Richard's Wedding

Comments (0) By Michael Atkinson Wednesday, May 30 2012

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Richard’s Wedding
Directed by Onur Tukel
Opens June 1, ReRun Gastropub Theater

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A handheld New York indie that dallies in the queasy DMZ between hipster-narcissism and a self-satisfied critique of hipster-narcissism, one-man-show filmmaker Tukel’s debut simply follows a small group of smartass friends as they aggregate for a tiny, unplanned wedding in Central Park. Tukel himself stars as a shaggy, jabbermouth, self-destructive dick, one whose irritating qualities are soon matched by the group’s collective backbiting, trite ethical arguments (Ayn Rand versus Gandhi), relentless insults, theorizing about masturbation politics, and the obligatory wholesale meltdown. You could take it as a dire generational portrait or as Tukel’s pretensions run amok without a budget, perhaps depending upon your own demographic curse, but there’s no denying that Tukel settles for crude jokes and absurd characterizations as often as he manages deft performances—Jennifer Prediger is seamless as an Everygirl with heartbreak in her future, and Dustin Guy Defa is unforgettably Walken-esque as a creepy wedding guest. (As a capitalist Brit recently rich on an app invention, Darrill Rosen is by contrast insufferably theatrical—or is it that his character is merely insufferable?) The only guaranteed takeaway is joy that you don’t know these people—unless you do.