Table 19

The wedding film has a long history, often somewhat in the romantic vein. Frequently it's focussed either on the groom or the bride and whether or not they will actually go through with the ceremony (although in the case of "The Philadelphia story" or its musical variation "High Society", the groom is pretty much an afterthought - the bride gets two far more impressive options).

In the case of "Table 19", though, it's the mob who are invited almost as an obligation, who maybe shouldn't have accepted - the table furthest from the wedding party. In this case, it's made up of a bunch of misfits - disclaimed cousins, distant children of friends, a long-ago nanny, vague business associates and, in one case, the former matron of honour, also the recently-dumped girlfriend of the best man and bride's brother. This mismatched bunch end up supporting each other somewhat as various trials start to make the occasion that is happy for someone else very much not okay for them...

As a way into an ensenble comedy, this is an interesting way to do it, though, as with a lot of ensemble comedies, the subplots don't quite balance. Anna Kendrick's subplot is sorta the prime mover as the aforementioned discarded matron of honour, and she has a suitable melencholy and mild bitterness, but Lisa Kudrow and Craig Robinson have to do a hell of a lot of work with their own charm as there isn't much in the scripting to support them as a pair of business associates whose marriage is in trouble. Stephen Merchant and Tony Revelori both manage to steal scenes as two of the goofier characters, and June Squibb brings a nice heart to the proceedings as the ex-nanny.

This detours into darker territory as we get a sense how these discarded people view themselves, but there is a little too much of a push to get a tidy ending to round things off. But for a gentle film with a few twists and turns and a couple of giggles, this does have a certain sweetness.