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THE GROOMSMEN
Directed & Written by: Edward Burns.
Produced by: Produced by: Burns, Philippe Martinez, Aaron Lubin & Margot Bridger.
Director of Photography: William Rexler.
Editor: Jamie Kirkpatrick.
Released by: Bauer Martinez Entertainment.
Country of Origin: USA. 93 min. Rated R.
With: Edward Burns, John Leguizamo, Matthew Lillard, Donal Logue, Jay Mohr, Brittany Murphy & Heather Burns.

Peppered with some laughs and moments of small-town whimsy, The Groomsmen tells the story of a week in the lives of four guys in their mid-thirties, all of whom have reached an impasse. Once a tight-knit group, they reunite for a wedding: Paulie (Edward Burns), though usually levelheaded, is unsure about his upcoming marriage to pregnant Sue (Brittany Murphy); his pig-headed brother Jimbo (Donal Logue) is often prone to rages; cousin Mike (Jay Mohr), perhaps the group’s weakest link, still lives at home with his father and works at a menial job; T. C. (John Leguizamo), skipped town years before without a word and with a secret; while Dez (Matthew Lillard) is the only one to have settled down with a wife and kids plus a steady job.

It’s interesting to read in the press notes that writer/director Burns was chiefly inspired by Fellini’s I Vitelloni, also a comedic drama about four adult men stuck in a small town going through growing pains. Burns carries over the structure and dramatic weight from Fellini’s film while keeping his own American spin on these suburban New Yorkers. As Burns departed from the original source and fleshed out his characters, I knew more or less what to expect. But for the most part, what really make the film watchable and engaging are the actors. Burns has a knack for casting the right actor for the right part.

The two big surprises are Jay Mohr and Matthew Lillard. Mohr, who unlike his stand-up act, is hit or miss in his choices for movies. Here, he may be the most entertaining of the lot as the lovable if not-all-grown-up Mike by achieving a great balance between being goofy in some of the funnier scenes without veering toward shtick. Lillard, meanwhile, is finally branching out and, I’m almost ashamed to say, showing he might have some real cinematic cred coming to him. Breaking off from the persona of Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo movies is not, of course, an easy feat at all, but Dez, while not always a dependable father, is the most grounded for the other men to reach out to, and he’s thoroughly convincing. Ironically, Burns, as an actor, keeps it low-key here, with Paulie’s dilemma perhaps the most uncomplicated (and maybe most typical) with its solution providing a lackluster ending. And many of the other subplots are a little too obvious for their own good, as if Burns the screenwriter only sets up the many conflicts to be easily solved later. But it is smart choice to focus on the ensemble instead of any one actor trumping the others. Leguizamo and Murphy have their moments, too (T. C.’s gay and coming out to his friends, while she’s hormonally off her rocker).

In those short but fantastic scenes where all five of the male leads are on screen, the camaraderie comes together naturally. The film rises above being sitcom material by sticking to a certain truth about all of the men. The Groomsmen is an intimate movie with nothing more on its mind than a few amusing and admirable moments with its characters, and is worth seeing based on the strengths of the actors. Jack Gattanella
July 14, 2006