Best Man Down | Review

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Koland’s Debut Lost In Its Own Drift

Poor Minnesota, it sure gets a bum rap when it comes to the movies. When its representation is not subjected to the Diablo Cody affect or used in name only (Contagion), it’s featured as the cold and isolated harbor of blandly unappealing stock types, at last as Ted Koland utilizes the state for his directorial debut, Best Man Down. A victim of title modification (originally, the film was to be known as Lumpy, which would have served it better in several ways, both good and bad), you wouldn’t be remiss in approaching the film as if it were a light, romantically tinged comedy, its new name suggesting or hinting that people like Ashley Judd should be littered throughout the cast. But Koland’s biggest, and only rewarding surprise, is that the film is decidedly somber and an exercise of abject unhappiness. But even if it plays with surface expectations, the film backs itself into a contrived formula, a nice little box with an old banana peel for a bow.

Scott (Justin Long) and Kristin (Jess Weixler) have just gotten married at their dream fulfilling destination wedding in Phoenix, Arizona. However, many of the guests, including the bride’s mother (an unrecognizable Shelly Long), seem to find the destination part a bit unwarranted. Scott’s best friend, Lumpy (Tyler Labine), in his usual outrageous fashion, spills booze on Kristin’s $3,000 wedding dress (a fact kept secret from Scott), who wearily accepts that wherever Lumpy appears, disaster will strike. Drinking himself into obliteration, Scott takes Lumpy back to his room, where he drunkenly cuts himself by accident, then wanders into the desert to die on a cactus. The newlyweds are thus forced to spend their honeymoon time and money on transporting Lumpy’s corpse back to Minneapolis. Once there, Scott discovers a whole passel of things about Lumpy he’d had no knowledge of, including a strange relationship with a young girl named Ramsey (Addison Timlin) and her haywire mother (Frances O’Connor) in Northern Minnesota. And just as they discover other secrets about Lumpy, their first major conflict has the young couple experiencing an early dose of ‘for better or worse.’

Koland’s scenario holds great promise, especially considering his exciting cast, including the usually hilarious Labine and the ever dependable Long as the long suffering straight man. Best Man Down opens about as obnoxiously as you’d predict, though Lumpy’s prompt demise promises a whole store of devious scenarios. But while Long and Weixler begin to quickly melt down, using Midwest food staple Mrs. Dash as a metaphor for their marital unrest brought on by the unfortunate circumstances, Koland then mires us in an After School Special subplot of Ramsey, played by Addison Timlin, who seems to be in pre-adolescent Mischa Barton mode. Her situation (floozy mum insists on keeping a Meth-selling boyfriend around) wears on the film’s already tenuous grasp of motifs concerning how little we know each other and how everyone’s little secrets pulls people apart from one another, tossed in with details like a gay priest father figure whose canoodlings are featured only to necessitate a happy, convenient ending. Try as it might, nothing about Best Man Down feels inspired, right down to its obnoxiously quaint re-titling.