Craft Beer Is Now A Useful Plot Device For Romantic Comedies

Earlier this week, in the best news that was ever released in the history of the world, The Washington Post reported that  a new study in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (whatever the heck that means) found that a daily beer could reduce the risk of kidney stones by 41 percent. I’m not sure if that news requires celebration, but I went home that evening and knocked back 6.4 standard drinks. Gotta look after our health!

Anyway, with such scientific evidence now proving that beer is, in fact, the king of drinks, it makes sense that the Hollywood movie machine would ‘tap into’ (zing!) the beverage’s universal goodwill for its own nefarious purposes (much like they did with Sideways years ago, permanently besmirching the good name of merlot). Here’s your first look at Drinking Buddies, a romantic comedy starring Olivia Wilde and New Girl‘s Jake Johnson as a couple of awkwardly platonic buddies at a Chicago beer brewery.

The film, which is yet to receive a local release date but gets ‘served’ (zing again!) to American theatres on August 23, also stars Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston and was the talk-of-the-town at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, scoring reviews filled with words like “delightful” and “intimacy and warmth” (although, the ridiculous beer puns are already ‘bubbling up’ — I can’t stop — with Variety stating it “offers mostly froth”. Damn, that’s a really good one).

Oh my God, that trailer made me so thirsty.