Reviews
Best Man Down | Review
The Man Who Wasn’t There: Koland’s Debut Lost In Its Own Drift
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.