meet-cutes and caps lock

I started this blog tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life watching cheesy romcoms without guilt, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

[karenvstheromcom]

#27: The Apartment (1960)

Written by: Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond RATING: 4.8e SYNOPSIS: Insurance worker C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) lends his Upper West Side apartment to company bosses to use for extramarital affairs. When his manager Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) begins using Baxter's apartment in exchange for promoting him, Baxter is disappointed to learn that Sheldrake's mistress is Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the elevator girl at work whom Baxter is interested in himself. Soon Baxter must decide between the girl he loves and the advancement of his career.

This is one of those tricky pictures where ... is it a romantic comedy? Does it really fit those parameters? Without entering into (yet another) discussion on genre and terminology and tropes - if you need to, there’s like a bazillion and one academic articles sussing out whether such a thing as ‘genre’ can exist, so eat your heart out - I’m going to just say yes, and begin there.

Side note about me, if you don’t follow me on my regular blog: I am generally what one would call a classic Hollywood film enthusiast? Other side note about me: I am generally very fond of Billy Wilder, as much as one can be whilst one has familiarity with like four or five films of his entire filmography. The Apartment has been on my to-see list for many, many years. [Other additional side note: I am very fond of Jack Lemmon, as much as one can be whilst one has familiarity with two films out of his entire filmography.] So you might say that just by showing up to watch it, I was going to like it. Maybe. Maybe not.

I’ll start off with the necessary: trigger warnings for suicide, depression. This is a Wilder picture so those sorts of things are handled delicately but also treated with a little bit more lightness than in a more serious picture. I also just read the review Roger Ebert did on this film before I sat down and decided to start typing, so maybe that’s going to color this review a little bit. Now, enough excuses.

It’s hard for me to pin down just what I want to talk about with this movie because it’s one of those things that seems to be a perfectly put together package. An incredible composite. There’s a few places where I think this picture mishandles things, but it was 1960, times were different, treatment of things were different, and I think it’s important to consider (and adopt) context when viewing pictures that are from time periods with different social and cultural mores (especially where censorship was a concern, and where they had to get creative to express a lot of the things that today we’d be pretty fine with seeing), but even that aside, it’s hard for me not to just sit here, put my face in my hands, sigh dreamily, and go god, billy fucking wilder did it again.

This movie has so much heart. This is what I want to shout from the rooftops when people talk about romantic comedy. Romantic comedy doesn’t necessarily have to be light - this movie isn’t - and it doesn’t have to stray away from serious topics or even social commentary - this movie doesn’t - but it has to have heart. So, at its core, this movie is sort of about what corporate culture does to people, especially in a time period when modern corporate culture is just starting to get up off the ground. You see this in the way that it shows us the offices, the sprawling expanse of people who are just there from 8:50a to 5:20p and will just clock-in and clock-out. To sort of bounce off of Ebert, he says that this movie is a lot about jobs. About showing us people in their jobs, and how people sort of become their jobs, and how it’s really difficult to break out of that mindset. In the same vein, and in a way that I think is frankly obvious the moment you start to watch it, this movie is about loneliness. And not in a piteous, lamentable kind of way, but in a real, honest, frank way. About looking at what it’s like to live in a modern city, and to live by yourself, and to feel isolated at the same time that you are there desperately hungry for genuine human interaction and affection.

(Quick side note: so Robert Osborne, film historian and general TCM host, noted that Billy Wilder allegedly got the idea for this movie when he saw Brief Encounter, which is a schlocky but well-regarded classic British romantic drama about two strangers who run into each other at a train station and have the briefest affair known to man. If you’ve seen Brief Encounter, it’s not very good. (If you’ve seen it, and like it, agree to disagree, all right?) But there’s an incidental scene where someone - a friend of one of the two parties there - agrees to lend them use of their apartment for a little tryst. Which is the backbone of how we get the plot of this movie.)

I hate summarizing films in this section because I feel like the part of this section is to talk about and analyze (for lack of a better term) what happens, but it’s hard to talk about this movie without summarizing because while the movie, on the whole, is excellent, I can’t break it down into individual parts without losing something. It’s probably one of the first - the only? - romantic comedy films I’ve seen where I can’t talk about its aspects. It exists as a complete something. It works as a complete something. And trying to break it down only waters down how good it is.

Which is kind of astounding when you get to the fact that the two people in this film are incredibly incomplete somethings. They’re both trying to live out this narrative of what they think their lives should be - he’s trying to be someone who can climb the ladder, who appears ambitious without being so, who can say that he’s achieved something and she keeps looking for love in the wrong places, and thinks that this is the guy, thinks that this is where she can lay her hat and settle down and just be A Wife or something - and their lives never meet that. Part of how Baxter decides to climb the ladder is by letting out his apartment, and the movie keeps showing us these instances where these straying men seem to be having much better times than this guy who has a good heart, who keeps saying yes to people because that’s the kind of person he is, and who kind of lets himself be trampled in the process.

(Look at Jack Lemmon’s face.) I mean, just:

fig. 1

There’s a great scene when Shirley Maclaine’s character breaks down for him the difference between people who take and people who get took and the real sadness in that moment is that both of their characters are people who know what they’re signing up for, who are complicit in the getting took, but also refuse to believe that there isn’t some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. There’s another great scene where Jack Lemmon’s character tries to write it off by saying i’m not getting took, see, i’m using him for this promotion, and it’s kind of sad because we - as audience - know that that’s not true, or at least, partly true, and it just gives you this little pang in your chest.

But like I said, this movie is dark. As much as something in a “light” genre can be. It talks frankly of suicide. There’s one suicide attempt that’s shown (as much as one can be in 1960), and there’s talk of another. But it doesn’t mean the movie isn’t hopeful. Now, the two romantic leads - spoiler alert - don’t even get a kiss. And usually that’s the sort of thing that I’d be mouthing off and throwing things about. But it works here. Because the two of them feel like real people, and feel like people who’ve been let down a few too many times, and the end is just. It’s tonally perfect. He tells her he loves her, he adores her - when, dude, do you really even know her? - and she smiles at him and she tells him to deal (cards) so they can finish their card game. And this is after she’s finally managed to get out of the disastrous romantic affair she’s having, and run all the way from the restaurant to his apartment.

I kept thinking about it while I was watching - Baxter has such a potential of being one of those capital N, capital G, Nice Guys, but he isn’t. Not really. Part of it is Jack Lemmon and how well Jack Lemmon plays earnest and poignantly kind of mild sad, and part of it is just the situation. He cares about this girl, he cares about people, and he keeps setting himself up to be the fall guy for other people because he doesn’t want to complicate other people’s lives. There’s a scene when he takes a punch for the married boss that Shirley Maclaine is having an affair with because her brother-in-law comes hunting for her and finds him instead, and he just says, yes, it’s me and she stoops down and calls him a fool and gives him a forehead kiss. And it’s, again, kind of romantic and kind of sad at the same time.

fig. 2

And I was thinking to myself, is this one of those situations where he’s in love with the girl because she’s sad and that makes her interesting? - because I think politics are important in, well, everything, but especially in genres like this one because it says something about us as people, and I don’t think that’s the case here. She’s kind of saved from being one of those flat two-dimensional Girls to be Won that a lot of times girls in these movies are when they aren’t the lead. And she isn’t the lead. This story isn’t her story. This is his story. And yes, he doesn’t really know her, but she isn’t interesting because she’s sad. Her sadness is a facet of her character, but it isn’t defining. Maybe part of that is Shirley Maclaine, too.

Other things: this movie manages to be pretty solidly funny. Nothing that’s going to have you rolling in the aisles - something a little more subtle than that - but a couple of gags, some dry humor, and occasional chuckles.

But ultimately, this is one of those good genre movies where it doesn’t end up all sunshine. It’s not a bad ending, to be sure. She shows up at his apartment and they finish the gin game they started after her suicide attempt (which he does because he doesn’t know how to talk to her and he wants to make sure she doesn’t try it again), and they smile at each other, and it feels like a new beginning.

So that’s the thing about this movie. They’re two people who are sort of stuck in this corporate wheel, and are so lonely, and find each other by accident, and you don’t know if it’s going to work out for them, but part of you - more than part of you - wants them to because they’re such gentle souls in a world that’s sort of hard and cold.

I guess what this movie touches in me is that it’s as close as I’ve ever seen to being honest about what it means to be a romantic in the real world. You sign up, and you know you’re asking to be duped, but you play anyway. Because... well, maybe there’s a chance. And that’s enough.

