'Drinking Buddies' is pale, stale ale

IN JOE Swanberg's "Drinking Buddies," Jake Johnson gets drunk and cuddles with Olivia Wilde for days on end, a relationship that stays stubbornly platonic.

Is this some new form of science fiction?

Has Hollywood reinstated a production code prohibiting adults from kissing in bed?

No, because Johnson's character kisses his girlfriend (Anna Kendrick), and Wilde's character, in turn, is seen seducing boyfriend Ron Livingston.

"Buddies" appears to be Swanberg's attempt to craft an updated "When Harry Met Sallly" for a more casual, laid-back and perhaps vitamin-deprived generation. Or to investigate how, in an era of casual hookups, a man and a woman may enter and become trapped in the dreaded Friend Zone.

Luke (Johnson) has feelings of one kind or another for Kate (Wilde), his co-worker at a brewery. Those feelings are tender, mostly friendly, though tinged with sexual subtext. He's certainly jealous when she displays sexual interest in another guy. Wilde, for her part, seems to want some acknowledgment of mutual attraction, but won't make the first move.

This relationship, Swanberg, seems to say, is inscrutable, and inexplicable, like life - and the movie has the haphazard, rambling construction of strung-together days.

I must say, though, that if you're going to cast a movie designed to be realistic, I would not cast Wilde, she of the otherworldly good looks (in "Cowboys and Aliens," she could have gone either way).

"Buddies" tries to make her look plain with informal outfits, but unless you're going to drape a T-shirt over her wide-set blue eyes, I'd say you're fighting a losing battle.

Also, the eye of Swanberg's camera seems a decidedly un-platonic relationship with Wilde, which makes you wonder if Swanberg believes his own premise.

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