Night Before the Wedding
Download this page in PDF formatThere have been a string of bachelor party movies released over the years…One of them even called BACHELOR PARTY. Most of these films have one thing in common, and that is a night without consequences. At the end of most every “guy’s night out” romp, the groom gets his girl at the end and everyone acts like nothing ever happened. David Branin’s NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING breaks that convention by humanizing the groom and his relationship with his bride, his friends, and pits him against his own morality.
William Shay (John Keating) is the quiet one of the group, and the one who’s life is most together out of all his high school friends. His impending nuptials prompts his friend Bronco (Gregor Collins) to stage an all out bash for his William the night before his wedding. He invites their old crew over for a night of binge drinking, toking, and getting raunchy with what everyone would expect is some female entertainment. Not far into the movie it is revealed that not only will there be girls at the party, they won’t be your typical exotic dancers, but full-on pornstars. Bronco, a controlling and egotistical bully of a friend makes everyone swear that they will force William to have a good time and get down themselves with the ladies. How supposedly grown men get bullied around by someone at their age I don’t know…But I’ll stick with the suspension of disbelief so I can let this film take me further down the rabbit hole. Hi-jinks ensue including a quick suspenseful moment when the cops bust into the party (kudos to the director for not doing the typical bachelor party gimmick of making the cops part of the evening’s entertainment). As the clock strikes nine, the real entertainment for the night arrives and what happens next is…Well, I’m not going to tell because that would ruin the movie wouldn’t it?
The camerawork in this film is done well, framing is nice in most shots although I had a few issues with a couple of closeups towards the end of the movie. Editing was solid as well. Certainly looked professionally done. Sound was great in most places although there were a couple scenes where the music drowned out the dialogue a bit. Whether this was by design or accident I’m not sure. But overall the music choice was good, and kept with the tone of the movie.
Acting all around is where this flick excels. David’s choice of cast was spot on, and they really do interplay, party, and bicker like I remember some of my own high school friends acting. The dialogue is solid as well. Great script overall considering that they were playing with an ensemble cast. The only complaint on that from I have is that they tried to do a little bit too much character backstory development at times that really probably could have been cut in my opinion. That being said, the movie keeps a trim runtime (97 minutes), which is a breath of relief considering most movies are pushing the 2 hour mark these days. David knows how to get in, get out, and end the story where it needs to end.
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Nic Baisley is the owner of FilmSnobbery, is an advocate and passionate speaker for indie film, a film reviewer, and the host of the web broadcast series FilmSnobbery Live! Nic also offers his services as an independent film consultant whose passion is giving a voice to independent content creators.
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