Best Man Down

 1.5/4

Starring: Justin Long, Jess Weixler, Addison Timin, Tyler Labine

Rated PG-13 for Thematic Material, Drug Content, Some Sexuality and Brief Language

Roger Ebert once said that "death is the ultimate rebuke to good manners."  I can see what he means.  In addition to ruining the belief that our loved ones will always be there for us, they invariably leave questions unanswered.  What were they thinking then they did this?  Why did they do that?  When a person is alive, such questions are usually irrelevant.  Or at least easy to solve by asking them.  When they die, even the most inconsequential questions can drive someone mad.  With his film "Best Man Down," writer/director Ted Koland tries to address these questions in a bittersweet way.  Trying, however, is different from succeeding.

Scott (Long) and Kristin (Weixler) have just gotten married.  Helping them celebrate is Lumpy (Labine), Scott's lifelong best friend.  In true best man fashion, Lumpy proceeds to get drunk and make an ass of himself.  Scott saves his friend from further embarrassment by telling him to go sleep it off.  After knocking himself unconscious, a bloody Lumpy wanders outside of the hotel and drops dead.  Now the newlyweds are forced into the unenviable position of planning the funeral and being the notification squad.  This includes a young girl named Ramsey Anderson (Timin), someone that Scott does not know at all.

Koland wants "Best Man Down" to be a tragicomedy.  He wants to provoke laughs through the tears.  Such a mix of emotions is difficult to pull off, but it can be done.  Unfortunately, his screenplay drips with artifice.  Moments that ring true, which are essential in a movie like this, are few and far between.  Instead of insight, the screenplay is filled with situations worthy of a sitcom and dialogue that not even actors like these can save.

The four leads, Justin Long, Jess Weixler, Addison Timin and Tyler Labine, are far too good for this material.  While I'm not too familiar with most of the cast, I've seen enough of Justin Long to know that he's a better actor than many give him credit for.  He and the others seem willing and able to go deeper but the screenplay doesn't afford them the latitude.  Either Koland lacks the skill to tackle this subject matter or is unwilling to go there, the cast members show that they can handle trickier material than they are given.

Even at a hair under 90 minutes, "Best Man Down" drags.  Rather than starting with the obvious jumping off point (when the newlyweds meet Ramsey), Koland stalls.  That material, which should be the meat of the film, is kept until the end when all is revealed through too cute dialogue that undermines the emotional honesty it is trying to covey.  Instead, we spend the better part of 90 minutes with Scott and Kristin, who despite having just left their wedding, feel like any romance as long since dissipated.  It's like spending an hour and a half with the Bickersons; there's no sense that these two even like each other.  Both are too self-centered for much affection to come across.

The film is too short and benign to be truly awful.  And as facile and witless as the film often is, Lumpy and to a lesser extent Ramsey manage to become real.  But the movie doesn't work.  It's the kind of movie that, when it hits the mark, it's easy to under appreciate.  The opposite is true, though.  When it fails like "Best Man Down" does, it's impossible to ignore just how badly it fumbles.

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