Most of us will go out of our way to avoid taking stock of our own lives, but we sure enjoy watching other people do it. Take, for instance, the new The Best Man Holiday (pictured), in which the college pals who gathered for a wedding in 1999’s The Best Man reunite a decade and a half later for a shared Christmas. Life has thrown all of them a few curveballs, and getting back together only further serves to remind them of choices made and roads not taken.
That distance between where we are and where we thought we’d be makes an easy template for dramatic conflict or satirical comedy. As does the gap between how well we’ve done and how well our friends or relatives have done. So it’s no wonder that the movies like reunions, whether its groomsmen celebrating at Christmastime, high school and college classmates marking another five years since graduation, or the band getting back together for one more shot at glory. Here, then, are ten such reunion movies, films that simply take a group of old mates, drop ’em in a room, and see what happens.