We Are Marshall screenwriter Jamie Linden sure has the right kind of friends. His directorial debut, 10 Years, about a group of pals catching up and looking back during their 10-year high-school reunion, is so stacked with young Hollywood talent, the rest of this review could be devoted to listing them. Channing Tatum, who also produced, heads up the ensemble cast as a former prom king, acting alongside his real-life wife, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, who plays his onscreen girlfriend. Rosario Dawson appears as his former love, now married to Ron Livingston. Then there’s Justin Long and Max Minghella as friends trying to pretend things have been going better than they have; Chris Pratt and Ari Graynor as the couple who stayed in town, got married, and had kids; and Scott Porter as the guy who headed off to Japan, met someone (Eiko Nijo) and seems ready to stay there.
Wait, there’s more. Oscar Isaac is the successful musician, still pining after his teen crush Kate Mara, while Aubrey Plaza discovers her husband Brian Geraghty used to be, as she puts it, a “wigger.” Anthony Mackie, Aaron Yoo, and Lynn Collins are also in the mix. The film itself is utterly standard: Each character has a compressed arc to get through, from Tatum’s need to clear the air with his ex and decide whether to move on, to Pratt’s increasingly sloppy apologizing to the guys he used to haze in high school. It resembles a grown-up indie sequel to Can’t Hardly Wait, and feels like the same kind of enterprise. Its natural home will be on cable TV some weekend afternoon.
That isn’t such a bad thing. 10 Years does nothing noteworthy, but it does it well, thanks to its ensemble cast. Watching these actors hang out so comfortably is enjoyable, and the film wisely underplays most of its potentially hokey moments, including the possibility of old flames running off together into the night, or the moment when Isaac is roped into karaokeing his own hit single (about Mara) at the bar. Sentimental and unambitious, 10 Years has an easy niceness as its foremost quality, which sounds damning, but actually makes it a perfectly pleasant experience, though not a terribly memorable one.