Good idea lost in the noise

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is a good,good story. I don' t care what anyone else thinks about it. David Schwimmer does start weak and is almost embarrassingly bad at the funeral before the story develops. Gwyneth Paltrow and Barbra Hershey hold things together. The scenes of Julie on the back porch and in Tom's bedroom are great. Mrs.Abernathy saying goodbye to Tom is touching to say the least. When seen after the first time,the story is motivational. It emits patience in love and gives a view of real rock solid friendships. Finally, the music in the background especially in the scenes at the wedding,the reception,and during the credits is great. I'm glad I own this movie.

SPOILER AHEAD! I never watched Friends, and I appreciate that the film's flavour will for many viewers will be overlaid with Schwimmer's earlier persona. Viewing it in isolation as I did, I found it a staple comedy scenario: the excruciating complications that arise from a character's lack of assertiveness in failing to admit a situation of mistaken identity. However, the joke grows increasingly uncomfortable: for Tom, this unassertiveness is pathological, related to his failure to grow up. His friends have careers and relationships, but he still lives with his mother, jobless and fixated on a woman he liked at school. In real life, it would be inconceivable for such a person to end up with Gwyneth Paltrow, and the film doesn't strain our disbelief in this respect. This is less a romantic comedy than a rite-of-passage story, Tom beginning (we hope) a belated journey to adulthood.

... You can't exactly shove her out of the way, because she's old; and if you were being charitable you might say that the ponderous gait she ambles along with isn't really her fault. Nevertheless, in these circumstances it's often difficult not to become irritated when you find yourself dragging your heels in her wake. So it is with "The Pallbearer", an attempt to do something 'different' with a romantic comedy that in this way is chiefly hamstrung because the venue is all wrong; sort of like showing off your 'breakdancing' skills at a grandparent's funeral.To further extend the metaphor (perhaps unwisely!); like the old lady, one starts to feel with the set-up of the film that its demise cannot be far away. Sure enough, this particular 'death' is agonizingly protracted, slowly chipping away at our reserves of empathy in tiny little increments, as depressingly we come to the realisation that the proceedings are only headed in one direction: Downhill. Its laboured attempts at 'humour' can be seen coming a mile off - again, not unlike the grim inevitability of death!Returning once again to the image of 'dragging heels', the main character, Tom, is shown to ceaselessly repeat this action throughout his life. If there are indeed degrees of 'pathetic', then this sap is possibly a good few notches ahead of Schwimmer's other - more famous - role. To find oneself in the awkward position of having to align audience sympathies with a character even MORE 'clueless' than Ross is certainly a tough ask even for as 'able' a comic performer as Schwimmer, but I guess he can find fault with himself for signing on to some seriously 'echoing' situations in the first place.How will he ever escape his most famous portrayal if he's picking scripts where the characters could almost be 'interchangeable', even if the situations aren't? A man with a longstanding high-school crush on someone he hasn't seen for years. Sound familiar... ? Paltrow is nothing else if not bland in her 'Rachel' role, but all of this going over old ground would perhaps be forgivable if the noticeable DIFFERENCES present weren't so incongruous as well. Unfortunately, the romantic element is so well-worn it's threadbare, and the 'backdrop' is so inappropriate that it seems the best way to describe the resultant film is as something of a 'stiff'... ! 2/10.

Some 25 year olds behave like teenagers, coping with the death of a high-school mate, trying to find their purpose in live and love. The script is so lame that I had to force myself to even finish this movie. Stay away from it. 1/10