We Should Get Dinner!

By: Jennifer Vintzileos

With the rates of re-marriage in the United States at a staggering high, what happens when the re-marriage doesn’t work out? And even moreso, what happens to the children who came to know one another as siblings…only to have that title taken away? In Eliza Jiménez Cossio and Lexi Tannenholtz’s film We Should Get Dinner!, former stepsiblings Abby (Eliza Jiménez Cossio) and Sean (Anthony Oberbeck) meet up for dinner to catch up—and determine where their relationship stands.

At first the dinner between Abby and Sean is going as normal as can be, for two people who were once related to each other by their parent’s marriage. While Abby is adamant about trying to maintain a relationship between her and Sean despite a decade of almost no contact and drinking every glass of water under the sun, Sean sees their parent’s divorce as a reminder that him and Abby were not meant to remain in one another’s life.

Initially the conversation begins as condolences for the death of Abby’s father and, strangely enough, a congratulations for her engagement, but quickly devolves into a shouting match between the two former siblings while they hash out their differences. Whether it be that Sean believes Abby needs to make everything about her or Abby thinking that Sean is cold and unfeeling for wanting nothing to do with her, their argument lays everything out on the table…and for all the patrons at the restaurant. Abby’s need to reminisce about the past rubs Sean the wrong way and eventually the argument gets out of hand and lands them both at the emergency room after Abby cuts her hand on broken glass.

Cossio and Tannenholtz touch upon a subject that many films don’t – what happens when former stepsiblings come face to face? The awkwardness between Abby and Sean is quite palpable in the beginning, merely because they have not seen or interacted with one another in ten years. And even though Sean seems to have put the past behind him and does not want to rehash what has happened, his passion during their argument suggests otherwise. There is unresolved former sibling tension that Cossio and Oberbeck play out spectacularly on screen, tension that is later revealed to be from their parents pitting them against one another in some twisted sort of game.

And yet when Abby is patiently waiting to be seen in the emergency room, Sean is more than willing to indulge her and reminisce then. Whether it be out of pity or to delve back into the past, this moment ultimately breaks all the tension and both individuals appear to finally relax around one another. They even laugh just a little.

While we may never know whether or not Abby and Sean are able to resolve their differences and become more involved in each other’s lives, We Should Get Dinner! will make you cry a little, laugh a lot and keep you guessing all the way to the end. Even if this is the end of the road, the tension is gone. Or maybe it’s a path towards a new beginning for their characters.