The Groomsmen

The Groomsmen **1/2

"The Groomsmen" is a recycled effort by Edward Burns. It's another one of those "hey, you're thirty years old and it's time to grow up now." Kind of like "Clerks," except not as well done. It has a nice little ensemble cast-Jay Mohr, Matthew Lillard, John Leguizamo, Donal Logue-they are always worth something. But, Edward Burns needs to try something new. There are other places to explore that don't involve a group of old friends hanging out in a bar, talking about life issues, and he should write about something like that. I'm not saying that he's a one-trick pony, but it starting to appear that he is.

"The Groomsmen" is about Paulie, the groom who is getting married to Sue in a week. Sue is pregnant with Paulie's child, and Paulie's brother Jimbo thinks that the pregnancy is the only reason why Paulie is getting married. And then there's Dez, Paulie's friend who already had a child, two of them actually, and a wife. And then there's also Paulie's cousin Mike, who is still mad at the childhood friend T.C, who disappeared for the last eight years. Mike is mad at T.C. because he stole one of his baseball cards before disappearing, the card that would now be worth a couple of thousand dollars. Mike also recently was broken up with by his girlfriend, and all of his chances of trying to reconcile with her are always twarted by her brother, a nineteen year old bully. So, as the week goes on, the five friends lives are all tested. Paulie has to decide what he really wants with his live, Jimbo has to start to figure out whats wrong with his marriage, T.C. has to tell the friends a harsh secret about himself, Mike has to understand that he is getting older, and Dez has to be some kind of voice of reason to everybody else. The five friends have to stop hanging out in bars, getting drunk, and to start to see whats important in life.

The root of "The Groomsmen" is that family comes first. When you get to a certain age, it's about time to just let things go and begin to settle down. Some of life's best moments involve the family. But family can also be anything-it doesn't just have to be marriage and children. Once again, it's a pretty typical story, but the preformances really do shine through. This movie suffers from alot of other things that have been coming out of Hollywood lately. The fact that everything is recycled from something else is really starting to become apparant to me. I did have to roll my eyes sometimes. And it's odd because the moral of "The Groomsmen" is exactly the same as the moral of "Clerks II," only one of them did it in a bigger, grander, and more fun kind of way. There's just nothing new here at all, and actors and dialouge can't save everything. There has to be some sort of shred of originality. I'm getting tired of the coming of age story.