John C Reilly Week Day Five: The Anniversary Party

I opted to do a John C. Reilly Week in part due to the fact I recently subscribed to the Starz streaming service, and for some reason their films were listed with a whole category of movies listed as, well, “John C. Reilly”.  Factor in he’s in the new Kong: Skull Island, and why not?

Now, not all of this week’s movies were available on Starz, but when it came time to pick out the final film, I wasn’t sure which one to go with.  I’ve never seen either Gangs of New York or Chicago, but the length of the one didn’t work for a weeknight viewing, and I don’t much care for many film musicals.  So, that means I opted for one I hadn’t heard of before with a promised ensemble cast that included Reilly.

That would be the 2001 low budget comedy/drama The Anniversary Party.

The John C. Reilly Factor

Yeah, this one was…well, it was a movie.

Co-written, co-directed, and co-starring Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh, the movie is about Joe and Sally (Cumming and Leigh).  They’re celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary, getting back together after a rocky patch.  She’s an actress whose career is on a downward trajectory while he’s a novelist whose career is getting better as he’s about to debut as a director/screenwriter of an adaptation of his most recent bestseller.  The movie was shot in 19 days out of Sofia Coppola’s house, and the cast is made up largely of actor friends of Leigh and Cumming who all did their own hair and make-up.  Heck, Phoebe Cates came out of retirement as a favor to Leigh, playing the wife of Kevin Kline…wait, she also happens to be the actual wife of Kevin Kline, and those are their kids running around.  There’s some trivia for ya.

Reilly plays the experienced director of Leigh’s character’s current film, and it isn’t going well.  It seems to be a lot of stuff based on her getting older, and Sally also isn’t happy Joe cast the hot new it-girl (Gwyneth Paltrow) in his new movie instead of her.  As for Reilly’s role, mostly he seems confined to being timekeeper for a particularly aggressive game of charades, and then he nearly drowns in the pool while high on the ecstasy that got passed around and made everything go rather badly.

Your mileage may vary on a movie like this.  Most of the characters were artistic types who seemed to have a good deal of money but rather run-of-the-mill problems for a movie like this.  The acting’s not bad or anything, and most of the dramatic heavy-lifting is done by Leigh and Cumming, but it didn’t work much for me.  It’s mostly a lot of familiar faces having rich, artistic people problems.   I’m not sure I’d recommend it if this sort of thing isn’t your sort of thing.  Six Reillys out of ten.