Platicsco
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
TaryBiggBall
It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
Geraldine
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
angelgrl-69952
I really wanted to like this movie. I love the cast members and had high hopes but was sorely disappointed.
c
the trailer says it all. The film just fills in the gaps. All very predictable, who is going for who. But then, after an hour and a half, it still leaves you with an open ending! How totally unsatisfying! Besides that 'drinking buddies' is more like 'youth-alcoholism'. Really sad.
Jonathan C
Drinking Buddies is a movie about what happens when you are in a relationship that is, well, shaky. The main characters, Luke and Kate, both have significant others, but in their jobs in a brewery they are constantly together and will, after hours, engage in heavy drinking and substantial flirting. They seem to have a mutual agreement to keep it innocent, but the problem is that this is nonetheless a form of infidelity--they share a bond that clearly intrudes on their relationships. As the movie progresses, the pair take their significant others to a weekend at a beach house, but end up spending significant quality time with each other. Meanwhile, a certain chemistry emerges between the significant others, Jill and Chris, and the question of who really belongs with whom supplies the dramatic tension for the rest of the movie.Drinking Buddies is an unusual movie on two specific levels. First, it is a romantic comedy, but it does not really follow the formula. Rather, it is interested primarily in the more subtle forms in which relationships sustain themselves, break down, and clunk along again. The plot, such as it is, is not neat and tidy, and the drama is real drama because of it. We end up not looking for the end of this movie--rather we relish the complexities of the individual situations.Also unusual is that Drinking Buddies adopts a cinematic style that complements this quality of ambiguity. The style is what some describe as naturalistic--basically you really feel like you are watching real human beings. The style is achieved because most of the scenes are improvised--rarely do you ever get the sense that someone is reciting a script. Rather, it feels like you are watching the quartet really live their lives, and so the drama never feels like it is following a formula.The result is a movie that is entertaining, but also interesting. Because the rom-com is in this case so true to life, you really are not certain in which direction it is going to go. The tension is very substantial, because Kate feels like a real person who is going through real hurt, and her redemption is largely that she is a real person who can live through the ambiguities. In this sense, the movie is quite profound, because this is what most of us do every day.
Danielle
This is why people hate independent films. I love independent films, just not one that epitomizes what (can be) wrong with them. This film could literally be 45 minutes long. The director insists on extending shots that would be much more effective if they were shorter: for example, people driving in awkward silence in a car - the camera lingers and lingers on them, as if the director thinks that the audience needs time to understand. We got it, it's awkward, there's tension. This happens repeatedly. The actors are terrific, but the story is frustrating. I don't need a Hollywood ending, but after awhile, these two people, that you're initially rooting for, are just manipulative and annoying and foolish. And Ron Livingston is heinously wasted, disappearing halfway through. What looked like it would be a charming gem turned out to be just a forgettable waste of time.
