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THE GROOMSMEN Send This Review to a Friend
Writer-director-producer-actor Edward Burns makes a specialty of writing about characters stemming from types he knows and he is entertainingly and movingly on target with “The Groomsmen.” At first the film seems as if will be just an enjoyable buddy movie, but it doesn’t take long for Burns’ take on friendships to escalate into deeper character study and revelations about the lives into which we are invited to peer. An excellent cast, including Burns himself as one of the leads, brings “The Groomsmen” touchingly to life with high spirits and exposed feelings.
Set on New York’s City Island, the plot brings together old school pals, now in their mid-thirties, for the wedding of Paulie (Burns) and Sue (Brittany Murphy). Sue is already pregnant and there is tension between them. Is Paulie really ready for marriage and committed to changing his life accordingly? Is Sue getting the right vibes from Paulie to make her feel secure in the situation?
Paulie’s unhappy brother Jimbo (Donal Logue) is against the marriage and resentful, for reasons eventually explained in a dramatic revelation. Paulie’s cousin Mike (Jay Mohr), frustrated in his pursuit of a girlfriend who repeatedly rejects him, nurses a grudge against T.C. (John Leguizamo), who stole his most cherished baseball card and disappeared, but has now returned for the wedding. There is something basic for everyone to learn about T.C. The most solidly adjusted of the lot is Dez (Matthew Lillard), who owns a local bar and is married and a devoted father of two sons.
Burns has the gift of mixing the serious with comedy, the romantic with anxiety. The screenplay provides sufficient meat to make us become involved with the fleshed-out characters, and more than enough humor to provide laughs that are part comic relief and part indicators of the sort of immaturity that persists among men who are still acting like boys in so many respects. The cast is up to the task of conveying the various shadings as the guys rehearse their old musical group for the wedding, argue, reveal things to each other and to the women in their lives, and learn to grow up and take their part in the real world as distinguished from the memories of the days when they were in school.
Leguizamo is especially effective in delineating his character and need to re-establish a relationship with his father. Mohr is often hilarious as Cousin Mike, who is somewhat of a good-natured slob who still lives with his dad, who urges him to find a nice girl and get married. Everyone turns in a good acting job, and although the way things come together at the end for all concerned is somewhat pat, this lends an upbeat feeling to the film and is justified by the way the characters have been depicted along the way.
“The Groomsmen” is consistently enjoyable for its incisiveness and overall ambiance that gives the impression of a real locale and the characters likely to be there. A Bauer Martinez Entertainment release.
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