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One star for Alison Brie, another for Lizzy Caplan, and that’s really about it. It’d be easy to think that given the two leading actresses carry likable personalities on television they’d get the same treatment on film but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be the case right here again. Although I’m aware many good films have come out from here, I tend to get rather skeptical of films that premiere at the Sundance Film Festival because of products much like this, Save the Date seems to rely too much on how its audience would be familiar with the likability of its leads thanks to what they remember of them on television to the very point it just forgets all about anything else; I’ll put the blame on Community for giving me the urge to watch anything where Alison Brie has a role of any sort.

If a few words were to come to mind as a means of describing the tone I picked up from Save the Date, a few among the first that would come to mind can range from “smug,” “dull,” and “repetitive.” Every moment in which the film attempted to reach beyond the limits of its own premise, which isn’t particularly bad for I admire what it is trying to say, it just fell down into a vat of rambling stuff that it already had been establishing prior and by that point onward I saw no point in caring for what I was receiving in here. For the whole slightly more than an hour and a half I was spending watching Save the Date, no real sense of establishment came around for all I was seeing was merely just aimless rambling and nothing more.

To elaborate more on where I would bring up the term “smug” as a means of describing Save the Date, it seemed to me that writer-director Michael Mohan only is taking pride in how he has his two leads reciting the lines, thinking that they’ll sound rather intelligent but they simply have nothing more to say. It also doesn’t help when none of these characters ever rang true at a single point in the film, for given the way the wording sounds coming from their lips, it doesn’t seem like there was much thought put into what these characters really are supposed to be like for a general issue I have with films coming out of Sundance is that they seem to rely on the fact that these characters are built around a quirk, and nothing more is established from that.

Alison Brie and Lizzy Caplan give the film the only stars that it will ever receive from me, for at least they seem to be the only ones that really care about bringing life to what overall is such a monotonous product. I’m not merely saying this because I like watching the two on television but at least whenever they had moments together with one another, their chemistry seemed to ring much more of a sense of satisfaction within myself because at least there was something interesting to find with their talents. It’s too bad that despite the likability the two of them carry, their characters are so bland and one-note all throughout the film.

Save the Date showcases the typical issues I come across whenever I watch a film coming out from the Sundance Film Festival. While not nearly as loathsome as it could have been, Save the Date is so self-satisfied to a rather unpleasant degree. It thinks that there’s so much intelligence arising from how it “examines” the troubles on the female side of relationships, but the repetitive nature had me thrown off, and none of these characters ever rang true at any point of the film. It’s such a sad waste of two extremely likable personalities, who seem to be the only form of life that the film ever would really carry. Films like this make me wish Alison Brie had much better films to star in, because if you watch Community or Mad Men as much as I do, you’d find it easy to note her incredible talent.

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Watch the trailer right here.

All images via IFC Films.

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Directed by Michael Mohan
Screenplay by Jeffrey Brown, Michael Mohan, Egan Reich
Produced by Jordan Horowitz, Michael Huffington, Michael Roiff
Starring Alison Brie, Lizzy Caplan
Release Year: 2012
Running Time: 97 minutes