THE ROMANTICS

CAROLINE: The Romantics is a pretentious, very low budget indie-feeling movie based on a book of the same title.

RYAN: And the author of the novel actually wrote and directed the film. It’s got a great cast, but I couldn’t believe how low budge it was. The look of the film is very grainy, and the colors are very muted in all sea foam and peach.

CAROLINE: [laughs’ Well, it is a wedding movie. They seemed to use a lot of natural light too, which didn’t always help Candice Bergen.

RYAN: It’s very much in the vein of Rachel Getting Married, with the wedding environment, the hilarious rehearsal dinner toasts, the shaky camerawork… but minus the drug addiction.

CAROLINE: I hear you on the similar themes, but it’s not nearly the quality of Rachel Getting Married. This isn’t that good a movie… though I was surprised by Katie Holmes’s performance. She was great, and it was nice seeing her in a small film again. I think it’s a good career move for her.

RYAN: She’s also an executive producer on the film. But I hate her a little bit for being married to Tom Cruise in real life and also getting to make out with Josh Duhamel in the movie.

CAROLINE: Josh Duhamel is a specimen of manhood, isn’t he? It’s kind of remarkable how hot he is.

RYAN: You’ll hear no complaints from me about him.

CAROLINE: The rest of the cast includes Malin Åkerman, Elijah Wood, Adam Brody, Quinn from TV’s Glee and Anna Paquin as the bride.

RYAN: I like all of these actors and that made the movie fun to watch for me. It’s well written, it’s got a good story and the drama is such that you both want to see and don’t want to see certain things happen. You’re hoping that the characters won’t behave badly and it makes you cringe when they do, but you also love it for the entertainment factor.

CAROLINE: I hear you, but I don’t think I liked it as much as you did. It’s about a bunch of self-indulgent, Ivy League rich kids who were BFFs in college and have all hooked up with each other at one point, dabbled in drugs, etc. It’s so predictable in that way. The director/writer went to Harvard, so maybe she’s just writing what she knows; but I found them all kind of annoying.

RYAN: As an Ivy League grad, did you personally identify with these characters?

CAROLINE: Ha. Not in the least, thank God. I don’t want to bash the movie totally, because it had some decent scenes, and I really liked the Katie Holmes/Anna Paquin/Josh Duhamel love triangle. I appreciate that it’s more or less a directorial debut, and I’m always impressed when someone makes a movie on a shoestring budget. It definitely has some funny and dramatic moments, but it has problems in the form of semi-detestable characters. Some of the things that are so important to them and create such drama for them are actually quite trivial. But I guess that’s just called being in your 20s.

RYAN: It’s about love and friendship, and if you’ll allow me to go there, it’s very much like the musical Wicked. This movie totally reminded me of the relationship between Glinda and Elphaba, especially the scene at the end with Anna Paquin and Katie Holmes.

— BOTTOM LINE —

CAROLINE: It’s a decent effort. I didn’t love every minute, and some of the characters annoyed me, but I enjoyed it.

RYAN: I clearly liked it way more than you did, and I’d recommend it for sure. I’d love to say see it in the theater, because I think it’s worthy, but you can probably just wait to rent it or catch it on cable.

CAROLINE: Well, it’s only out in limited release anyway, so most people won’t be able to see it until it’s out on DVD.

— RATING —