DESTINATION WEDDING

Stars: Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves.
Writer/Director: Victor Levin

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Finally afforded the screen time together that their Gen-X fanbase has been pining for going on three decades, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder play the most adorably unlovable rom-com couple ever in Victor Levin’s cynical but deceptively sweet Destination Wedding.

From the sitcom-y airport meet-cute in the opening frames to that knock on the door in the final seconds, Levin’s structure is as formulaic as the genre gets. However, the devilish charm of his debut feature is in the caustic detail of his dialogue and his casting of two stars who, despite their iconic status amongst fans of a certain age, have never really been afforded this kind of punchy, rat-a-tat repartee. They have the whole film to themselves – there are no other speaking parts – so the balance is certainly redressed.

Ryder plays Lindsay, a SJW-lawyer who brings down irresponsible corporations; Reeves is Frank, an executive for a company who hands out ‘Best Of...’ awards to big business. They are thrust into each other’s orbit on the way to a destination wedding in San Luis Obispo; Lindsay was once engaged to the groom, who happens to be Frank’s half-brother. Neither are seeking romance or companionship, yet find themselves drawn together via their misanthropy, cynicism and general despair at the notion of a life-long bond and all who seem to be working towards one.

While Reeves and Ryder may not seem the obvious leads for a movie that would have soared in generations past in the hands of, say, Walter Matthau and Eileen Brennan, or Richard Dreyfuss and Lily Tomlin, the darlings of 80s/90s cinema turn their callous-hearted characters into legitimately redeemable love birds. Reeves in particular seems to revel in delivering Levin’s dark, delicious words; the chemistry between he and Ryder (typically flinty, utterly endearing) is both sweet and sour, a coming-together of damaged souls who might just be able to mend each other over time.

Do not expect windswept, late-evening soft-glow late in the third act (as one of the interstitial title-cards states, “Just what the world needs – another Goddamn sunset wedding”), but instead a more seasoned perspective on the prospect for enduring romance. In their teen-dream heyday, a Reeves/Ryder romantic entanglement would have set every under-18’s ticker into cardiac arrhythmia; in 2019, the actors get to play understated, doubtful and resigned to a compromised human connection. Their more mature selves provide no less a love story, and Reeves and Ryder prove no less engaging, because of the passage of time.