[karenvstheromcom]

#26: Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

Written by: Dan Fogelman RATING: 2.5e SYNOPSIS: Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) gets the surprise of his life when he learns that his wife Emily (Julianne Moore) cheated on him with a coworker, David Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon), and wants a divorce. After moving into his own apartment, Cal begins frequenting a bar night after night, talking loudly about his divorce, until he attracts the attention of a young man named Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling), a womanizer who successfully beds women each night, although a young woman named Hannah (Emma Stone) recently rejected his advances. Jacob agrees to teach him how to pick up women. As they spend their evenings at the bar together, a friendship begins to blossom. On Cal's first attempt to seduce a woman, he meets a teacher named Kate (Marisa Tomei), who initially rejects his awkward advances, but eventually they sleep together at his apartment. Meanwhile, Hannah, a law student, is about to take the bar exam and is expecting a marriage proposal from her boyfriend, Richard (Josh Groban). Hannah's best friend, Liz (Liza Lapira), doesn't believe Hanna is happy with Richard and after Hannah passes the bar exam, Richard does not propose, but instead extends a job offer at his law firm. Hannah storms from the restaurant and finds Jacob at the bar, embracing him in a passionate kiss. The two return to Jacob's home and plan to have sex, but end up staying awake all night talking about themselves. Jacob soon starts a relationship with Hannah, and as a result of the amount of time they spend together, ends up distancing himself from Cal. In preparation for winning his wife back, Cal and his kids create a makeshift mini golf course in their backyard to remind Emily of their first date. During the gathering, Jacob and Hannah show up at the house unexpectedly and Hannah is revealed to be Cal and Emily's daughter. Cal, Jacob, David, and Bernie then get into a scuffle which is broken up by the police, after which Cal leaves everyone in frustration. Cal starts spending his time at the bar again and receives a visit from Jacob, who confesses that he is in love with Hannah. Cal, however, cannot approve of their relationship because he has seen Jacob's womanizing ways. At Robbie's eighth grade graduation, he gives a speech about how he no longer believes in true love and soulmates. Cal stops him and recounts his courtship with Emily to the audience. After the ceremony, Cal finally approves of Jacob and Hannah's relationship.

I really wish this movie had been better. I really, really do. But this movie has some ups, a lot of downs, and really suffers from a lot of prioritization problems.

So the good: this movie has a lot of heart. It does. It gets a little sentimental but never to the point where you think they're sacrificing some kind of realism to give you the sentimentality that you're looking for. The cast is great. The cast sells it. Especially Steve Carrell, who I love, and who has that perfect combination of sort of regular-guy schlumpiness along with endearing charm in spades. Julianna Moore is the wife, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone and Liza Lapira all have good senses of comedic timing and really deliver, and turn their characters into actual people.

This movie does have heart, even though I think it really excels in one arc only. And even then, it's really one scene within that arc. And I think that if you went around and polled everyone who watched this movie, they'd agree that it's the arc between Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone's characters. It's one of the most genuine and genuinely developing relationships that we get to see, and that's where a lot of the emotional connection and resonance for a romantic film comes from, from seeing the way a relationship builds and changes. (Granted, remarriage romantic comedies are also a fave of mine, but this movie does not do that one well. Unfortunately.) I mean, Ryan Gosling's character is the kid who roams around without a father and without a heart and finds himself falling in love against his own wishes. And he turns into one of those schmaltzy cutesy people he used to make fun of. It's incredible. It's so, so well done. They're so cute.

And it's mostly the first scene when they're really getting to know each other. When he tells her that he gets women to sleep with him by doing the end lift from Dirty Dancing with them and playing the song. (Which is such cheating, both on a filmic level in terms of getting me to root for you and your faves by making me associate a positive movie memory with this incomplete mess, and on a real level because that's just suuuuuch a shortcut move into not needing to actually write.) And when he talks about how he has an addiction to the Home Shopping Network because he keeps trying to buy his way into happiness, and can't do it. That was amazing.

And it isn't even that I don't like Cal, although he, for sure, has his unlikable moments. It's just that so much of Cal's development is interspersed with these terribly embarrassing interludes, and the movie kind of cheats us into believing that he's grown as a person when the point is that he's realized what he's had all along, and he's realized that he needs to stop being lazy about his relationships, but there isn't actually a lot within the framework of the film to show us that change? Instead, it just sort of does this like ten degree turn and talks a lot about it to convince us. That's not how you do it, friends.

Mostly what bothers me about this film is that the women aren't people. They aren't. I mean, this is largely a narrative that's centered around Cal and Jacob, and the relationship that they forge and their uneasy development into father-son kinship. It's about them teaching each other to grow as people, and that's all well and good and enjoyable - it's certainly structured well - but then, that isn't the romcom that I'm looking for. And, most importantly, it has little to do with women.

So much of the narrative in this movie centers around the ownership of women and women's propriety? So, like, you have the neighbor dad who (rightfully) flips out because his teenage daughter is sending sexts (essentially) to an older man that she believes that she's in love with. You have Cal, who has spent so much time with Jacob that he feels inclined to revoke his approval of the relationship with Jacob because he knows what kind of character Jacob is. And then you have his own relationship with his wife where, outside of the initial affair that we aren't even witness to as audience, he spends the majority of the time in the film dictating.

Women's love lives in this film are not their own. We never get to see Hannah really articulate what she wants in her relationship with Jacob to her parents, or to her father, especially; we never get to see Julianne Moore's character really talks about what led her to stray in the first place, or how this time is going to be different; we definitely never get to see the babysitter's perspective on the fact that a thirteen-year-old boy has a crush on her. Instead, we're inundated with this narrative that perseverance is the key to romance, that if you believe and keep trying, things will magically work themselves out. This is exacerbated by the fact that all other female minor characters in this movie are jokes, or shrews, or caricatures. All, really, except for Liza Lapira's character, who's the only one to articulate what she wants (which is mostly centered around sex) and disappears once everything gets rolling. No one woman ever gets to talk about what she wants, and with whom, and why. Instead, everything is centered around the men.

Which... sure. It's a narrative about a man. And his relationship with another man. His developing platonic/familial relationship with a man. That's all well and good but then don't try to sell that to me as a romantic comedy. We got one truly romantic-comedic scene in there and it was to sell the idea of Jacob and Hannah as a couple which could lead us to the dramatic reveal (and provide the dramatic tension) for the bulk of the third act. Hannah is a device to create tension for Jacob and Cal, and exists pretty much for that purpose, narratively speaking. Emily serves a similar purpose, but on a broader scale in terms of getting Cal to reevaluate his life.

And I'm not really here for a movie that isn't about women, that doesn't treat its women as people. There are plenty of other problems with this movie, if you're looking for them - man, where to begin. This movie's pacing is not great at all. This movie doesn't start until about an hour into it, which means that we get an hour of prologue for some unknown reason. There are plenty of really truly reality-defying scenes where things happen that we are just expected to believe even though they are ludicrous from a legal standpoint (if you are a 17-year-old girl, and you give a 30+-year-old man sexual photos of yourself, you've officially given him child pornography? if you are a 17-year-old girl who is sleeping with a 30+-year-old man, which doesn't happen but is definitely Jessica the babysitter's goal here, that is most definitely statutory rape) among other things. Why is an eighth grader's graduation speech about how he'll never find true love? Who vetted this? How did we never know that Cal and Emily had a grown-up adult daughter until the very end? Why is it that Cal and Emily, who, all in all, tend to maintain a pretty close-knit family, allowed Hannah to graduate from the bar without so much as a call or anything? But I digress.

At the end of the day, those few shining scenes - and Gosling and Carrell knocking it out of the park - really wanted me to root for this movie, but the rest of it - especially the first hour which literally felt like pulling teeth - had me running the opposite direction. I wanted the women to be people. I wanted the reconciliation to feel real. And at no point did it feel real. You have to work on the relationship to be able to sell your audience on the plausibility of it working out. What exactly did Cal and Emily fix? I can't even begin to tell you what their problems were in the first place except that he...?... wasn't trying hard enough? Which is vague and general, but also doesn't address her specific points of unhappiness and displeasure, which is because this movie doesn't take the time or the energy to explore her desires and motivations as a person. All roads lead me back.

Plus the confession speech - if we can call it that - was largely in defense of nostalgia? It was kind of flat, y'all. I don't know what to tell you. This movie sung a whole good note in two hours of mangling an opera. If it got its shit together, I'm sure it'd be great. But it doesn't. And it really isn't. And that's the world we live in.

