Sunday, March 25, 2007 ‘The Groomsmen’ toasts to friendship, good times
WHEN you’re about to tie the knot, does this mean it’s time to ditch your friends and party all night antics? In The Groomsmen, five thirty-somethings discover that their days of behaving badly might finally be coming to a close.
In one week’s time Paulie (Edward Burns) will be married to his beautiful fiancée, Sue (Brittany Murphy). But with his four groomsmen getting together for one last week of extended adolescence before the big day, it’s Paulie that is going to have to grow up, something that guys find hard to do. As he bands together with his gang of lifelong pals from the same suburban New York neighborhood – his brother Jimbo (Donal Logue), Cousin Mike (Jay Mohr), Dez (Matthew Lillard) and T.C. (John Leguizamo) – Paulie can’t help but get a nagging feeling that he’s about to lose some vital part of who he is.
He isn’t the only one affected by the impending nuptials.
As the gang settles into a form of their old life of softball games and rehearsing the band they all had high hopes for, their secret fears, hopes and misconceptions come to the surface. Struggling to shuffle off their extended adolescence or early midlife crisis, they wrestle with concepts of fatherhood, honesty and personal responsibility. And as the wedding day grows closer, Paulie begins to see that though bonds with friends can change, they never break, and life continues to hold great wonders, even when you grow up.
Since his acclaimed debut with The Brothers McMullen, filmmaker Edward Burns has made films which tell rich stories set in a unique time and place inspired by the city he loves and the people he has known. He originally dreamed up The Groomsmen as a broad comedy, but put it away, unfilmed.
“Then, years later, after I got married, I went through all the stuff that goes with planning a wedding,” he says. “My wife actually suggested I should take the script out and take a look at it again, try and write a more realistic version of what happens before a wedding. That’s when I first got reintroduced to ‘The Groomsmen’. I wasn’t so interested in the things groomsmen have to do as the wedding day approaches, but I was definitely interested in writing a story about men in their mid-30s reaching that age where they should be behaving like men yet they can’t let go of their adolescent selves.”
“Behaving badly in your thirties isn’t as cool as behaving badly in your twenties,” says John Leguizamo (TV’s “ER”, “Ice Age 1” & “Ice Age 2”), who plays the character T.C. “He is the kind of guy that moved away from everybody because he felt different,” says the actor. “Even though he found himself, he wasn’t complete until he came back and fessed up to all his friends.”
Brittany Murphy, a veteran of Burns’ Sidewalks of New York, feels the director creates the feel of the film through casting. “Sue is a lot like me, and that’s due to Eddie’s casting sense,” she says. “He actually gets the performance out of that person because he casts the human that has and obtains some of the qualities that he has already written.”
Donal Logue (“The Tao of Steve”, “Ghost Rider”) plays Jimbo, whose own marriage and fatherhood issues are accelerated by his brother’s impending wedding. “Jimbo suffers from a form of sibling rivalry where the younger brother has his life together, always did what he wanted to do, pursued his dreams,” says Logue. “He’s happily married, having children, and did everything Jimbo didn’t do. The more his brother’s life is coming together the more he realizes his life is completely out of control.”
A feeling of brotherhood and camaraderie permeates Burns’ film. “Everyone’s in their mid-thirties, late-thirties, trying to figure out their lives, and yet their big reunion for the wedding is a big chance for conflicts, closure, and just crazy guys behaving badly,” says Leguizamo.
Go crazy and celebrate the good times with “The Groomsmen” as it opens at your favorite theaters beginning March 28. Distributed by Viva International Pictures. (Press release)
