WATCH NOW
“Drinking Buddies’ is like watching a bunch of boring alcoholics when you’re the designated driver. For me personally, the best part about being the DD is watching people get out of control under the influence of what the Baptists like to call ‘that Devil’s Brew’. The characters in ‘Drinking Buddies’ are utterly dull, filled with whining and passive aggression. “Drinking Buddies” is done in the form of a mockumentary, which means that the cast is made up of overly simplified, dirty looking stereotypes who can talk non-stop without doing anything to captivate the audience. The people watching are simply bored by the as the “drama” that the movie provokes. ‘Drinking Buddies’ is a combination of meaningless chaos stitched together, and for some reason the creators want us to believe it is an outtake of actors drinking on set. It’s ‘Grown Ups 2’ for the art house addicts.”
“Drinking Buddies” misses a golden chance to showcase the world of beer-making. It totally neglects the process. The leading characters, Luke (Jake Johnson) and Kate (Olivia Wilde) are employed in a brewery situated in Chicago. Kate is the only female staff at the brewery, but this astonishing detail is hardly explored. Luke is her best buddy and perhaps an ex friend with benefits. He is currently seeing Jill (Anna Kendrick) but still has feelings for Kate. While Kate works in an executive capacity, Luke has the privilege of wandering the brewery in his birthday suit, and that is just the beginning of his rough appearance; he looks like the MGM lion after a night in a crack house.
Even when Kate, Luke, and the men at the brewery have unlimited access to free beer, they still choose to go out to bars to drink, talk in circles, and play pool. The price of a movie ticket will buy you a couple of beers. Wouldn’t you rather be drinking them than watching “realistic” portrayals of people drinking?
Allow me to get back on track. Jill and Luke partner up with Chris aka Ron Livingston and Kate to enjoy a weekend at his lake house. The poster and trailer for “Drinking Buddies” suggest that this is an invitation for Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice style children harming, but that’s not true. While out on a nature hike, Jill does the normal thing and kisses Chris, but the way it’s presented makes it ridiculous. Later, Luke ruins that argument that “the director is showing real life” when he says no to Kate’s preposterous request to go skin dipping with her. When Olivia Wilde asks you to go skin dipping, YOU GO.
After the weekend, Chris breaks up with Kate, while she goes out with a few of her male colleagues and gets ‘lewd’, ‘screwed’, and tattooed. At the same time, Luke and Jill are having the most oddly named conversations about marriage. The conversations with them, along with everyone else in “Drinking Buddies,” makes it evident why the movie is bad; These actors have no idea how to improvise. This needs to work or else one side needs to sound like a person or cartoon character. Here, everyone sounds like they have recently started learning English. In a comedy, this is a bad strategy. To prove my point, if you do see “Drinking Buddies,” just try to listen to Wilde’s “dialogue” to a seasoned comic like Jason Sudeikis who plays the Kate’s boss in the brewery.
“Drinking Buddies” really tries the audience’s patience when Jill travels to Costa Rica and Luke is left to search for rumpy pump activities with Kate. Their scenes become excruciating as Luke does the sort of passive-aggressive schmoozing that no man will do, and Kate attempts to be ambiguous about it. They converse ad nauseam. “Please smash my eardrums,” is how I felt. We also experience an endless segment of Luke assisting Kate in moving, although at least that has some violence and the film’s director in a cameo role getting his head punched.
Actually, the inclusion of prominent personalities makes the Samberg formula worse. The absence of the lesser known actors would have stopped me making comparisons with Wilde’s performance on “House” or Livingston’s role in my favorite “Office Space.” I recognize that I am not a follower of this sort of a genre, but I got to come across some movies in it that I enjoyed. I do disagree with the reviewers who have branded “Drinking Buddies” as a movie of “White People Problems.” It seems like the last thing on their minds is privilege, and the issues they have are global, no matter how poorly they are depicted.
Befriend people who don’t drink. You’ll enjoy yourself more, and I guarantee the chats will be far more interesting.
To watch more movies like (Drinking Buddies (2013)) visit 123Movies.
Also Watch for more movies like:
