Movie Review Table 19

Table 19 (2017) 

Directed by Jeffrey Blitz

Written by Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass 

Starring Anna Kendrick, Wyatt Russell, Stephen Merchant, Lisa Kudrow, Craig Robinson 

Release Date March 13th, 2017

Published March 29th, 2017

Undoubtedly someone will relate to the idea of being invited to a wedding where they are not expected to attend. At least, that is what the producers of the new comedy “Table 19” would like to think. The premise here is that several people have been invited to a wedding where they were just expected to pick a gift off the registry and send that in with their regards. Instead, each of these oddballs decides to attend the wedding and wind up at the table of misfit guests.

Anna Kendrick stars in “Table 19” as Eloise, the former Maid of Honor turned pariah after she was dumped by the Best Man who is also the Bride’s brother, Teddy (Wyatt Russell). Eloise has backed out of the wedding several times since the breakup only to show up on the day of the wedding with everyone concerned she might make a scene. To mitigate her potential meltdown, Eloise is placed as far away as possible, at Table 19.

Joining Eloise are a random assemblage of guests including Jerry and Bina Kepp, (Craig Robinson and Lisa Kudrow) business acquaintances of the Bride’s father, Jo (June Squibb), the Bride’s former Nanny, Renzo (Tony Revolori) an awkward teenager, and Walter (Stephen Merchant), a business associate of the Groom’s father. Walter is fresh out of prison and hoping no one knows about his prison stay or how he got there; why he came to the wedding or was invited is anyone’s guess.

“Table 19” has the appearance of a movie but not the story of a movie, at least not a good one. At times the film feels like each actor was given one idea for a character and then told to improvise some comic situation. Unfortunately, despite a very talented and game cast, no one, not even the lovely Anna Kendrick finds much beyond one note to play and that one note is rarely ever funny.

Stephen Merchant is a very funny and talented man but his Walter is an absolute comic dead zone. Walter’s one note is that he is just out of prison and hoping no one notices. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to lie properly so he keeps stumbling into awkward and contrived conversations that the makers of “Table 19” apparently believed were hilarious. They are not hilarious, tedious is the more apt description as Merchant plays the same awkward gag over and over until you wish his character would just leave the rest of the movie alone.

Craig Robinson and Lisa Kudrow have a slightly different problem, they are way more interesting than the one note characters they are given to play. As a married couple seemingly headed for a breakup, Robinson and Kudrow at times seem to border on a much better movie, a more European style character comedy where we might explore their marital problems with a wedding in the background. I kept dreaming of that far funnier movie while “Table 19” forced Kudrow to carry one joke through the movie, she has the same color jacket as the catering staff. Ha Ha.

And finally, there is Kendrick who should be the star here but is instead treated as a member of a wacky ensemble. Unfortunately, that ensemble isn’t funny or even all that interesting while Kendrick is her usual appealing self, her charisma and beauty calling for our full attention while the film forces us to endure her one-note table mates to ever more unfunny situations and dialogue.

I had high hopes for “Table 19.” Anna Kendrick, to me, is a genuine movie star and I wanted to see where she might lead this story. Sadly, the wacky, one note ensemble strands her in the role of straight-woman to a group of terribly unfunny side characters. There is a very funny Anna Kendrick wedding comedy trapped inside of “Table 19” trying to get out but is entirely thwarted by the filmmakers. 

The Bride's parents were right, these wedding guests should have just stayed home.

Movie Review Overlord

Overlord (2018) 

Directed by Julius Avery

Written by Billy Ray, Mark L. Smith

Starring Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, John Magaro, Bokeem Woodbine 

Release Date November 18th, 2018 

Published November 17th, 2018

Overlord stars Jovan Adepo as Boyce, an infantry soldier, completely out of his depth when he’s dropped behind enemy lines in France during World War 2. Boyce, along with a group of 20 or so other soldiers have the task of destroying a German stronghold where a radio tower stands. The soldiers must destroy this communication tower, inside an old French church before the troops hit the beach at Normandy, the famed D-Day raid, and keep the Nazis from being able to radio for help. 