[karenvstheromcom]

#25: While You Were Sleeping (1995)

Written by: Daniel G. Sullivan and Frederic Lebow RATING: 4.6 e SYNOPSIS: Lucy Moderatz (Sandra Bullock) is a lonely fare token collector on the Chicago Transit Authority. She has a secret crush on a handsome commuter named Peter Callaghan (Peter Gallagher), although they are complete strangers. On Christmas Day, she rescues him from an oncoming train after a group of muggers push him onto the tracks. He falls into a coma, and she accompanies him to the hospital, where a nurse, misinterpreting her, tells his family that she is his fiancée. At first she is too caught up in the panic to explain the truth. She winds up keeping the secret for a number of reasons: she is embarrassed, Peter's grandmother Elsie (Glynis Johns) has a heart condition, and Lucy quickly comes to love being a part of Peter's big and loving family. With no family and few friends, Lucy becomes so captivated with the quirky Callaghans and their unconditional love for her that she cannot bring herself to hurt them by revealing that Peter does not even know her. She spends a belated Christmas with them and then meets Peter's younger brother Jack (Bill Pullman), who is supposed to take over his father's furniture business. He is suspicious of her at first, but he falls in love with her as they spend time together. They develop a close friendship and soon she falls in love with him as well. After New Year's Eve, Peter wakes up. He does not know Lucy, so it is assumed that he must have amnesia. She and Peter spend time together, and Saul persuades Peter to propose to her "again"; she agrees even though she is in love with Jack. When Jack visits her the day before the wedding, she gives him a chance to change her mind, asking him if he can give her a reason not to marry Peter. He replies that he cannot, leaving her disappointed. On the day of the wedding, just as the priest begins the ceremony, Lucy finally confesses everything and tells the family she loves Jack rather than Peter. As the family argues, Lucy slips out unnoticed, unsure of her future. Some time later, while Lucy is at work, Jack places an engagement ring in the token tray of her booth. She lets him into the booth, and with the entire Callaghan family watching, he proposes to her. In the last scenes of the film, they kiss at the end of their wedding.

So I have to confess that I had never seen this movie before this. It's one of those things that I try to keep under wraps because if you don't say anything, people usually assume that the answer is yes, and it's one of those big titles that people are all shocked about when you say you've never seen it. And that's really a half-truth anyway, because I saw part of it in a movie night during sophomore year of high school but only remembered the first ten minutes? (I possibly may have fallen asleep. Who knows?)

Other things to keep in mind are that I went into this with a fair amount of knowledge about things, so I don't know if that colors the review in any way. I knew that Bill Pullman was the real love interest is basically the extra knowledge that I came into this with.

There isn't much bad to talk about with this movie at all. There are points that I think don't work, whether for me personally or in general, but those might be ymmv points. For instance, the creepy next-door neighbor who's meant to be a bit of a lovable yutz with a pot belly and no sense of boundaries and continues to ask Lucy out on a date even though she keeps rejecting him. He made me uncomfortable, but he's also kind of a stock character in the genre. Pacing was another thing. I understand the purpose of the introductory anecdote about her father and their old traditions, but the entire opening segment before he ends up on the train tracks seems to take quite a long time. Once Bill Pullman and the family enter the picture, things start picking up much quicker. And lastly, there are a few moments in the film that just make my secondhand embarrassment flare up like crazy and make certain scenes unenjoyable. Lucy's confession speech at the end definitely borders on that, but it doesn't quite cross the line because Sandy B. is incredible at her job. The plot definitely (definitely, definitely) operates off of the remember-the-genre-you're-watching rule because the notion that she would spend several minutes on the tracks asking him to wake up instead of dialing 911 or running for a transit cop makes little sense to me (and also seems like it would violate transit authority protocol, no?) but who cares?

The good is so good. I actually was struggling for a while to figure out where to place this on the ratings scale, because this movie is good in a way that other romcoms I've seen aren't typically? Which I'll get into when I talk about the love story, but mostly - everything I've seen has evoked a strong response. I either love it, or I hate it. The tepid ones are usually tepid because of faulty execution. This movie sneaks up on you. It's so quiet in the way that it sets up the relationship; Lucy herself is such a quiet person and a quiet character; and it really replicates the feeling of that sense of romance without going for all the bells and whistles. And it elucidated a reaction within me but nothing that had me shouting or jumping for joy because so much of it isn't (just) about the sexual chemistry. It's about compatibility on an emotional level that goes so much deeper than that. So they pace the love story differently and it isn't worse - it isn't lesser - but it's different, and consequently, it felt different to me? Not in a bad way.

The love story is really truly great. Because ultimately it's Lucy's love story with the family. And they're so sweet, and so pitch-perfect in terms of striking that mix of eccentric and charming, cozy but large. And I think the movie spends so much time making you feel Lucy's loneliness that you get to really empathize with her and move with the story the way (and at the speed) the movie wants you to move. Jack and Lucy's love story definitely fits in the tone of that. So much of it is about two people who have always placed themselves in this position to be secondary in their relationships with people that the way that it plays out involves so much yearning. But a wistful yearning. It's about people who see what they want, who know they can't have it, and kind of take two steps back and go okay, well, i can't have it and i guess that's okay.

The scene with the two of them on the stairwell when she asks him to make an objection, she asks him if he's in love with her, and he doesn't do it (and then he heads to the door and basically slams it open) because she's Peter's fiancee and he can't take things from Peter. It's such a good ache.

And even though the idea that a woman would fall in love with a man's family and stay fake-married to him for the sake of their feelings borders on kind of creepy, so much of this is saved by Sandy B.'s earnestness. She's in her prime here, all fresh-faced and sweet and honest and she makes it feel so much more okay than it probably should (on the moral level). And the other thing is that she and Jack are so so so so so cute. Like the scene when they're clinging to each other as they're slipping on the ice and you're just witness to how much trouble they're in before they even know it... it's magical.

I was thinking about this actually because so many romcoms have the set-up that introduces the male love interest in a way that kind of tugs at your heartstrings because even if she doesn't know that she's going to fall in love with him, we certainly do. And sometimes it's flashy, and sometimes it's over the top, but it's there to be dangled in front of us, to tease our emotions a little bit, and give us a little bit of a mushy feeling before things get rolling. And that moment is so perfect here, too, because it's so quiet - it's just the shot of Bill Pullman's boots as he steps out of the truck and heads towards the house.

That's the thing that really stole my breath away with this whole movie - how quiet it was. Usually romcoms aren't quiet. Even if the characters are. So much of romcoms are sort of about this fraught tension that exists the moment that they meet about when such and such is going to happen, or when some conflict is going to emerge. Part of it is because its viewers (who love it, and a lot of those who hate it) know that it's such a trope-filled genre, so it's like ticking boxes off a checklist. Yes, they met, and yes, this happened, and yes, they're already halfway to sleeping together or kissing, which is going to give us the conflict to propel this through the third act when they sort out their lives. And this movie has those elements - for sure - but it deploys them in a way that makes them feel fresh. Which is really hard in a genre that a lot of people consider stale.

What comes to mind is actually that old saying about soup? You know, people never write odes and odes to really well done soup because it's so simple. But really well done soup is really difficult because of how uncomplicated it is. That's how I feel about this movie. I wasn't jumping to the rafters shouting, but it was genre that wasn't wrapped up in its own head. It was genre that operated well on every level, and like a good soup, just warms you and satisfies you completely.

eta: I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT TO MENTION THE LEANING SPEECH. The LEANING SPEECH IS SO IMPORTANT. It's just everything that I ever wanted with respect to a movie knowing its tropes. And Jack is so jealous and so mad and huffy and she's so confused and HE'S SO RIGHT. THE LEAN!!!!!! None of this is coherent, I'm sorry.

[karenvstheromcom]

Can I request a review? Can you review Working Girl please?

yes, of course! i'll add it to the list :)

[karenvstheromcom]

#24: Notting Hill (1999)

Written by: Richard Curtis RATING: 1.75 ephrons

SYNOPSIS (via): Every man's dream comes true for William Thacker, an unsuccessful Notting Hill bookstore owner, when Anna Scott, the world's most beautiful woman and best-liked actress, enters his shop. A little later, he still can't believe it himself, William runs into her again - this time spilling orange juice over her. Anna accepts his offer to change in his nearby apartment, and thanks him with a kiss, which seems to surprise her even more than him. Eventually, Anna and William get to know each other better over the months, but being together with the world's most wanted woman is not easy - neither around your closest friends, nor in front of the all-devouring press.

Despite what I said in my previous review, Richard Curtis and I are most definitely not on good terms, and will likely never be again. Despite my fourteen-year-old self being charmed by Love Actually, everything he touches is largely the same. I did not enjoy this film. Buyer beware.

Richard Curtis really does write exceptional friend groups, and this movie is no different. But romantic comedies are not about friends, they're about romance. And, just like Four Weddings, the romance is contrived and shallow, and it's all about a hero who feels dumped upon by an unavailable, perfectly aloof yet charming enough manic pixie dream girl who manages to fall into place in his life right at the last second. Again, she seems to hold most, if not all the strings; again, she seems to be emotionally available until the plot reminds us that she is not; again, she seems to be heartless until we realize the direness of her circumstances. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

The pacing in this movie is fucking awful. It's nearly fifty minutes too long, i'd say, and the friends aren't in it as much as the friends are in Four Weddings, which I think is to its detriment. Everything feels like a lag; it takes Hugh Grant fifteen minutes to spit out a single sentence.

