Ceremony
Director: Max Winkler
Writer: Max Winkler
Cast: Michael Angarano, Uma Thurman, Lee Pace, Reece Thompson, Jake M. Johnson

Plot:
Sam (Michael Angarano) is a children’s books author whose books are neither succesful, nor actually for children. To catch up with his old friend Marshall (Reece Thompson), they head on a weekend trip together. Or at least, that’s the reason Marshall knows. In fact, Sam wants to crash the wedding of Zoe (Uma Thurman) and Whit (Lee Pace) to convince Zoe that Whit is an ass and she should be with him.

This movie seems a bit like a RomCom, but it definitely isn’t, not even an indie one. It’s more tragic than funny (apart from Lee Pace who is funny all the way through, despite a really bad [and badly written] English accent) and never achieves much momentum.

I was afraid that this was one of those films where the nerdy lead character behaves like an idiot most of the time but for some reason or other we are supposed to root for him and he ends up with the girl for no particular reason other than that he is the lead character. But there is a lot of crap I’d watch for Lee Pace and so I gave this one a try anyway. Well, while the movie progresses that way half of the time, the ending does redeem it a little bit.

But there are two characters and performances which are above and beyond the rest. The first one is Reece Thompson as Marshall, an interesting character: deeply insecure, hiding away from the world and yet an utter realist and more adult than most of the other characters. The character is great and Thompson is great with him. The other is Lee Pace: Whit is an idiot and a bit of an ass but nevertheless you do understand why Zoe would be with him (and it’s not only because of his looks). Also, as I said, Lee Pace is really funny.

Aside from those two characters, though, the movie doesn’t have much that stuck with me. Michael Angarano plays his usually type and it’s fine and all but it’s a character I tend to find extremely boring. Uma Thurman is fine and apart from the fact that Zoe gets a say in who she would like to date (which is not as normal as it should be in films), she brings nothing to the table. Which is more the script’s fault than her own.

The movie and the script just flounder along and neither really gets off the ground. Instead we just move from one quirky, slightly surreal situation to the next and we never really get anywhere.

Summarising: It’s alright.