The plan requires men jumping from a plane over heavily guarded German territory and while the infantrymen are fooling themselves as best they can, they know that of the 20 or so on the plane, only a handful will survive the drop and be able to try and complete the mission. Boyce has an antagonistic relationship with many in his squad but the movie is smart not to linger over this with exposition, we will get around to that. 

The plane gets shot at and is about to crash when Boyce gets tossed out by his Sgt. On the ground, after nearly drowning in a lake, Boyce meets up with the few men who survived the drop. These include the commanding Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell), the bullying Tibbet (John Magaro), an AP cameraman and soldier named Chase (Ian De Caestecker) and one other soldier who is not long for the movie. 

You will recognize the dead meat guy pretty quickly as he is the first and only one of the soldiers to spend time talking about what he plans to do when he gets home. He may as well have a wife with a baby on the way and a sign that says shoot me. The character is kind of a parody of the classic trope about the innocent lamb being led to the slaughter of war, but Overlord is not meant to be a parody.The film's modest sense of humor appears tacked on.  

Here we make the turn away from the plot and into a discussion of the movie as a conception. Overlord appeared to be, from the trailer, a wild-eyed zombie soldier movie that would be a rollicking ride. It is not quite that, not exactly. Instead, Overlord is a surprisingly straightforward World War 2 thriller that takes on elements of science fiction via historical speculation about the Germans experimenting on Jewish people, captured soldiers and their own dead soldiers. 

There is history to back up the idea that the Germans were committing horrific atrocities in the name of science. In fact, you might not want to dig too deeply into how some of the medicines of the day today came to be via what monstrous German scientists did to a lot of innocent people. I won’t cite a specific example here so as not to get bogged down in conspiracy theories, I mention this only to provide an insight into where the makers of Overlord are coming from. 

The intention here is to make an entertaining thriller with elements of science fiction and horror in the midst of the genuine, human drama of war. This is not a movie to be taken seriously but Overlord is a movie that surprisingly earns a little bit of self-seriousness that I know I wasn’t expecting from what I assumed would be a World War 2 zombie movie. There are elements of that zombie idea, but the story actually appears more at home in the world of speculative science fiction than the braindead horror genre. 

Speaking of horror, the best element of Overlord is the body horror element. The special effects at play in Overlord, especially the makeup effects, are superb in how they turn stomachs. One particular soldier's gruesome death is preceded by a transformation from man to God knows what kind of monster, featuring some truly gut wrenching visuals. Director Julius Avery may be a newcomer to big budget horror but he has a tremendous vision for terror, a mastery of creepy imagery that should bode well for his career. 

Overlord is tense and fun, a tad slow at times, and rather conventional given the zombie premise, but I do recommend the movie. Overlord is a terrific piece of war-time suspense and speculative science fiction. German scientists did horrible things to people in the name of war and Overlord is the rare movie to push the boundaries and look closer, even from the pop sci-fi perspective, at the horrors of Nazi scientist war crimes. 

Think of Overlord like a thought experiment that goes to the most broad and even ludicrous lengths regarding speculation over  what Nazi scientists were willing to do to those they deemed inferior to them. There is real life evidence to suggest that German scientists may have experimented on dead bodies and reanimation of corpses. That’s not me saying that Overlord has a basis in fact, it doesn’t, but I don’t see the harm in taking the idea of what Nazis may have done to people to an extreme conclusion. 

The World War 2 backdrop gives Overlord an unpredictable and chaotic bit of suspense that really works and keeps us in the audience aware of the constant  danger, not just from monstrous reanimated corpses, but from the Nazis who make a great villain. 

Overlord is in theaters nationwide now and is worth a look. Even if you wait for DVD and Blu Ray, if you’re a fan of horror movies, you will enjoy Overlord.