But let's talk about the love story. Let's talk about how fucking contrived and heartless and shallow this love story is. She kisses him first, about fifteen minutes into the entire movie, and we have no idea why. He's enraptured! British women are usually so much more closed-off than this! He has never been quite so enraptured in his entire life! They go on several dates, and the entire time, she's always sharing more of herself than perhaps is safe for a celebrity, and he's going through it as if this is a normal love affair. (Spoiler alert: it's not. She's famous.) When they sleep together, his careless flatmate lets it out that she's staying with him and invites the paparazzi to stake out their front door, which causes them to split because she thinks he did it intentionally. And then they have a reunion in front of all the reporters.

We have absolutely no idea why they love each other.

None.

While they go on several dates, their chemistry never seems to get off the ground and they seem perpetually stuck in the awkward flirting infatuation stage. Which is fine. I just don't know how we get from here to 'I love you' in an hour and forty-five minutes which simultaneously feels enormously long and brief at the same time. I want to know what it is about her that he can't seem to find with anyone else; I want to know why it is that she feels he's worth the jeopardy to her professional career; I'd like to know whether the relationship between her and Alec Baldwin's character was ever real or simply a concocted showmance for publicity, and why she never thought to tell him about it.

This story doesn't have heart, and so it never gets off the ground. The best part of the whole thing are the exchanges between Hugh Grant's friends, the married couple, who are absolutely in love with each other despite the multitude of hardships they've faced in their life. But other than that, it's flat.

I'm actually really mad about how good a line "I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her" is, because it belongs to a better movie. It should not be part of this film.

It's just frustrating to me because his friend groups are so natural and they always have such a good rapport, and so much genuine heart to them, and then the romance is this! It's flat and it's stale and it could be so much better, and instead it's not! It's just THIS vacuous shriveled piece of emotionless gristle that gets stuck in your teeth and reminds you why you never order from this place EVER.

Save yourselves the time and the trouble. If you're going to go Richard Curtis, you might as well aim higher and reach for Love Actually. Or even Four Weddings.

[karenvstheromcom]

#23: You Instead (2011)

Written by: Thomas Leveritt RATING: 2.7 ephrons

SYNOPSIS: Adam (Luke Treadaway) and Morello (Natalia Tena) end up handcuffed whilst appearing at T in the Park. Adam is the lead singer with successful pop group The Make who are booked to perform. While looking for his manager he happens upon Morello, the lead singer for the all girl punk band The Dirty Pinks. The two do not get along and end up arguing, while doing so attracting the attention of a preacher who decides to teach them both a lesson in cooperation and compromise. He handcuffs the two together and disposes of the key, leaving the two stuck together until the handcuffs can be removed. This also means that the two must perform together, an arrangement that both are unhappy with. But over time they both see that they have more in common than first thought and Morello begins to wonder whether she is truly happy with her boyfriend Mark (Alastair Mackenzie).

This is one of those weird romcom product scenarios where it is a wholly enjoyable cute movie that is also just incredibly terrible.

To start with the bad, the premise is truly profoundly lazy. There's no explanation for why a random passing preacher should want to handcuff these two people there, or even why no one would want to help them out of it. For the most part, the festival staff seem to find it laughable rather than like an enormous liability, which I think is testing the bonds of realism there a bit.

We have no reason to see why Adam and Morello dislike each other so much from the get-go either. Her band tries to tip his car(?) for some reason, although god knows what that reason would be, and he is subsequently pissed about it and steals her jacket, which turns out to be a family heirloom that's really important to her. Their fighting is what draws the attention of the preacher who comes to handcuff them together.

This movie also spends a weird amount of time on a sub-plot with Adam's manager getting absolutely wasted which I don't find funny and mostly consider to be a waste of time.

Literally this entire movie is just carried by the sexual chemistry of the leads and Luke Treadaway's face which grows to scream 'I am really into you' at really viewer-disastrous levels. The actors really sell that they're both really into each other and are developing feelings, but there's nothing in the script that really tells us why. I mean, honestly, the core of it is mostly that they want to sleep with each other but can't.

The can't comes mostly in the form of their two existing SO's who are both equally bad, but in different reasons. We don't really get explanations for this, either. Lake - Adam's girlfriend - is a supermodel who is vapid, shallow, and all the typical things that dudes ascribe to supermodels; Mark - Morello's boyfriend - is a straitlaced responsible banker type. Because their break-up takes place much later than Lake and Adam's break-up, it seems even more manufactured and the movie knows this, which is why it tries to sell us on a half-assed 'she also cheated on him before!' explanation after we've spent the whole movie with Adam and Morello making eyes at each other.

Like I said, it's mostly worth it just to see the two leads play off of each other. And, because this is set at a music festival, we also get a lot of really great music. One of the best scenes in the whole movie is when Adam has to go to Morello's gig and ends up riffing with her on one of her songs and makes it a mash-up with Tainted Love. (It's great.)

Once their significant others have broken up with them, we also get into this real comfortable stretch of movie where we can see them fall in love. They walk around the festival together - and the shots then are really gorgeous because it's Scotland at dawn, and sunrise, and birds everywhere - and they kiss and shower together (after she has a breakdown in the mud) and it's very cute. The last stretch of difficulty we run into is when Morello finds out that Adam has known where the key was for a bulk of this stretch together and didn't tell her because he wanted to spend more time with her. She is, rightfully, pissed off and doesn't want to have anything to do with him anymore only for him to make a giant gesture at his stint of the gig - getting the audience to chant her name, declaring his feelings, &c. - and for that to make everything okay.

This is definitely a dude romantic comedy. A lot of the focus is really on the music, and everything is sort of a vehicle to showcase that. That said, neither Adam nor Morello are particularly likable people (if you spend more than a half second thinking about it) and they aren't really people to begin with. They're two-dimensional and kind of flat. Selfish, self-centered rock stars who are handcuffed together and really want to bang. I don't really find the declaration of love believable - although his face does truly incredible things - but you do still root for them to get together at the end, and not out of any kind of spite.

This is a movie that I want to believe in because the premise is great, but the premise makes it sound better than it is. That said, it's still a movie where you have a lot of fun. It's just that everything stays on that surface level. This is not a movie with any deeper messages, and that's okay. Not every movie has to have one. But it's hard to really root for a couple in a movie when you have no idea what motivates their passion for each other, and when they do terrible things to other people to get to be together (mostly because we have no idea what motivates their passion for each other).

It's worth a watch for sure but it's frothy and I don't know how many repeat viewings will sink that air.

[karenvstheromcom]

#22: Music and Lyrics (2007)

Written by: Marc Lawrence RATING: 4.5 ephrons

SYNOPSIS (via): A professional collaboration between a popular lyricist and a washed-up musician takes a decidedly personal turn as the pair gradually finds their relationship developing into something much deeper in a romantic comedy directed by Marc Lawrence and starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant. Alex Fletcher (Grant) may have been all the rage in the 1980s, but these days he's lucky to get a gig playing at the local county fair. Just when it seems as if things couldn't get any more bleak for the dejected has-been rocker, reigning pop diva Cora Corman (Haley Bennett) offers Alex the opportunity of a lifetime -- write and record a duet to be sung with her and watch his career receive a much-needed boost as the nostalgia-crazed public laps it up. Little does Cora realize that not only has it been years since Alex has written a song, but he's never actually written a single lyric. Now, if he hopes to make the comeback needed to save him from a life of complete and utter obscurity, Alex will have to craft a radio-friendly hit in a matter of mere days. Luckily for Alex, his quirky plant-keeper Sophie Fisher (Barrymore) has quite a way with words and may possess just the kind of songwriting talent needed to make such a hit happen. Unfortunately the beguiling Sophie is still reeling from a recent break-up with newly famous novelist Sloan Cates (Campbell Scott), and she isn't quite sure if she's ready for any kind of collaboration right now -- romantic or otherwise. Despite Alex's hesitation to commit and Sophie's reluctance to collaborate, the pair quickly discovers that a little chemistry can go a long way in healing the wounds of the past and laying the foundation for a much-deserved future of happiness and success.

If you've never seen this movie before, first of all, I don't know what you're waiting for, but if you're waiting for a sign, this is it. Go see it. It's probably the best genuine thing Hugh Grant has ever done (Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones is the objective best, but he's a dickhead in that). Drew Barrymore is always delightful, and she's great in this. Plus we were on the late 2000s post-Chicago craze of making everyone sing their own songs for things. Garbo laughs; Grant sings. Totally comparable.

