Drinking Buddies

If you’ve ever worked a job where the company culture is built entirely on the foundation of "after-work drinks," you know the specific, hazy tension that defines Drinking Buddies. It’s that low-frequency hum of attraction that never quite resolves into a melody. I watched this again last Tuesday while trying to scrape a stubborn lasagna stain off my coffee table, and honestly, that mundane, repetitive struggle felt like the perfect companion piece to Joe Swanberg’s 2013 masterpiece of awkwardness.

For the uninitiated, Drinking Buddies arrived at a very specific crossroads in cinema. It was the moment when the "mumblecore" movement—that DIY, ultra-low-budget, improvised genre of the early 2000s—finally decided to put on a clean shirt and hire some movie stars. Joe Swanberg, the man who basically built the mumblecore house with films like Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007), managed to snag a "real" cast and a "real" budget ($343k is a fortune in indie-land), but he didn't lose his soul in the process.

The Art of the Unspoken

The setup is deceptively simple: Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson) work at a craft brewery in Chicago. They are the platonic ideal of work spouses. They share a rhythm, a sense of humor, and an alarming amount of mid-day beer. The problem? Luke is ten years into a relationship with Jill (Anna Kendrick), and Kate is dating Chris (Ron Livingston), a guy who seems to have been designed in a laboratory to be "sturdy but slightly boring."

What follows isn't a series of grand gestures or cinematic monologues. Instead, we get a weekend trip to a cottage where the four of them collide. There’s no big "I love you" in the rain. Instead, there’s a lot of holding eye contact for a second too long and the excruciating sound of silence when someone brings up the word "marriage."

Jake Johnson is doing his best work here, perfecting the "charming but emotionally stunted" vibe he’d eventually ride to stardom in New Girl. But it’s Olivia Wilde who steals the show. She plays Kate with a prickly, defensive energy that feels dangerously real. She’s the girl who wants to be "one of the guys" so badly that she’s forgotten how to actually be a person. It is, quite frankly, a film for people who think most rom-coms are written by aliens who have never actually had a conversation over a pint.

Hops, Dreams, and Improv

The most fascinating thing about this film—and the reason it feels so much more authentic than your average studio dramedy—is that there was no script. Joe Swanberg provided the actors with a plot outline and let them find the dialogue themselves. In the hands of lesser actors, this would be a disaster. But with this quartet, it results in conversations that actually sound like people talking. They interrupt each other. They trail off. They say things that are accidentally mean.

The brewery setting isn't just window dressing, either. Shot at Revolution Brewing in Chicago, the film captures the blue-collar-adjacent aesthetic of the early 2010s craft beer boom. Apparently, the actors were drinking actual beer throughout the shoot, which probably helped with the improvisation but surely made the 6:00 AM call times a nightmare. You can see the genuine flushed faces and the loose-tongued honesty that only comes after a few IPAs. It gives the film a lived-in, tactile quality that CGI-heavy blockbusters of the era (think Man of Steel, released that same summer) couldn't hope to touch.

Why It Stayed Small

Despite the star power, Drinking Buddies barely made a dent at the box office, bringing in less than $350,000. It’s a classic "middle child" of the digital transition era. Released via VOD before it even hit theaters, it was part of that early wave of films that proved you didn't need a massive theatrical run to find an audience. It was a movie made for the burgeoning "streaming and chill" crowd—people who wanted something that felt more like their actual lives and less like a Michael Bay fever dream.

Looking back, it’s a time capsule of a very specific moment in indie film. This was before the MCU swallowed every talented director whole; back when Anna Kendrick could pivot from Pitch Perfect to a small, improvised drama without anyone blinking. It’s also a testament to cinematography by Ben Richardson (who also shot Beasts of the Southern Wild). He manages to make a dimly lit bar look like a place of religious significance, capturing the warmth of the amber liquid and the coldness of a Chicago winter with equal grace.

The film's ending remains one of my favorite subversions in recent memory. I won't spoil it, but I will say that it respects the characters enough not to force them into a neat little box. It understands that sometimes, the "happily ever after" isn't a wedding; it's just a shared lunch and the knowledge that things are going to be weird for a while.

Drinking Buddies is the cinematic equivalent of that one friend who always tells you the truth, even when you’ve had too many and don't want to hear it. It’s messy, it’s occasionally frustrating, and it’s deeply human. It captures that 2010s indie spirit—small, intimate, and stubbornly resistant to Hollywood tropes—while reminding us that Olivia Wilde is a powerhouse when she isn't stuck in a high-concept thriller. If you missed this one during the initial VOD shuffle, grab a cold one and catch up. Just don't expect it to make you feel better about your own "work spouse" situation.