Winona, me, and Keanu makes three

There’s something simple to the successful formula of Victor Levin’s Destination Wedding:

Take two Generation X stars who are identifiable from just their iconic first names, pair them for the third time and first since A Scanner Darkly in 2006, and have nobody else in the whole movie speak a single line of dialogue.

Simple, eh?

You, the audience, become kind of the third character in this intimate, quirky affair.

At first blush, it seem like Destination Wedding will be a pointed critique of the type of wedding thrown by people who are just below society’s upper crust, who can’t afford some decadent affair in a palace, but who can afford to make their guests take a short plane ride from where most of them live to attend their destination wedding. Or, more to the point, think their guests can afford it, and reward them with little gift bags full of gourmet biscuits and expensive skin lotion.

Destination Wedding is that, sort of, but more than anything, it captures what it’s like being an outsider at a wedding that you maybe shouldn’t be attending, where you don’t know the other guests and where the only people you do know, the bride and/or groom, don’t have the bandwidth to give you any face time. Keanu Reeves’ Frank should be attending the San Luis Obispo wedding, in the strictest sense, as he is the groom’s brother. Outside of occasions like this, though, he avoids his sibling. Winona Ryder’s Lindsay most definitely should NOT be attending, as she was once the groom’s fiancée, until he broke off their engagement only five weeks before the wedding. This was six years ago, but she’s still not over it, and the groom only appears to have invited her as a gesture toward being the bigger person. She hasn’t even seen him since then.

Frank and Lindsay meet cute when they are both waiting to board the eight-seat puddle hopper that is taking them to San Luis Obispo, and by “cute” of course it means that they initially loathe each other. She thinks he’s trying to cut her in line. He explains that he’s only moving ahead so as to avoid the banal interaction she forged out of his polite attempt at conversation. Clearly, the wedding is not their only destination. Their other destination is each other.

Maybe. They’ve both got sardonic views on the world and appear to have contempt for the idea of a long-term relationship, especially with each other. But these types of things have a way of being smoke screens that are trying to hide their deeper yearnings.

It’s a two-hander that owes a lot to someone like Woody Allen, as the characters bicker and eventually bond while unspooling verbose versions of their life philosophies. The movie is a tad overwritten to be sure. But Reeves and Ryder are both game participants, and they have a couple scenes of physical comedy that remind us how well they both can do that kind of thing. Other recent examples are Reeves’ cameo in (spoiler alert) the movie I saw to start this weekend and Ryder’s work as Joyce Byers in Stranger Things, particularly its most recent season.

But one of the things I liked most about it was that the other characters in the movie are kept at such a distance. We do indeed see the bride and groom, mostly from at least 100 feet away, once from closer on the dance floor, but really, never well enough to pick them out from a lineup later on. Various other characters reappear from a similar distance, and Frank actually tells us about some of them, particularly the ones who are his own estranged relatives. Presumably, he does share actual words with them at some point, but no point we ever see. These two misfits stuck together, both by fate and by table assignment, never get close to anything that’s actually going on at the wedding in any scene portrayed on screen.

A lesser film would have certainly given Lindsay an awkward scene with her ex-fiancee, to show us he’s a douche (as Frank proclaims) and to help give her the closure she says she’s seeking. Or Frank could have had an awkward scene with his father, who left his mother for an older woman. According to Wikipedia, he’s only the groom’s half brother, so I may be misconstruing Frank’s parentage.

The point is, they are both estranged from this whole scene, and though they participate in some of the activities – like a pedicure, and an event where people crash into each other while encased in inflated bubble wrap – they are really just ghosts.

I think it’s something we’ve all experienced at one point or another. And you never know who you might find in that scenario.

I don’t want to overstate the quality of the film. It’s more of a pleasant little diversion than anything. It’s the second feature from a man who has spent much of his life as a TV writer and producer, most notably on Mad About You. In fact, it’s so slight, in a way, that the credits start to roll even before the 80-minute mark, ultimately petering out before the 83-minute mark. (Even though the DVD box lies and says it’s 87 minutes, while Wikipedia lies and says it’s 85.)

But the star wattage of Keanu and Winona is the type of thing that gives the project additional visibility. Ryder is no longer in the phase of her career where she can pick and choose, but her last ten years have been a lot better than her previous ten. Reeves, on the other hand, is possibly at the hottest he’s ever been, after himself having a bit of an aimless decade following the end of the Matrix movies. They both likely did this as a favor to Victor Levin, though it doesn’t show from their commitment to the material.

Anyway, it’s worth a watch, especially if you want to feel like you’re the third in an 80-minute conversation between two 1990s stars who burned brightly, and are burning still.