In all seriousness, this is kind of the fluffy romantic comedy that has heart and Something to Say that I always really love. It is, by all accounts, Alex's story, but Alex's story can't take place without Sophie. He's a likable enough guy but he spends most of the movie being complacent and kind of lazy, and Sophie is the plot device that ushers in all this change. But unlike other similar movies, Sophie never takes a backseat to Alex's narrative. Once she becomes part of it, she's there.

The music part of this movie is super charming. They're not the best singers in the world, but they also don't have to be. Sophie's a total amateur, and Alex was part of a super autotuned 80s pop band. (He is the not-George-Michael part of Wham.) The love story is also super cute. Sophie is your typical romcom heroine love interest - she's just quirky enough to be interesting (obsessive compulsive, kills plants) without any of her quirks defining her completely. She's like 2-and-2/3rds dimensional.

What I find most interesting is the way that this movie talks about art. (No, I'm serious.) This movie - in looking at pop music trends and using that as its premise - is all about the difference between genuine art (art with a heart) rather than manufactured schlock. And unlike other media, it takes care to distinguish the manufactured art with a heart from the manufactured schlock and does not lump them all into the same category. It's really self-referential about it, from the parts where Alex is made to interact with other songwriters to Sophie's interactions with Cora, a Britney/Christina manufactured pop princess whose music lacks heart because it lacks genuine feeling.

Part of why Sophie and Alex work so well is that her quirkiness places her in counterpoint to his position in terms of where they approach the idea of art. He's here for the money, he's commercial, and now he's throwing away every last shred of dignity that he is in order to keep getting paid (whereas she is a serious creative writer, someone who attended graduate-level creative writing workshops, someone who refuses to pander her art for the sake of getting it sold), but what she finds in him is genuine emotion. And what she gets him to do - over the course of the film and the ups and downs of their relationship - is to utilize that emotion within his writing.

Part of the reason why the confession speech in this movie is so satisfying is because a) it's not a confession speech, it's a song, and b) because he listens to her and he writes the first genuinely heartfelt lyrics of his life.

It's never been easy for me / To find words to go along with a melody / But this time there's actually something on my mind / So please forgive these few brief awkward lines / Since I met you my whole life is changed / It's not just my furniture you've rearranged / I was living in the past / But somehow you've brought me back / And I haven't felt like this / Since before Frankie said "Relax" / And though I know / Based on my track record / I might not seem like the safest bet / All I'm asking you / Is don't write me off just yet / For years I've been telling myself the same old story / That I was happy to live off my so-called former glories / But you've given me a reason / To take another chance / Now I need you / Despite the fact that you've killed all my plants / And though I know / I've already blown more chances / Than anyone should ever get / All I'm asking you / Is don't write me off just yet.

But Sophie, as much as she's being used as a muse here, is her own person, and spends the movie iterating her status as her own person over and over again. And I think that negotiating these muse politics is really fascinating. Sophie is being used as an inspirational figure for two different types of artistic men here - there's Alex, who is the protagonist and who we're rooting for, and then there's Sloan, the douchey ex. And the difference is that Alex sees Sophie as a contributor - a lot of the movie is about him sourcing her credit and giving her co-writing credits and recognizing her contributions (and making her an active agent) - and Sloan sees Sophie as a passive object, a deranged ex-girlfriend, a gold digger who wants to make her own name by leeching off of him. He is every singular male artist all of us have known and despised throughout the years because he is so incredibly self-centered and an asshole and yet successful for reasons of the World is a Dickish Awful Place.

But Sophie gets to take that back. She gets to reclaim her ownership of herself from Sloan, and I think that's really important. If the history of the world is full of male artists devaluing and diminishing the accomplishments of female artists, if the world is full of male artists who blame the women in their lives for everything that's gone wrong and somehow manage to make a name off of it, then Sophie gets to deliver the speech that speaks (if only briefly) for the women that don't have an outlet to talk back.

She struggles, of course. He's still a recent ex for her that managed to ruin her life and traumatize her into not contributing and it's hard enough to tell people what you want to say to them without it being this Big Thing, but Sophie, at least, has prepared a speech:

Sloan, even though Sally Michaels only lives on paper, I live in the real world. And I can never forgive you for using me as raw material to create a fictional monster. Sally Michaels is my own personal ghost, a shadow hanging over each phone call, a cup of tea. And one cold day when age has robbed your mind of its fertile phrases and your hand of its dexterity all the success won't be able to shield you from the pain you've caused and the shame you deserve. Or something like that.

And even though Sophie doesn't get to deliver that speech the way that she wants to, she gets what I'm told is the best revenge: living well. And it's all told in the end credit Pop Up Video sequence.

The only other warnings needed here is that Cora - said Britney wannabe - is wildly culturally appropriative with Buddhist imagery and East Asian iconography, which, let's be real, is not far off the mark anyway.

[karenvstheromcom]

#21: What's Your Number? (2011)

Before we get started with the review, one housekeeping item: I've retagged all the existing reviews with a letter grade. (The scale is out of 5, so I think the math is pretty clear.) I'm still going to rate by the Ephron scale, but I think that for sake of shopping around for good flicks and for organization, the letter grades are easier. (I'm also hoping to post a little more often!)

Written by: Gabrielle Allen and Jennifer Crittenden, adapted from the novel by Karyn Bosnak RATING: 3.25 ephrons

SYNOPSIS (via wiki): Ally Darling (Anna Faris) is a thirty-something woman who is struggling to make better decisions with her life. Her boyfriend Rick (Zachary Quinto) breaks up with her when she asks him to attend her sister Daisy's (Ari Graynor) upcoming wedding, and she then gets laid off from her job. While taking the subway home, Ally comes across a Marie Claire magazine article entitled "What's Your Number?", which says that women who have more than twenty lovers in their lifetime have difficulty finding a husband. She realizes that her number is nineteen, making her decide not to have sex with anyone else until she finds "the one". After hooking up with her ex-boss Roger (Joel McHale), she lets her neighbor Colin (Chris Evans) into her apartment so that way Roger will leave. She decides to track down all of her ex-boyfriends in the hope that one of them will have grown into the man she wants to marry and gets help from Colin in exchange for letting him stay in her place after his one-night stands. After a falling out with Colin, Ally thinks she finally finds her match - an old flame, Jake Adams (Dave Annable) - only to realize that the man she truly loves is Colin.

Let me begin with perhaps the most salient point: this is the movie where all those gif sets of Chris Evans with just a small kitchen towel covering his dick come from.

So let me start off and say that this movie has really great high points and really solid low and mediocre points. It's actually pretty all over the place in a lot of ways, but I think its strong suits are more than enough to skew the rating positively.

Bad things first: this movie is hella uneven in nearly all ways imaginable. The plot - even for genre - is like completely ridiculous (Colin comes from a cop family and thus can moonlight as a private detective! Ally just so happens to be really great at sculpture! There is an absolutely absurd scene where two people can allegedly sneak into TD Garden and play basketball on the court without being caught!). There's a really fantastic term I picked up from an Ebert review once - he calls it the aha moment. As in, in an action film, just when the plot boxes you in to this sticking point where there is no escape, the hero will realize (aha!) the thing that will let them escape just by the skin of their teeth. This movie is built on that principle. Things happen because the plot needs it to, and it doesn't even really care to sell it to you. (At Daisy's wedding, the orchestra is cancelled because the harpist hurt herself playing softball with the Philharmonic's softball league?; Colin has had Jake Adam's number the entire time! Just when our dynamic duo need conflict to wedge them apart for the last act!; the one ex that Colin couldn't track down calls to say that they never slept together in the first place so!)

It's also not very funny. It's got a lot of funny people in it - I am not very knowledgeable about Anna Faris films, but I've heard she's a good comedian? And she's decent with the physical comedy and with the acting - but the jokes are straight up bad. Chris Pratt plays one of Ally's exes who's under the mistaken impression that she's stalking him? The verbal humor, when they try it, is stilted and fairly obvious. Probably the funniest part is when Aziz Ansari calls at the end (he's the last ex). There's a scene where she fakes a horrendously awful British accent. Awful. There's a scene where Andy Samberg (who plays the puppeteer ex) makes one of his puppets ... fellate him. Which is .... yeah.

It's also got some fairly objectionable content in terms of fat jokes, the occasional casual rape mention (Daisy's friends refer to Colin as the 'rapey neighbor').

No one's really a person. Everyone's an archetype. You've got the mean mother, the perfect sister, the quirky dad, the best friend troupe. I mean, they really phoned it in. But like with a lot of effort? Like the most effort you could put into something whilst also not succeeding at making them real people. Even Ally and Colin aren't, and they're saved from this because Anna Faris and Chris Evans both have enough semblance of charm and/or acting skill to give them presence.

