Bad reception for wedding guests
TABLE 19
CONGRATULATIONS are in order to “Table 19”: This comedy about the random losers stuck together at a wedding reception creates an experience as dull, awkward and excruciating as the thing it mocks. It’s like going to “50 Shades Darker” and being handcuffed to your chair.
The winsome Anna Kendrick is the last person I’d cast to play the losesome Eloise, formerly planning to be maid of honor but now dumped by the bride’s brother. At the reception she is exiled to the socially awkward Table 19 with a feuding couple (Craig Robinson, Lisa Kudrow), a batty nanny (June Squibb), a horny kid (Tony Revolori) and a convict (Stephen Merchant).
Writer-director Jeffrey Blitz, who made two wonderful movies (“Spell- bound” and “Rocket Science”), goes for dreadful broad humor, not excluding people falling on their fannies. Long, nervy pauses, such as those that ensue when the convict is asked what he does for a living, are painful. I felt bad for everyone at the table, but worse for myself.
In the movie’s second half, Blitz steers away from cheap gags and turns the movie into a character study, which is to say he explores why everyone’s so miserable. The couple haven’t had sex in years, for instance, and the wife came to the wedding because she was hoping to have an affair. Merchant’s character turns out to be an embezzler with a heart of gold, and Squibb’s has her own private sorrow.
Once the secrets are out, Blitz has nothing left to say and goes back to wacky romcom antics involving Eloise’s ex (Wyatt Russell). The movie’s more like an operating-room table — where you’re being lobotomized.
Running time: 87 minutes. Rated PG-13 (profanity, sexual content, drug use, brief nudity). Nowplaying.