Too many characters make for too many plot lines and by the end of 10 Years writer/director Jamie Linden (screenwriter of Dear John and We are Marshall) has trouble wrapping everything up as he tells the story of a group of friends reliving their glory days at their ten year high school reunion. Marking his directorial debut, Linden has amassed a large and diverse ensemble cast and he has tapped into some legitimate scenarios that would face a group of decade-old graduates, but while things start out really well, his story lacks focus and the later it gets into the night the more you begin to notice the cracks as it all comes tumbling down.
10 Years focuses on six different couples in various stages of their relationships and a variety of singles adding to the atmosphere. At the very least we are talking about 11 different lives Linden has decided to focus on over the course of a 100 minute movie and he surprisingly does an excellent job introducing each character and/or couple, giving them identities and backstories deep enough to understand their motivations as the story plays out.
Channing Tatum and Rosario Dawson make up the featured storyline as a pair of exes reunited for the first time in several years. Tatum has a new girlfriend (Tatum’s real life wife Jenna Dewan-Tatum) and Dawson is now married (Ron Livingston), but that doesn’t stop old feelings and lost chances from coming back to the surface. Elsewhere Culley (Chris Pratt) is driving his wife (Ari Graynor) crazy as he annoyingly spends the night apologizing to several kids he picked on; Reeves (Oscar Isaac) spends the night trying to get closer to the girl (Kate Mara) he never had the chance to ask out; Garrity (Brian Geraghty) has a past life he hasn’t yet told his wife (Aubrey Plaza) about; and Marty (Justin Long) and AJ (Max Minghella) spend the night pining for Anna (Lynn Collins). A variety of other characters make up the fray, but this should give you a good idea of what kind of hole Linden has dug for himself.
Each story has a life of its own and many of them ring true as to what you would expect a reunion to be, which is to say a night of regrets, friends, smiles, tears, repressed anger, apologies, etc. Linden’s biggest mistake, however, was in not cutting ties with his characters as the night moves along. Instead, all of the story lines come to a close at the same time resulting in an endless barrage of conclusions and cliched moments all at once, killing any momentum the film had built to that point.
It’s unfortunate it had to come to this and I could see it slowly collapsing in on itself as the film wore on and some story lines continued to hamper the film’s progress. The plot line involving the drunken doofus apologizing to the geeks he tormented becomes a massive thorn in the film’s side, the unresolved relationship between Tatum and Dawson is muddled and dragged out to a point you’re no longer interested and the plot involving Long, Minghella and Collins is as uncomfortable as it is unbelievable.
The only relationships of the bunch I actually enjoyed for the duration involved the blossoming romance between Oscar Isaac and Kate Mara and the smaller story with Brian Geraghty’s character reuniting with his friend (Anthony Mackie) and how that arc plays itself out despite a rough start.
For the majority of its running time 10 Years is as pleasant as your favorite high school-centered TV show, but it comes to a conclusion as if it suddenly learned this was the final episode and it had to wrap up all of its characters’ story lines in the last rushed minutes of the season. I wish Linden had allowed room for some of his characters to gradually say good-bye as the night wears on, thinning out the herd to the point the finale arrives and all that’s left are the two lead characters. Unfortunately the film becomes its own worst enemy to the point a solid reunion feature becomes a lost opportunity.