Pacing is another one. The beginning is so slow that when you hit their actual love story, you see them becoming friends and him developing a thing for her but you don't see it enough from her side, I don't think. I can explain to you why she loves him - the movie makes that pretty clear - but in terms of seeing it on screen, ehhhhh.

That said, I think they're precious. And it leads me to talking about the good, so.

This movie doesn't try to hide its politics at all. It's about virgin/whore dichotomies and the politics of decency for the modern woman etc. We again return to the romcom heroine's perennial internal conflict: do you be the woman others want you to be, the so-called perfect modern woman, or do you choose yourself, flaws and all? Take a guess what this movie's answer is. So part of this Ally/Colin thing is about her breaking from trying to be what her mom wants her to be, and just being herself.

In fact, when they're in their 'falling in love without realizing it' montage portion of the film, they have a conversation about it which is pretty great:

COLIN. I don't know why you care so much about your number anyway. ALLY. You guys all have this ideal girl in your minds, and if our number gets too high, we can't be that girl. COLIN. The ideal girl. Tell me about her. ALLY. You know, you can take her home to the family, she's smart, but not smarter than you, and she bakes apple pies with your mom and plays catch with your handicap sister. But then when you're alone, she takes off her glasses and puts on a vinyl catsuit and fucks you sideways. COLIN. That girl doesn't exist, if she did, I'd be sleeping with her. And what kind of guy cares about how many people you slept with anyway? ALLY. Decent guys.

Emphasis mine. That's ultimately the politics of the movie, and even though it puts Ally through her paces because Hollywood film yadda yadda, her arc through the whole thing is about learning to be her own person. Standing up to her mother by breaking up with a boyfriend that her mother wholly approves of, ditching a white-collar marketing job in favor of pursuing her art, etc. And Colin's the guy that makes it all possible because he's already living the life he wants - he sleeps with women (but only at his apartment because he falls in love too easy and has a sizable guilt complex about breaking up with them, of course), he's in a band for its own sake, etc. And he teaches her to be selfish.

That said, it'd probably be less enjoyable if it were two other people. But the two of them are really cute. (They play a game of strip horse - like the basketball game - and don't sleep together but fall asleep together.) And this movie's about seeing the other person for who they are so there's a big point made about how he sees her in the morning without makeup and still thinks she's the most beautiful woman he's seen yadda yadda.

She's the one to deliver the confession speech, as well, and it ends up being more of a self-affirmation. She breaks up with Perfect Boyfriend because he's perfect for someone, but not for her. And her confession speech is sweet and kind of poorly phrased, but it works:

ALLY. No, wait. There's more. I...um, I'm happiest when I'm being myself, and myself when I'm with you. That was it. I guess, I was just so afraid that you were another asshole that I became the biggest asshole of all.

So, that's it. This movie is given a really strong upswing by its actors (Chris Evans also sings and plays a little guitar in it, so) but the source material itself isn't super great. Has a lot of heart though (not enough to really get it to standing, but), and bless it, it tries.

[karenvstheromcom]

#20: Sliding Doors (1998)

RATING: 3.5 ephrons* Written by: Peter Howitt

I'm having a '90s romcom nostalgia phase. But when aren't I?

So let's deal with the synopsis before we get underway: Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow) gets fired from her public relations job. As she rushes for her train on the London Underground, the plot splits into two parallel universes, one in which she catches the train, the other detailing the separate path her life would have taken had she missed that train. One universe has her staying with her cheating boyfriend who gets her pregnant. When confronted with evidence of his cheating (all before she's told him she's pregnant), she takes a spill down the stairs, ends up in the hospital, and loses the baby. In the other universe, she meets James (John Hannah); they become friends and fall in love only for her to discover that he's married - although, he explains, they're only in it to appease his dying mother, are separated, and will divorce shortly. He tells her he loves her, she gets struck by a car, ends up in the hospital, loses the baby, and dies. When she wakes up in the other universe, she breaks up w/ cheating boyfriend and leaves the hospital only to meet James in the elevator. (Again.) Fate? Coincidence? &c. &c.

Let me start with this: the last time I saw this film, I was in middle school. I enjoyed it very much. I still enjoy it very much. I have a thing for John Hannah - have had a thing for John Hannah forever - that seems to be going strong and not disappearing so that's still brought some sway.

As always, let's talk about the lady protagonist. Helen is... well. She's sort of average. She isn't particularly difficult nor is she a pushover. She's lost, she's confused, she's your average twentysomething living in a major metropolitan area in the late-1990s, and she's juggling work problems with personal ones. I really like her. I don't think that there's anything particularly groundbreaking about her other than the fact that she isn't. She's very much your everywoman, who has problems that a lot of women face. And deals with it in much the same way that a lot of women do. And I think that the novelty of the foundational plot premise allows the movie to explore the idea of why didn't you leave him vs. why didn't you try to work it out very well, although I don't think that was a primary intention of the writer or the movie itself. Unlike the other things we've seen, Helen's very much at the center of this whole saga, but the movie itself - in exploring both possible scenarios - doesn't really express one way or the other support or criticisms for Helen's choices or actions. She does as she pleases; she suffers the consequences regardless.

But don't get me wrong - absolutely the weakest parts of this movie are in the plot. At the end, the cathartic pouring-rain-declaration-of-love scene - my favorite of favorites - is cheapened, I think, by the fact that he says that he's separated from his wife and that he's going to divorce her. I mean, the movie has shown us that James, by and large, is the most upstanding of upstanding guys, but like 80% of this movie is spent on showing us the shit boyfriend so I'm not particularly inclined to trust anyone who says well, we're separated but i'm leaving her, i swear. (Like, read a Cosmo: there is a very, very small likelihood a sentence like this details a scenario that's going to end well.)

That said, I do really like James. And not just because he's played by John Hannah, although that certainly helps. I was exploding about this on twitter earlier but John Hannah's got that really interesting mix of romcom hero traits - he's down-to-earth, he's charming, he's cute, but not in a way that makes it difficult to imagine him being a total wreck in bed. And James is very much kind of a manic pixie dream guy? They meet in these isolated circumstances - and their meet cute is weirdly logical and believable for the genre, but still cute - and he's there to be a friend (and he means it!) and they gradually develop feelings for each other. He brings her around to meet his larger friends group, he is empathetic and supportive and loving (up until the plot demands that he be vague about things for the sake of moving things along and adding dramatic tension and angst). I mean, we don't even know what he does! Apart from being a crewman (a rower? whatever they call people who participate in rowing as a sport) and carrying a cell phone, we don't know anything about him!

Which I guess is kind of refreshing.

I guess my problem is that the premise takes away the journey. At the end of it, Helen hasn't learned anything; that Helen - who learned to assert herself, who learned to walk away from a bad relationship, who learned to trust her instincts and open up her own business and decided to trust again and try to build a relationship with someone else - dies. And we get this whole other version of her who wakes up from her coma and has that kind of weary realism that we saw the other version of her wear, but that wasn't her growth trajectory? I think that if we had seen a little more of what her new relationship with James became, it'd make it sting less. To see if they ended up being happy, you know? And instead, we get a rehash of their first meeting in very similar circumstances, except she gets an inside joke that she didn't get before. It's kind of kitschy, and a nice bookend to the whole thing. There's closure but there's no growth. Which is a really weird thing to say about a movie.

On an emotional level, though, until you hit the soap opera melodramatics, it's really great. That is, if you're invested in the relationship. I find the depiction of their budding relationship to be really sweet - full of legitimate awkwardness that is never made to seem cutesier than it is, full of hesitation and trepidation and nervousness, and also just full of really cute, I'm-into-you moments. I'm also a really big fan of James' last speech to Helen (when she's unconscious and dying, unfortunately), which is when he apologizes for not telling her sooner about his (not really so) estranged wife and says that he's glad he got to tell her he loves her and that he just wants to make her happy, and that he thinks he can make her happy. (It gets me. I'm a sap.)

The other characters are kind of just there, though. Unless you're Helen, James, or Helen's friend, Anna, you really get the short end of the stick. Helen's boyfriend (Gerry) is a douchebag who is an unemployed aspiring novelist who picks up an old relationship and then doesn't know how to break up with either girl ( - or, really, know who he wants to break it off with) and just comes off as an asshole. His girl on the side, Lydia, is mostly portrayed as shrill, shrewish, and just mean, until you get to the scene in Dorset in AU A where she breaks up with him because she knows he's never going to leave his girlfriend. (That's the one scene I really enjoyed with her because she becomes more than just a plot device, and she isn't treated like an evil witch, basically.) Gerry even has a friend who is even more pointless than anyone else, since he mostly seems to laugh at Gerry's neurotic reactions to his own conflicts and is there to summarize things for the viewer. Why??? Who knows.

