Drinking Buddies (2013)
Directed by Joe Swanberg
No — Drinking Buddies is not woke, scoring 6 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Joe Swanberg's "Drinking Buddies" arrives from 2013, a mumblecore romance set in a Chicago craft brewery, where Kate and Luke flirt across the production line while their respective partners wait at home.
Consciousness Markers
Kate and Jill are given interiority and romantic agency, and Kate works in the male-dominated craft-brewing world, but the film makes no argument about gender and treats these as ordinary facts of the story.
The cast is uniformly white with no deliberate diverse or inclusive casting choices; the ensemble reflects a default demographic rather than any representational intent.
There are no LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes anywhere in the film's narrative.
Race is entirely absent as a subject; the film's conflicts are interpersonal and romantic with no racial dimension.
No environmental or climate themes appear; the brewery setting is about craft beer culture, not sustainability.
The film is set in a small independent craft brewery and treats it affectionately as a workplace, with no critique of wealth, labor, or capitalism.
A skinny-dipping scene exists but is played for awkward romantic tension, not as a body-positive statement about self-acceptance or beauty standards.
Chris is characterized as an introvert, which is a personality trait rather than a depiction of neurodivergence; no such themes are present.
The film is a contemporary relationship drama with no historical subject matter to revise.
Swanberg deliberately avoids moralizing, favoring improvised, observational ambiguity and an open ending; the film pointedly refuses to lecture or hammer home a message.
Why it received this score
Joe Swanberg's "Drinking Buddies" arrives from 2013, a mumblecore romance set in a Chicago craft brewery, where Kate and Luke flirt across the production line while their respective partners wait at home. The film is improvised, observational, and committed to the messy ambiguity of adult relationships. A cottage trip, a skinny dip, a breakup, and a moving day all drift past without resolution. The final scene, a shared lunch and a tossed banana, offers no closure. That is the point.
From the perspective of contemporary social consciousness, the film is a near-total void. The cast is uniformly white, and race never enters the conversation. There are no LGBTQ characters or themes. Climate change does not intrude upon the brewery. The setting is an independent business, treated with affection, not as a target for economic critique. A skinny-dipping scene serves romantic tension, not a body-positive manifesto. Chris is an introvert, a personality trait, not a representation of neurodivergence. History is not revised. Swanberg avoids sermonizing altogether. His camera lingers on glances and half-finished sentences. He refuses to tell us what to think.
The one faint signal is the film's treatment of women. Kate and Jill possess interiority and romantic agency. Kate works in the male-dominated world of craft brewing. But the film makes no argument about gender. These are simply facts of the story. The feminist content is present, yet it never announces itself. In the end, "Drinking Buddies" is a pleasant vintage from a pre-2015 cellar. It is drinkable. It is unlikely to trouble any cultural sommelier.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Weekend trips, office parties, late night conversations, drinking on the job, marriage pressure, biological clocks, holding eye contact a second too long… you know what makes the line between “friends” and “more than friends” really blurry? Beer.
Questions about Drinking Buddies
Is Drinking Buddies woke?
No — Drinking Buddies is not woke, scoring 6 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Drinking Buddies have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Feminist Agenda at 10.
How does Drinking Buddies compare to other 2013 movies?
It ranks #181 of the 274 films from 2013 we've scored; their average is 14. The wokest is Belle (76).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.