10 Years: Film Review

Ten Years is the kind of movie that almost everyone should be able to relate to but almost no one will want to see. It’s yet another ensemble comedy about a group of high school friends that reunite for their 10 year class reunion to see how lives have changed and how personalities have developed only to discover that no one really ever does change. It’s the old formula about “you can man out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the man” or somesuch. It works well enough, but well enough isn’t, well, enough.

We have a large cadre of characters in the movie, starting (and ending) with Jake (Channing Tatum) who is deeply in love with his girlfriend Jess (Jenna Dewan-Tatum), or thinks he is until he runs into his old high school flame Mary (Roasiro Dawson). Then there’s Chris Pratt’s character Cully, who married a cheerleader and has been looking forward to the reunion just so he can apologize to everyone for being a bullying douche from grades 9 thru 12. The funniest and most memorable plot line, however, belongs to Justin Long and Max Minghella who play high school geeks turned rivals who pick up exactly where they left off, trying to one-up each other by impressing their class’s “it” girl played by Lynn Collins. There’s also a subplot about one of the class going on to become a famous pop sensation (Oscar Isaac) but remains tongue tied when confronted by the girl he once had a crush on (Kate Mara).

Nothing much happens in the way of actual plot or character development, but the movie is played with enough pathos and likability from the cast that everyone watching it should be able to glean exactly what they want from a movie that lets them commiserate with their former high school selves. Though it’s the kind of movie that you forget once its over, it does remind you of your real life experiences in the jungle of high school and that alone might be enough to entice an audience. If nothing else, it simply reaffirms Channing Tatum’s star power. Whether or not that’s a good thing, I’ll let you decide.