I know people who don't like this movie, and I get why it's polarizing. The plot structure isn't exactly typical or traditional, the plot sacrifices logic and sense a lot of the time for the direction of its narrative, and it definitely does not prioritize characters beyond the primary couple. As a romantic-comedy, it comes off as a little too sad/melodramatic, and it isn't exactly funny. So that's why the 3.5 rating.

That said, it's still a really(, really, really) enjoyable romance movie for me, and as much as I do not like Gwyneth Paltrow (it's a personal preference thing), I still really like this movie. I think that she and John Hannah play off of each other really well, and I think that the premise is really interesting in the way that it kind of deals with fate and destiny semi-honestly, or, at least, with a fair bit of heart. It ends sort of optimistically, and you never feel like they dropped you mid-air. There's definitely something solid to end on.

But I can't get past wanting a little more.

Not gonna lie, I think a lot of this could have been solved if they had just kept her alive in the universe where she and James were together, but maybe that would have been too easy.

[karenvstheromcom]

i find the dialogue surrounding romcoms to be tremendously interesting. i was in a mood to watch something tonight and was trying to google new recommendations and instead found about a dozen articles being linked that asserted that romantic comedies were what was ruining modern relationships, ruining women's happiness, ruining love because the expectations were too high

but the missing part of that sentence is obviously 'for men' because high idealized impossible expectations are something that women have forced upon them and are constantly required to negotiate. and this escapist genre that lends itself to a) letting women voice their demands, b) ask for more than 'settling', c) giving them what they want is what's making the sky fall and bring about mayhem in the streets and cats and dogs living together

(i think it's important to note that i don't think it's an infallible genre, but i think the bulk of the critique here - and the direction of the arguments - suggest something less than total objectivity)

but i think it's very illuminating that in response to fictional women winning the game, the general response from outside the target demographic is 'you're asking too much'

you're asking too much of your partners; you're asking too much of men; you're asking too much of yourself when the cheesy typical line of the movies themselves is that no, you're not asking too much at all, you deserve good things

[karenvstheromcom]

#19: Failure to Launch (2006)

Probably the first and only video that will ever happen on this blog, I and a guest commentator/friend (slatternly) talk about what Failure to Launch has done to us as people.

rating: 4.7 ephrons

[karenvstheromcom]

#18: The Proposal (2009)

RATING: 1 ephron Written by :Pete Chiarelli

So a few caveats. I didn't stream this; it was on TV -- FX -- by chance and I had nothing else to watch, and you know they edit crap out of there like nobody else's business, so this is what my review is working off of. Generally there's enough plot information to get by, but if you feel like my review is tainted because of the inferior cut, please let me know. I will probably never watch this movie again, but your input is always good.

Second, I went through my old reviews and 2 ephrons is apparently the lowest I've ever rated anything. This was worse.

Third, wow, it's been two months since my last review. Sorry about that, guys!

Synopsis is simple. Sandra Bullock plays Margaret, who is a frigid terrible boss at a Manhattan publishing firm. Ryan Reynolds is her assistant. She's going to get deported, so she decides to use him as a coverup so that she can get citizenship. He uses the opportunity to get her to give him a well-deserved promotion, but they end up going to his parents' house in Alaska where they fall in love. She does the big reveal at the wedding altar, and he flies to New York to get her back. They really become engaged (for real) the second time. The film ends with their interview with INS.

It's late. I've been procrastinating on my work. This is not going to be tremendously thorough or nice.

This movie did not care about Margaret at all. She has really no sense of character development throughout the whole thing, except she does get one singular scene where she confesses that the reason she's a giant bitch is because she was orphaned as a teenager and now… I don't know, that is supposed to explain her emotional deficiencies in some way. This movie probably emphasized the fact that Margaret is nothing more than a prize by using her downfall as a counterpoint to Ryan Reynold's success because he is a Hard Worker and she treated him like shit and didn't recognize him, and he is a Good Person who is family-oriented, and she's a giant bitch, but he brings her down a peg so that's good.

I was so throughly bothered by so many things in this movie mostly because this is something that positions itself as a romantic comedy but is largely critical of women and women in charge in general. It's all about how Ryan Reynolds' character never got the accolades that he deserved, despite slaving away in a position that emasculated him (there are three jokes alone about how, because of her tendency to blow up at him for small shit, he orders her light cinnamon soy latte which is not Manly Coffee), but this finally gives him the opportunity to Show Her What Her Place Is, Get What He Deserves, and yeah, also something about love.

On top of that, this movie is not subtle at all about the racism. You have Oscar from The Office playing a Latino man who's basically a caricature, insinuated to be an illegal immigrant, and speaks with an accent. On top of that, every time Margaret is in front of US Immigration officials, her answers are basically well, it's not like i'm brown or anything, i'm from Canada! Which is always fun.

That aside, writer apparently didn't do his research because the law doesn't even work like that anymore. I think in order for the marriage to qualify you for citizenship, it has to have been for a minimum duration of five years. (It's been a while since I've looked at US Immigration rules, like five years or so, but still. If anything, they'd be more stringent now.) But that's a small point.

What I find most egregious is that this movie offers the literal bare minimum when it comes to the work it has to do. There's no explanation for why they think they love each other, especially when (in context) this comes after three years of unrepentant, uninterrupted abuse. like…? And then, I have no understanding of who Margaret is as a person, why she does anything that she does, and why she's in love with him. In fact, the only thing I do know is that she's actually more in love with his family than with him which is the only thing in the film that offers a concrete explanation of anything, but makes the relationship appear even more sleazy than it's set up to be in the narrative!

Low points included: someone in the office shouting show her who's boss! in response to the final make-out in the movie; a confession scene that was in front of the entire office that was just embarrassing; and Ryan Reynolds making her propose in the middle of the day by making her kneel on a NYC sidewalk block when she's wearing a skirt and four inch heels and asking him nicely.

Lord save us from these movies.

[karenvstheromcom]

I am adoring your analysis! And I hope you will dissect my favorite movie of all time, "While You Were Sleeping." I love it so unabashedly (it's a love story about a family, I think), and I'm curious to see where it falls on your scale. Thank you for your humor!

thank you so much! it is definitely on the list - a lot of people love while you were sleeping - but it probably won't be gotten to for a few months? :( sorry for the wait

and hey, man, i think you should love everything you love unabashedly! love is not something you should hide from the world, esp. enthusiastic love for cute things!!! that is just my personal philosophy anyway

and thank you for reading :)

[karenvstheromcom]

#17: Populaire (2012)

RATING: 5 ephrons Written by: Daniel Presley, Régis Roinsard, Romain Comping

I'm putting this on the romcom blog because I'm enmeshed in too much emotional devastation and need to share what I thought about this movie. Okay, so to give a picture, the first thought I had - in the middle of the movie - was that I need to own this movie? It needs to join my tiny collection of DVDs ASAP.

First of all, this movie does pastiche right. The aesthetics of it make the film feel like one from the time period they're going for but it never gets kitschy or hokey, and it never dominates the objective of the film's narrative. Sometimes I think people can get really caught up in making something appear really similar in tone and style to what they're going for and then completely sacrifice narrative for that. But that doesn't happen here. (Also: this never impacts things like their treatment of the relationship which is so important. Sometimes a movie that's set in a time period that has already gone which had different social morals than the ones in the era the movie is coming out in will make these sort of little snide asides about how straitlaced or repressed or what-have-you things were back then and this movie never does that??? We will get there, friends, don't worry!)

This movie is Rose's story through and through. We start by seeing how sheltered she is and how curious and ambitious she is, and how she funnels all of that into her typing. And that's how she gets the position as Louis's secretary. She's also - in typical romcom heroine fashion - a total klutz outside of this singular talent, but she's engaging and feisty. She refuses to kowtow to her father's wishes for her to marry someone else in the village and settle down. There's also this running theme about happiness in the film and about finding your joy, basically.

GOD, OKAY, NOTHING IN THIS MOVIE IS OKAY. So there's this whole ruse that happens because after hiring her for her unique typing talent, Louis asks her to move into his house with him because he wants to enter her in a competition. As a perennial second-bester in everything, he has a complex about winning. While he's been an athlete, he's never been a champion and he has issues with his dad about it and it's all very serious typical romcom stuff.

But this movie doesn't fall into any kind of typical pitfalls about needing to sacrifice ambition for love or anything like that. Unlike other French films that have ruined me, both of them still remain alive and unscathed at the end. But, again, I return to the fact that this is Rose's story. Everything that happens is oriented through her perspective until about the third act when it becomes much more important to witness Louis's emotional growth, as inspired by Rose's presence. So obviously, part of this is that while she lives in his house and while he trains her to become a better typist, they start to catch feelings for each other.

