (Stephen Merchant) and Renzo (Tony Revolori). These two characters were awkward and while you could ignore them when they were part of the group, I didn’t look forward to the parts where you go into their backstories.

It’s a quiet film. The pacing is a little weird and the tone of the film changes throughout the film. Is it a comedy, is it a drama? Somehow it doesn’t manage to be both and instead is a weird mixture of the two with some scenes feeling too serious for the rest of the film. The other thing that I thought was done gracelessly was the ensemble part of the film. The film goes into depth with each other characters but it still seems to be centred around Eloise. It felt odd.

Would I watch this again? Maybe… If I felt tired and wanted to watch something very low-key. It’s not a bad film, it was funny and smart and the plotlines were solid enough. Something about it just didn’t feel right though. It didn’t have enough substance, I just didn’t care about the characters that much.

Watch it: Sundays. This is a strictly sundays kinda film.