Channing Tatum, Chris Pratt, and Oscar Isaac in '10 Years': Revisiting a Star-Crossed Curio
Oscar Isaac, Anthony Mackie, Chris Pratt, and Channing Tatum in ‘10 Years’ (Everett)
If a movie was released today starring Magic Mike, Poe Dameron, Star-Lord, The Falcon, and another dozen or so well-known actors of the same generation, you might expect it to be a blockbuster hit. But just such a movie premiered almost four years ago and barely made a blip at the box office. A high-school reunion dramedy called 10 Years, it starred Channing Tatum, Oscar Isaac, and Chris Pratt, among others, and hit theaters back in 2012, before most of its cast had made a major splash on the big screen. As inconsequential as it was at the time though, it’s possible that some day we’ll look back on it as a millennial version of American Graffiti or St. Elmo’s Fire, a fortuitous gathering of future stars, just as they were on the cusp of serious fame.
10 Years’ director Jamie Linden had made his name as a screenwriter, working on the Matthew McConaughey-starring football drama We Are Marshall and the Channing Tatum-led romantic drama Dear John. On the set of the latter, he learned that Tatum was looking to produce and cooked up the idea of an ensemble movie about a ten-year high-school reunion, inspired by films like Diner and The Big Chill.
Linden wrote some roles for friends, like We Are Marshall actors Anthony Mackie, Kate Mara, and Brian Geraghty, and others for performers he admired. Oscar Isaac, Chris Pratt, Ari Graynor, Rosario Dawson, Justin Long, Max Minghella, Friday Night Lights star Scott Porter, Aubrey Plaza, X-Men: Wolverine costar Lynn Collins, and Ron Livingston all signed on.
Watch the trailer for ‘10 Years:’
The film follows its before-they-were-all-star cast across a number of plot lines: Jake (Tatum) must reconcile his feelings for his high-school sweetheart (Dawson) before he can propose to his girlfriend (Tatum’s real-life wife and Step Up costar Jenna Dewan-Tatum); Long and Minghella play a pair of now-successful nerds lusting after the hottest girl in school (Collins); Pratt plays a former bully trying to apologize to those he tormented; and Isaac plays a rock star who’s reunited with the girl who got away (Mara).
Like the conceit of the movie, none of these story lines is wildly original. They’re barely even story lines: The film is incredibly low-key, coasts along without much real drama, and wraps up with minimal conflict. In other words, it’s an incredibly slight movie that doesn’t linger long in the memory. (In that respect, it’s also similar to St. Elmo’s Fire, which is memorable more for gathering members of the 1980s Brat Pack together than it is for being a good movie).
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But as a time capsule, it’s sort of fascinating. Tatum was billed as the movie’s most famous face. At that point he’d had some modest hits with Dear John and G.I. Joe, but there was still plenty of skepticism around whether he was the real deal. When 10 Years premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2011, the movie demonstrated two things: First, that Tatum was a surprisingly capable dramatic actor, and second, that he was hungry to produce his own projects. By 2012, both of those things had paid off and he’d had three hits in a row thanks to The Vow, 21 Jump Street, and Magic Mike (he was also a producer on the latter two).
Kate Mara and Oscar Isaac in ‘10 Years’ (Everett)
Most of those we now see as the movie’s biggest stars were even less well known (indeed, actors like Scott Porter or Lynn Collins, whose stars have faded since, were arguably more famous when the film was released). Chris Pratt was still the doughy joker from Parks and Recreation who wouldn’t slim down for Guardians Of The Galaxy for another three years. Meanwhile, Kate Mara wouldn’t star in House Of Cards for another two years, and Anthony Mackie had lost some of his Hurt Locker buzz and was three years away from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
As for Oscar Isaac, who probably has the movie’s best role — his chemistry with Mara is off the charts, and he even performs two songs in the film — he might have been the least well known of them all. At the time, he’d had only a handful of film roles, and though he appeared in some high-profile movies — Sucker Punch and Drive — he wouldn’t get a leading role until the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis two years later, which would eventually lead to Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Jenna Dewan-Tatum and Channing Tatum (Everett)
10 Years was held up by Tatum’s other movies and finally opened in theaters on Sept. 14, 2012, to middling reviews (Entertainment Weekly praised its “unforced, melancholy sweetness,” but Variety called it “less fun than a funeral”). It never played in more than 63 theaters, and ended its run with just $203,373.
Though the movie didn’t find much of an audience, it now seems smartly ahead of its time: In tapping the nascent star power of its cast so early, it’s likely to live on among curious cable viewers and iTunes renters long after better-reviewed contemporaries have faded away. And, like the adorable real high school photos of its cast that litter the movie, it’ll be a fascinating snapshot of these big names as their careers continue to grow.
