Courtesy - The Sunday Leader By Sumaya Samarasinghe
In a nutshell, The Romantics is about a group of college friends who reunite after several years to celebrate Tom (Josh Duhamel) and Lila’s (Anna Paquin) wedding.
Lila who comes from a rich family is somewhat of a control freak who desperately tries to ignore the fact that her husband-to-be is not completely smitten by her. He is still in love with his ex girlfriend Laura (Katy Holmes) who is also the maid of honour.
The film takes place over one night at Lila’s parents’ seaside house in Long Island. The wedding rehearsal dinner is a disaster and a prelude of what is in store. The group of friends gets completely drunk and make embarrassing and revealing speeches about the bride and groom. The last toast which is made by Laura is probably Holmes’s best scene in the entire film. She keeps it together throughout most of her toast and then gradually blunders with words and stumbles, making her feelings towards the groom evident before a thankfully comatose and drunk crowd, and, unfortunately a mortified mother of the bride (Candice Bergen).
On the same night, the group, minus the bride, continue their drinking binge on the beach and they decide to go for a midnight swim; all return to shore except for the groom. The drunken friends decide to go looking for him without alarming his future bride and of course Laura finds Tom who is having a serious case of cold feet.
Read moreThe interesting point of the film is that none of the characters seem to possess an ounce of morality. They are only vaguely faithful to each other and are selfish human beings who have no issues using and abusing sex, drugs and alcohol. Their semi incestuous relationships which allow no outsiders earned them the nickname of “The Romantics” in college; and six years later, the situation remains the same.
Take the three main characters for example. Lila and Laura despite having been college room mates are better rivals than friends. Lila sees no issues about asking Laura to be her maid of honour despite the fact that she knows Laura and Tom were a couple for five years and Laura who seems more fragile and confused at the beginning of the film will pull out her claws to protect her interests. Most viewers will probably question whether Duhamel is really worth the trouble.
Despite being a top class athlete and a scholar, he is clearly a social climber. Tripler (Malin Åkerman), another member of the group who sniffs cocaine and is probably an unfaithful wife says it to Laura, implying that he picked Leila’s bank balance over true, maddening and passionate love. But as a result of this action, Tom looks like a bundle of uncertainty and nerves before his big day, and the fact that he is having second thoughts is pretty evident to everyone.
Critics have questioned the fact that none of the characters are held accountable for their actions, the temptation here is to respond by saying ‘When are people ever?’ Sometimes maybe, the bad ones will pay, but look around you and just notice how many have broken the rules of morality set by a majority in society (by that I mean for example, thou shall not marry someone for financial reasons and cheat on her the night before her wedding day) and still are happily getting along with their lives?
The most frustrating point is that this so called group of good friends never confront each other or take sides and this perhaps is because of a terrible fear to end up alone one day. So they rather keep a blind eye to possible mistakes from their buddies and pretend nothing ever happened.
But this we can only assume because Director Galt Niederhoffer doesn’t dig very deep into the psychology of her characters. One of the most interesting supporting roles is Malin Åkerman’s. She’s an Ivy League graduate like her friends, is on drugs and acts in third rate movies; how that happened, we will never know. Neither are we sure of the other characters’ jobs, backgrounds, sometimes religious beliefs etc. The lack of depth in the characters is the main drawback in The Romantics which is a shame since the Director based her screenplay on a novel she wrote.
A sadly laughable scene takes place between Tom and Laura who share a “poetic” moment over their respective iPhones which is meant to symbolise their common love for poetry and words! A dusty old book would have had so much more effect!
But on the whole The Romantics is a cruel movie which makes you wonder about friendship and love. It isn’t a wedding comedy like My Best Friend’s Wedding nor is it as well made as Rachel Getting Married by Jonathan Demme who has decades of directorial practice over Niederhoffer.
But the film has its moments; the cold and beautiful windy settings are gorgeous. Candice Bergen who plays the mother of the bride is her fantastic self and tells her daughter : “He has to love you more, that’s how a marriage works”, words which Leila ignores. Katy Holmes and Josh Duhamel are very good in their parts despite not always being “nice” and that is probably the key word which earned The Romantics rather negative reviews in the US. It isn’t a perfect movie but at least the end cannot be sametimes guessed 10 minutes into the beginning; The Romantics is an imperfect pleasant surprise for a mature audience.
