Ceremony Reviews

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from the flick but since I have a weak spot for Uma Thurman, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, even though it didn’t turn out to be one of Thurman’s most misguided career choices, this movie was still seriously weak though. Indeed, it was basically one of these typical quirky indie romantic-comedies but, to be honest, pretty much nothing worked with the damned thing, I’m afraid. First of all, the beginning was just seriously scattered and the movie pretty much never really recovered from this really poor start. In fact, from the moment these two guys ended up by ‘accident’ at this wedding, I had actually pretty much figured out the whole plot which made the main character look even more pathetic than he already was. To make things worse, even though the characters were obviously supposed to be funny, they were in fact all rather obnoxious and/or seriously vapid. At least, Uma Thurman still looked really lovely and her performance was actually not so bad at all but, in my opinion, she had barely any chemistry with her co-stars. On top of that, it was rather difficult to root for this woman who chose a lover who was just as annoying as her fiancée was but only in a slightly different way. To conclude, I think I might have been actually slightly generous with my rating here and it was probably due to the fact that Thurman has spent actually much of her career showing up in some garbage even worse than this flick. Anyway, you should probably avoid the damned thing.

The majority of moviegoers are awfully comfortable with their overly traditional notions of gender roles. As progressive as some people claim to be, there are too many restrictive ideas out there about what men and women "should and shouldn't do" that it's inevitable that, when it comes to romantic comedies (arguably the film genre in which we're supposed to see male/female dynamics displayed nicely), we're gonna see those close-minded notions play out. CEREMONY is a solid example of that. If a movie is about a romance between an older woman and a younger guy, the reaction is "Haha, that's funny, poor guy trying to score with a MILF," whereas if it's an older man and a younger woman, the reaction is more along the lines of "Eww, gross. Why would she want to do that?" Since Hollywood is all about obliging mainstream viewers, you won't be surprised to know that CEREMONY depicts the former scenario.

But here's what's even more interesting. This isn't even the first time that Uma Thurman and the younger, not-as-famous Michael Angarano have each shown up in this type of film. Thurman starred in PRIME in 2005 (a film that was decent, mostly thanks to Meryl Streep's presence), and in the same year, a teenaged Angarano led the cast of ONE LAST THING, in which he played a dying kid whose final wish was to spend his last day with a supermodel (despite the film's appealing premise, it's utterly mediocre, and I can't recommend it at all). As dispiriting as it may be that Hollywood isn't too interested in taking risks, and as awkward as it may seem that they don't even want to have variety in terms of actors who take on a certain type of role, the good news is that CEREMONY isn't too bad. It opens in indie theaters in April, so if at that point you're still frustrated about having to wait till the summer for multiplexes to show anything decent, this could be a good alternative.

Sam (Angarano) picks up his buddy, Marshall (Reece Thompson) for an apparent road trip. It seems that Sam and Marshall haven't hung out in a long time, and Sam criticizes the fact that Marshall "hasn't been out of his parents' house in over a year!". Marshall immediately comes across as one of these awkward-yet-witty-and-interesting characters (that I personally love to see in movies), and the film seems well on its way to being an interesting two-man dialogue-based show. But that changes when Sam seems to have an unnatural interest in crashing a private party that's being held in one of those fancy beach-side houses. The two guys blend into the party quite well, and suddenly, that moment we see in every romantic movie seems to take place: when a guy and a girl see each other and all of a sudden everything is in slow motion and passion-filled background music plays (Roger Ebert calls this the "Meet Cute" scene). But the film plays a trick on us. Sam seems to be captivated by the older Zoe (Thurman), but we soon discover that they've actually known each other for a while: "What are you doing here?!", she asks, completely shocked. It gets even more complicated when we discover that the party is actually a wedding reception, and yes, you guessed it, Zoe is the one getting married, and to a guy who's closer to her age than Sam.

What I immediately liked about the set-up of CEREMONY is that it doesn't force us to go through the motions of most romantic comedies. We meet the lovebirds when they've already known each other for some time, and from the moments they have together during the film, we can imagine what the earlier stages of their relationship were like. You may think it's a bad thing that we don't get to SEE those earlier stages, but considering how bad a job most romantic comedies to at displaying the development of the "courtship" phase, CEREMONY may actually be doing us a favor.

The film is interested in capturing the awkwardness of how these two guys try to fit into a situation in which they're clearly out of their element, in terms of both age and social class. I like films that care about exploring that sort of dynamic. What makes things even better is that Sam chooses NOT to tell Marshall that he's here because he's in love with Zoe, so Marshall continues believing that this is simply a place they randomly crashed. One of the film's best moments comes during a scene in which they're in a room talking about all the things that happened during the evening. Oh, and this only happens once in a blue moon in romantic comedies, so let's savor it: for once, a "penis joke" is actually subtle and believable rather than lame and crass. The line is delivered with a jokester-type honesty that differs a lot from other movies in which it feels like you're being begged to laugh.

The movie does have its share of hiccups in the final act. The characters start playing a game, and the running joke is "I don't get what this game is about!", which would've been funny if the audience weren't even more confused than the characters themselves and if the scene seemed to have some sort of purpose other than filling in the running time. Even worse, there's a completely unnecessary scene in which someone nearly drowns that seems too much of an obvious way of giving closure to a secondary character's emotional arc. Finally, there's a moment towards the end related to some wedding vows that is good in terms of the sense of redemption it provides as the film comes to a close, but it also can't help feeling somewhat corny.

If you've seen the indie film SNOW ANGELS, you know that Michael Angarano is a solid actor. In CEREMONY, he has to play a character who is initially annoying for not taking certain things as seriously as he should, but Angarano doesn't overplay it, because that would make the film's final act too hard to believe. Talking about Angarano just makes me look forward to RED STATE even more (I have mixed feelings about Kevin Smith as a director, but the controversial comments that have already surfaced are enough to tickle anyone's curiosity). It continues to be quite difficult for me to appreciate Uma Thurman in all these vanilla roles. I know you're not supposed to let one character define how you view an actor from that point forward, but during CEREMONY, there were times at which part of me was half-expecting Thurman to pull out a Hatori Hanzo sword and limbs to start flying during the movie's titular scene. No such luck. Needless to say, CEREMONY's not that type of movie. But you could do much worse.