Destination Wedding

This cheerfully acidic anti-rom-com is a dream for fans of Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves, that plays out as a sort of reverse and much more cynical Richard Linklater. Ryder and Reeves, who work seamlessly together as the old friends they are, play a couple who meet and immediately fall out at an airport only to discover that they are heading to the same wedding - between her ex and his brother.

Essentially a two-hander, we watch these misanthropes watching others while talking up a storm and gradually discovering that misery loves company more than they might imagine.

This is a very wordy script but thanks to some good deadpan work from Reeves, proving he can deliver pseudo-intellectual lines just as well as any, "Whoa!", and a charming performance from Ryder, its hard not to be won over. Writer/director Victor Levin's refusal to soften the pair or make them more traditionally likeable during the course of the film only adds to its off-beat charm.

Levin's scripting is stuffed full of movement but the direction itself is distinctly static - it could easily have a second life as a play - and he does have a tendency to repeat his set ups, so we see the pair struggling with peanuts, chocolate and wine in much the same way, for example. But while not particularly visually inventive, the director has a keen eye for the casually absurd, so that every setting he puts his characters in comes with just the right amount of daftness.

Destination Wedding is most likely to appeal to older fans, who'll enjoy the fact Ryder and Reeves are clearly having a whale of a time, and those who are sick of the more saccharine output of mainstream Hollywood. You long for them to live grumpily ever after.