I’m not a big fan of wedding pictures.  A great many movies have explored the melodramatic and comic potentials of these events, with universally recognized customs, traditions, situations and pratfalls.  To give it credit, Table 19 explores one such wedding from a different perspective — it ignores the bride and groom in favor of six wedding guests stuck at the worst table, chronicling their relationships to the bride and how and why they are where they are (and, to some degree, why they even bothered to come).

Jeffrey Blitz’s film places the wedding reception as the stage upon which the ex-maid of honor (Anna Kendrick), a retired nanny (June Squibb), and friends of the bride (Lisa Kudrow and Craig Robinson as a diner-owning couple; Tony Revolori as a lonely young man; Stephen Merchant as a guy who bilked the bride’s father of money) gather and interact with each other.  The film has an odd feel, as most of the conventions one would expect are either flaunted or ignored.  The six guests actually spend more time away from the reception than in it, and all of them have secrets that, sooner or later, are revealed to each other (and the audience).

The film is surprisingly deep once those secrets begin to spill, and yet that is when it reverts to more traditional form.  Each person or couple has a situation to reconcile, and most of them are wrapped up within the story’s compact 87 minutes.  One particular moment was quite effective, and changes everything for Anna Kendrick’s character, but I’m still trying to figure out why Stephen Merchant’s character was ever invited.  The reception itself is shown as a humdrum affair, complete with drunken family members, dancing and the all-too-familiar feeling of being left behind as life moves on for someone else.

As interesting as the premise is to me, the film seems incomplete.  Not enough backstory is provided for the diner couple, the lonely young man or the brother of the bride (who dumped Anna Kendrick’s character by text, thus relieving her of maid of honor duty).  As the secrets come to light Kendrick’s character benefits, but she’s really the only one which does.  I would have liked to seen ten or fifteen more minutes added to expand the other characters.  Nice try, though.  ☆ ☆.  10 March 2017.