Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Yeah, I’m not afraid to admit that I put Save the Date on my schedule without knowing anything about it other than Ms. Alison Brie was in the cast. Wanna make something of it?!?
I know it sounds like wanted to watch it for pervy reasons, but in all honesty that was only, like, a little part of it. If I see a decent cast, a writer I like, a good director or cinematographer and it fits easily into my schedule I like to know very little about the movies I’m going to see here. Sundance is one of the few times of the year that I can experience a movie without being bombarded for months with trailers, TV spots, posters, interviews and other things designed to show off the plot of the movie and I try to take advantage of that as much as I can when I’m here.
Now to be a total hypocrite I’m going to review the movie for you, giving you a better idea of what the hell this thing is!
While Save The Date is very much in the tone of Ghost World (with a pinch of Scott Pilgrim for good measure) the charming cast and emotional through-line keep it from just being your typical quirky rom-com clone.
I find I’m using the word “charming” a lot this fest. There are just a whole lot of cute movies this year. The First Date, Your Sister’s Sister, Safety Not Guaranteed, The Surrogate, Robot and Frank and Save The Date could all be described as charming. Either I’m a helluva scheduler or there’s a theme emerging this year.
Lizzy Caplan stars here as a super pretty, but emotionally crippled girl who freaks out when her rock star boyfriend proposes. And she’s an artist. That works in a book store. I told you it was a familiar set up. To be honest, it’s difficult to sympathize with Caplan at the beginning of the movie. I don’t find self-sabotage sympathetic, unfortunately, especially when that mindset hurts the other more likable people in the story.
But when Caplan starts a new relationship with the super nice-guy Mark Webber their budding romance shows the girl behind the defenses and then I was hooked in, by God. Suddenly she became more than an indie movie stereotype, even if she is following a well-used character arc. However Caplan’s particular brand of vulnerability changes the dynamic enough to make it fresh.
Brie plays Caplan’s sister who is stressing everyone out while planning her marriage to Martin Starr. This is the second great pairing in the film. Starr is so good at delivering dry humor and Brie is so good at being adorably obsessive. They’re dynamite together and oddly give a very honest look at the pressures of a pending marriage despite their story not given nearly as much time as the main love triangle.
Geoffrey Arend (who is a really good character and has been in many movies, but no matter how accomplished he becomes I can still only think of him as the ‘Candy Bars!’ guy from Super Troopers) plays the third wheel to the love triangle, the musician left heartbroken by Caplan. In another film he would have been the douche bag villain, but he’s probably the most sympathetic character in the whole movie. His only crime not recognizing his girlfriend is scared of commitment.
Then he has to watch this other dude take her heart and progress past the trust issues he wasn’t able to. It’s a very sad character and Arend really gives it his all.
The film works, the emotion is there and even though it took me a little bit I was hooked in. Now that could possibly have something to do with both Brie and Caplan looking eerily like two different girls in my life that I’m crushing pretty hard on… I wouldn’t rule that out, but my critical brain also recognizes that writer/director Michael Mohan took these characters, cast the perfect actors and spent just the right time developing them so we’re left with a movie that’s not just some other forgetting quirky indie comedy.
Another review down! More to come! Stay tuned!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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