Drinking Buddies

Directed by Joe Swanberg

(R)

***

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This surprising “and altogether excellent” new film about contemporary romance “refuses to dance to the usual tune,” said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Created by a director known as a mumblecore pioneer, it gives us a man, a woman, and the potential of a happy-ever-after relationship, then “follows the eddies and digressions of everyday life” to an unexpected place. Olivia Wilde and a thick-bearded Jake Johnson star as co-workers at a Chicago microbrewery who already share a close bond before putting together a getaway weekend with their respective lovers, said Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times. But “just when we think we know exactly where things are going, they take another route”—much as they do in real life. And crucially, we like all four main characters, including Anna Kendrick’s uptight Jill and Ron Livingston’s full-of-himself Chris. But the skill of the actors also reveals the weaknesses in the script, said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. Sometimes it seems as if Joe Swanberg has only one thing to say—“that women are hard to figure out.”