Table 19 (2017)

A romantic-comedy simply called 'Table 19'. How did I find myself watching this film you may ask? Well I was at the airport waiting for my flight, reading through Anna Kendrick's hilarious Twitter page. I then got on board, checked the movies available to watch and one of the first ones I saw was an Anna Kendrick movie. I thought if that isn't a sign of the first movie I should watch I don't know what is. Little did I know it would also have two of my favourite comedic actors in it, June Squibb and Stephen Merchant. Not to mention the rest of the cast was pretty good as well. So was the sign from above telling me I would love this film a correct one? Not quite.

At times I just felt like the film was trying a little too hard. Then at other times I didn't feel like it was trying hard enough. Merchant and Squibb were fantastic (Squibb in particular - she carried the film for me) but I'm not sure they wrote Merchant's part overly well. There was one gag he had going at the start that simply went too long and didn't have enough pay-off to justify it. In the second half of the movie when his character freed up a bit he became much more effective.

The director seemed to have a fascination with characters randomly falling down. Almost every character does it at some point. It was quite bizarre. I'm not sure if he was going for something, or if it was simply a case of there not having been a laugh in a while and it being a simple way to break the drought. There's a bit of a 'The Breakfast Club' feel to the film at times, and I love that every character has their secret and the way it slowly reveals one by one. The film gets a little darker occasionally than I expected it to.

The flaws the film had were probably just not being funny enough often enough, and also I didn't love the way the movie ended in regards to Anna Kendrick's character 'Eloise'. I think they got that all wrong and if that was always the intended way for the film to end then they needed to handle things differently earlier on. It's not a bad watch, but it's sadly pretty forgettable.