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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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Smokin' Aces
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by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
B- Rated PG-13 124 min
Remember in the movie The Big Chill, the characters were brought together by the funeral of a friend at the widow’s house. Kevin Costner was the dead guy–his first role. Likewise, in this film, writer/director Savannah Grant’s scenario uses a similar device to bring the characters together and set the stage for the story. Jennifer Garner portrays Gray Wheeler, whose fiancé was killed in a freak accident during his bachelor party. Instead of a wedding, she has had to hastily organize a funeral.
Gray’s fiancé was a wealthy executive with Celestial Seasoning Tea Company in Boulder, Colorado. His colleagues and friends Dennis (Sam Jaeger) and Sam (Kevin Smith) show up for the wedding, turned funeral. Also, Gray’s fiancé’s other friend, a bachelor filmmaker, Fritz (Timothy Elephant) attends the sad event. Overwhelmed by grief, Gray tries to hold her composure together to get through the funeral and wake. Of course, her late fiancé’s friends are there for her and in Sam’s case, to eat up all her groceries.
Director Grant’s orchestration of the scenes are tightly paced and structured. The mixed emotions of Gray’s devastated emotional status is offset by Kevin Smith’s natural comedic talent. Smith singlehandedly saves the film from tedium with his snappy delivery in perfect diction. Garner plays Gray with a savvy mix of grief-stricken depression and hurt as she now has to deal with her fiancé’s secret past, which gradually unfolds as she goes through the motions of being a cordial host to the houseful of guests.
The shocking turn of events would send most people into a downward spiral, but Gray continues to work and try to maintain a normal life. Dennis, Sam, and Fritz stay with her to help her get her life back together. However the grief mixed with jealously has a devastating effect on Gray. One day Maureen shows up at Gray’s house seeking information about his death and her status in his will. Gray tells her she is the housekeeper, but Maureen soon finds out she is “the other woman.” Gray also finds out other disturbing things about her late fiancé’s finances. Yes, her love for him is unraveling as she uncovers his secrets.
Juliette Lewis has a funny scene with Kevin Smith that rejuvenates the mid-part of the story. Otherwise, she was not given much of a part, but she does her best with the role. Gray must make friends with her late fiancé’s mother, which is awkward and painful. It seems there were many things Gray didn’t know about her betrothed, including his financial status. The more secrets she learns about him, the more she realizes that the marriage would have been a disaster. Still, she grieves for him.
Interestingly, Garner’s character Gray is put in an unusually stressful situation, and the challenge for her is working through her grief-driven emotions and shock at finding out her groom was not the person she thought he was. Given that she is dropped into an emotional black hole, the story focuses on how she is able to fight her way back to normal with a little help from her friends and some prescription drugs. At first she uses Fritz as an emotional crutch to heal her wounded pride, then the relationship grows into a more hopeful union.
Clearly, the lynchpin of this story asks the rhetorical question: How can she trust men again, with their avalanche of lies and secret girlfriends with illegitimate kids scattered across the land? Ah yes, Gray’s struggle to overcome adversity makes for a medium cool and entertaining movie with Kevin Smith saving everyone’s butt.
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