In college, they all knew each other. Four years later, they're starting to wonder if they even know who they are. The soul-searching isn't accidental: Michael (Adam Garcia) and Elise (Amy Adams) are getting married this weekend, and as all their friends gather around, each comes with a custom outfit and individual set of neuroses. Samantha (Melissa Sagemiller) is wondering if Rich (Aaron Stanford) is ever going to pop the question; Jennifer (Lauren German) and Lana (Mena Suvari) are both carrying some emotional baggage from their undergrad days; Quentin (Colin Hanks) has become a slick-haired, slick-talking agent, and Pockets (Jon Abrahams) is hiding a few old wounds behind his devil-may-care grin and mannerisms. And Michael and Elise aren't perfect, either. …

Written by Michael Perniciario and Timm Sharp, Standing Still is a look at that transitional period in life when you're drinking almost as much as you used to in college, but at least now you're doing it out of proper glassware. When I was younger, I loved movies like St. Elmo's Fire, as they offered a fascinating glimpse into a fantasy version of adulthood: Wow, look at Rob Lowe's apartment! As the years progress, though, you learn that, for example, movie apartments are always eight times the size of what real people with those jobs could actually afford (among many, many other things). And in time, those movies turn from fateful prophecy to unintentional comedy. Maybe if I were, like the characters, four years away from my university graduation -- and not 14 -- Standing Still might have had a slightly better effect on me; as it was, I felt like the oldest guy at the party, swilling bourbon while younger people worked through stuff I had (or hadn't) endured a long time ago.

It's not necessarily a bad party: Standing Still is a great demonstration of what can often happen in an ensemble film, where an ever-growing number of characters fight and jostle for screen time like kittens scrambling for their mother's teat. On a script level, Standing Still is a mile wide but an inch thick. We go from character to character, plot to plot, and skip from moment to moment without getting too much traction. What this does is turn the movie into pretty much a level playing field, where actors with enough charisma and chops to stand out do, and those who don't, don't.

Garcia's performance as Michael is a little bland, a little sweet, and little thin; at the same time, Adams plays Elise with a more up-to-speed version of the grace and charm that earned her an Oscar nomination for Junebug. She always has an innocent, magical slightly dazed look to her -- as if she's forgotten where she parked her unicorn -- and it serves her well as she comes to grips with Michael's past with his recovering ex-doper dad Xander Berkeley. As Pockets, Jon Abrahams has killer suits and a go-to-hell demeanor that may feel incongrous -- it's like he just stepped off-stage from a production of Guys and Dolls -- but it does provide his scenes with zing. And Hanks manages to capture complete self-absorbed cluelessness in a way that makes him more to be pitied than to be hated, and also manages to keep one of the film's more amusing subplots from getting too creepy. Negotiating on behalf of one of his clients, Hanks agrees to a cash-for-flash exchange of money for a nude scene. Confronted with what he just did by Rich, he's blasé: "She gets her tits out every time she gets drunk; at least now, she gets paid for it."

As for the other actors, it's uncertain if they're not up to speed or if they're simply not given enough to do by the script. Rich and Samantha seem pretty thin as characters, and while Suvari gets lines like " … My psychiatrist said I should wait until I'm well before I start another bad relationship …", she can't do much with them. German's Jennifer has a striking presence, but that, to be blunt, may represent a triumph of genetics and cheekbones more than a victory for her stagecraft.

Partway through Standing Still, I scrawled in my nerd-notebook "WHAT'S THE MOTOR" -- translated, what's the plot or character arc motivating this film, driving it, pushing it via conflict and resolution? By the end of the movie, the question was still unanswered. The script's subplots -- including James Van Der Beek and Roger Avary as a drunk actor-director combo invited to the festivities for a reason that's never made clear, and Ethan Embry playing an education entrepreneur who's combined aerobics and learning skills education for kids -- might add to the zing and zap of the film, but they sap the life out of it in a way, too. I don't want to hear Van Der Beek's idiot pitch for his next project ("It's a metaphysical Western … Il Topo meets The Matrix. We're gonna shoot it all while we're on peyote. …") when I'm still somewhat in the dark about our supposed protagonist Rich; I don't want to laugh at Embry's weirdly intense, go-getter videos when key character moments lack resolution.

And that's the microcosm of the movie; moving from wackiness and gags to drama and trauma, flitting from moment to moment and emotion to emotion. Standing Still isn't a bad movie -- it's got too much heart and charm for that -- but it's a little unsatisfactory, one of those films where everyone on each side of the camera seems to be giving it their all but nonetheless falling a little short of the mark.