Destination Wedding (2018)

Photo Credit: Sunshine Pictures

Directed by Victor Levin

Released: August 31, 2018

Format reviewed: Video-On-Demand

Destination Wedding only has two speaking roles, Frank (Keanu Reeves), a prejudiced, petulant and emotionally unavailable douche and Lindsay (Winona Ryder), a needy, judgemental and over-sharing bore. 

They’re both separately invited to a destination wedding purely out of social obligation, bond over being the undesirables stuck there, and -as you may expect-  these two opposites attract. 

Hackney premise aside, I found plenty of joy in this movie, most from Winona Ryder’s overactive face. She has a particular superpower as an actress, she can tell you a whole story filled with thrills and chills just by her well-timed facial expressions. 

The character of Lindsay has no walls, she wants you to know how she feels as she feels it, and this works perfectly with Ryder’s superpower. Cued by Keanu, she would raise her eyebrows, press her lips, open her mouth like she’s about to say something only to swiftly press them again. Giving us a full monologue showcasing the character’s offense, her desire to speak up, and her self-censorship in a single second. 

Human movement has always fascinated me and seeing someone take full advantage of every single facial muscle to effectively tell a story is truly a delight.

Serving as her foil is Keanu Reeves who delivers his dialogue with as much of a stone face as he can. This is not a dig at Keanu’s performance, the role of Frank demanded an impenetrable force field of defense mechanisms. His performance feels unnatural, but in a familiar way, like meeting a stranger with something to hide. While I may not rave about it as much as I did for Winona’s, it worked perfectly for what the role required. 

Most scenes are composed of relatively long takes with both actors together in the same closed frame as they banter and get to know each other. This not only gives me more of Winona Ryder’s facial performance but also creates a fly-on-the-wall feeling. Soon we forget that we are watching a movie and feel like we’re overhearing a witty but personal conversation between two interesting people. 

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, it is… until it gets old 30 minutes into the movie. As the long stretches of dialogue dig and dig through the characters’ exteriors, we discover that underneath this douche and this bore there’s only more douche and more bore. 

What we see in the first 30 minutes is the entirety of their characters and the once delightful banter losses its meaning until it becomes little more than noise. The lack of character depth turns a voyeuristic fly-on-the-wall experience into a sitting-in-between-a-couple-arguing experience. Not a great trade-off. 

What we have here is a good idea for a short film stretched to reach a 90-minute run-time. This is not bad on itself but instead of adding more story, writer/director Victor Levin just added more witty banter, apparently hoping that alone could justify its existence. 

1.5/5