MOVIE REVIEW : Just a Scrap From the Table of ‘Diner’

When “Diner” came out, most critics were surprised that so hackneyed a subject could result in such an original movie. It was a valuable, oft-unheeded lesson for Hollywood: It’s not the subject of a movie that’s paramount, it’s what you do with the subject.

Now comes “Shaking the Tree,” following in the wake of a decade’s worth of sub-”Diner” confabs. Shot in Chicago on a minuscule budget, and starring a cast of avid, relatively unknown actors, it’s about four buddies, friends since graduating from high school 10 years earlier, and their rites of passage between Christmas and New Year’s 1990.

There’s Barry (Arye Gross), a rising real-estate broker; Duke (Steven Wilde), a bartender who had to quit a promising boxing career because of injuries; Michael (Doug Savant), a struggling novelist who works as a teacher’s aide, and Sully (Gale Hansen), a dissolute rich kid with a dangerous gambling habit. There’s also Barry’s fiancee (Christina Haag) and Michael’s pregnant wife (Courteney Cox).

A lot of emotional turmoil roils through this R-rated movie, but most of it seems processed and prefab. The cast seems to be working up scene after scene as though they were audition pieces. They all go in for a lot of heavy emoting, but the central conceit--that these disparate types would stick together for a decade--never quite takes hold.

There’s an all-too-convenient egalitarianism at work in “Shaking the Tree” (selected theaters). It doesn’t allow for the kinds of class biases and pressures that would work against these guys. Which is not to say that this kind of comradeship doesn’t exist, just that it seems too pat here.

But then everything about “Shaking the Tree” is pat (the finale most of all). Cinematically speaking, the first-time director, 26-year-old Duane Clark, doesn’t exactly shake the tree. The staging and compositions have a dull, TV-movie sameness. Many of the scenes seemed padded, like, for example, a buddy-buddy baseball montage in Comiskey Park.

The forced bonhomie of this movie can get wearying. There are a few grace notes from Gross, and from Ron Dean, as Duke’s furiously closed-off father, but in order to appreciate them you have to be willing to put yourself through yet another “Diner” wannabe.

‘Shaking the Tree’

Arye Gross: Barry

Gale Hansen: Sully

Doug Savant: Michael

Steven Wilde: Duke

A Castle Hill Productions presentation of an Anthony J. Tomaska and Robert J. Wilson production. Director Duane Clark. Producer Robert J. Wilson. Executive producers Tomaska and Richard Wagstaff. Screenplay by Steven Wilde and Clark. Cinematographer Ronn Schmidt. Editor Martin Bernstein. Costumes Susan Michael Kaufman. Music David E. Russo. Production design Sean Mannion. Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (for language).