The more successful she becomes though, and the more intense their UST (which it becomes intense, my friends, I'm pretty sure I spent a bulk amount of time of this movie watching from underneath a blanket and squealing), the more it becomes clear that he's the one that carries all of the restraint. And that's explained narratively because in WWII, he believes himself to be a coward because when he and his troop were heading back to rendezvous with, I guess, the rest of the military outfit, they were ambushed and he watched his friends die and turned tail and ran. And so he's consigned himself to this position of support, where he helps other people achieve their successes, but doesn't believe that he is enough to make them happy. Both because he's never been successful and because, you know, he carries around this self loathing.

So this reaches fruition when they head to the French national speed typing competition and things come to a head and they sleep together. (YO IT'S A LOT. GOD BLESS THE FRENCH, VIVA LA FRANCE, EVERYTHING IS A LOT. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I SAID I WANTED A COMPREHENSIVE SEX SCENE TO ACCOMPANY ALL THE EMOTIONAL JOY AND TURMOIL OF A ROMCOM? HOW MANY???????? AND GUESS WHAT THIS MOVIE DOES. YEAH EVERYTHING IS A LOT. It's also in the aftermath of this competition that she admits that she loves him. YEAH. I KNOW. Meanwhile, a typewriter corporation, who had been sponsoring the previous French speed-typing champion, approaches him and tells him that he's not going to be able to push her to the competitive heights that she needs to go in order to win the International competition. This plays on every insecurity that he has and he decides to do the Greater Good and give her up even though he's in love with her so that she can make it big and achieve her dream and escape the small town village from which she came. (G U Y S.)

This turns into an enormous fight where she tells him that she loves him and he says that he used her for sex because he knew that she had feelings for him and that that was what they needed to get her to win. He's pretty win-focused. And everything is sad and she goes and joins the typewriter corporation and bags all these sponsorships and does these commercials and becomes a national celebrity. (There's like a minor point about how he becomes even more of an asshole after this because his heart is broken and he pins one of her magazine covers to the wall of the bedroom in which she stayed in his enormous house and everything hurts.)

I should also say that there's a scene in the movie when, in an attempt to stave off their insane amounts of sexual tension, he tells her that they need a break and that she should go back to the village and spend Christmas with her father. And instead she ends up calling his best friend's wife who then drives her up to his family's house and tells his entire family that she's his fiancee. YEAH, THAT HAPPENS. And then there's a tense scene at the dinner table when his family is being the most in terms of dragging him down and making him feel awful and she defends him and basically gets super wasted and they hold hands.

Sorry. None of this is actually commentary. It's just me shouting about things. This movie hits everything I want in a romcom. It was sweet, it was funny, it was romantic as shit. I melted on the sofa from the force of all of the things that were happening, and I never felt like I was being emotionally manipulated on purpose except for the scene where he broke up with her for her own good and I always feel emotionally manipulated in scenes like that so I guess it's okay. Their relationship is a slow burn and then it fucking explodes in every possible way. There's arguing, there's kissing, there's sex, there's like unrequited love eyes that they make at each other. A LOT OF YEARNING. A LOT OF YEARNING. And then on top of it all, when you look at the progression of the narrative, it's ultimately about two people who have spent their entire lives being told that they are not enough to make others in their life happy, and that they, in turn, do not deserve that kind of happiness because they have failed others. And they find each other and they fail each other - and this is very, very big, like he fails her in a huge way - and then they come back together and they make up for it.

Like this movie is a lot about how finding your joy doesn't necessarily mean throwing away everything, and that sometimes you just have to live for yourself and know that that's the right option for you and that everything else will follow after. She does the typing thing for herself, which he turns into a competitive sport thing for her, but it's initially her hobby and it's what gets her town, her strict former-hostel-manager, her father invested in her again; for him, that relationship is for himself and he finally allows himself to go back at the end and have the thing that makes him happy and know that sometimes you have to throw your fear to the wind.

The narrative here is basically that he's been afraid to live his life because he's afraid of failing people the way that he failed his friends in the war, and she's the thing that brings him around to the fact that failure's a part of life, and trying to avoid it forever and always just makes for a miserable, restricted life. The end kiss happens right before the reveal that she won Worlds -- oops, spoilers, but come on -- but we all knew that she was going to win anyway, because it didn't matter if she won, because they found love. You find self-actualization, and then the love comes, and then all of the other accolades. And in this movie, it doesn't matter that she won the accolades (although we, as audience, would have probably booed had she not, so come on, let's cheer for the fact that she got it), because she's already won what she was chasing for the entire time.

On top of that, everything is impeccably filmed and gorgeous. The costuming is beautiful; the music is really cute. I honestly didn't really have anything that turned me off the movie at all (it was kind of made for me?). Like I didn't really feel its length like other people have criticized (I think you needed it for prime emotional resolution); I didn't really find him too dickish to be a romantic lead (it's meant to be pastiche, and the romantic heroes of the era were hardly progressive and perfect; the scene with the slapping back and forth felt totally in tune with the kind of comedy of the era; and part of his dickishness, especially after the break-up, is a sublimation of his own self-loathing and emotional pain which is absolutely a romantic trope so); and yeah. Some critics complained that it didn't tell us anything new or do anything innovative in its storytelling, in which case I say, who cares. Get out.

On a purely shallow note, it's just so emotionally well-done from start to finish. It builds you up, and then it handles the coupling and the subsequent break-up and complications so well. Like you understand the complications and you get why the break-up is necessary and it doesn't just feel perfunctory for the sake of plot like it does in other romance movies. And then the resolution feels natural as well, in part because he goes around being a dick and she goes around trying to look happy and not being happy, and it takes them so long to work their way back to each other.

HA HA HA A A A A the confession scene here is also fucking PERFECT. It's backstage at worlds; there's a gag where all the other girls from other countries translate what he says into their languages. And it's the simplest confession speech of all time but it's what she's been waiting to hear the entire time which is essentially that he loves her just for who she is and that, win or lose, he'll still love her and nothing will change that. And that, then, is coupled with the fact that she changes her corporate sponsored typewriter for the one she first learned how to type on and goes on to absolutely smoke the competitor. (An American, of course.) Afterward, as they tabulate the scores, he comes out and he kisses her and everyone is dying, the scene is so tense, WHO WON WHO COULD IT HAVE BEEN but it doesn't matter because these two attractive people are still just making out on stage.

What an incredible movie. GOD. I may or may not have put it on again just to write this post. I may or may not finish it again.

[karenvstheromcom]

why romcoms are not a dead genre and why people who tell you that are wrong

i've been thinking on this recently because everyone and their mother is running around like chicken little screaming that the sky is falling and that there is no longer any need to keep around romantic comedy as a genre in this culture of meaningless premarital sex and divorce and i'm here to tell you that that's a lie and that i think it actually erases a lot of what makes the romantic comedy great.

first rule: do not listen to the bros. thou shalt not listen to the bros that tell you that romantic comedy is anachronistic and irrelevant because, as in all other matters, they are very, very wrong.

romantic comedy, as a genre, is exclusively interested in the domestic and the personal. it has to be, right? it is, after all, the genre relegated for women and their everyday concerns. but i think that beyond that, what the genre concerns itself with is largely love. and not the narrow definition of love that most people think the genre concerns itself with. it is not just romantic/sexual love. it extends also to the platonic and the familial.

romantic comedy concerns itself with relationships and people take this to mean that its focus must always be on the courtship-and-marriage aspect of it because that's what eats up a lot of the plot development. and i'm not saying that that's not there - it definitely is - but i think that ignores another side to this genre that's so integral to understanding it. which is largely that it also deals (often) with the position of the protagonist within the structure of their own families and about reconciling the people that they are/become with the kinds of roots that held them in place for so long.

think about it. bridget jones talks about it explicitly - "just as one part of your life is coming together, another part must be falling apart" - and the breakdown and consequent recovery of colin/pamela mirrors the buildup/breakdown/buildup of bridget's various romantic entanglements; sweet home alabama, moonstruck, my big fat greek wedding, bend it like beckham, hope floats, etc. are just as much about the woman learning to love the family that embarrassed her, the family that she tried to run away from just as much as it is about how she learned to love this new person in her life. even sleepless in seattle and you've got mail are about the absence of family and the way that impacts the protagonist's/lead's life. and even the more urban romantic comedies, the modern ones have these friend-centric groups that stand in for the structure of the family

which leads me to this: my running idea here is that the romantic comedy is not just a bottleneck for trite, sentimental fare, but about taking the idea of the domestic (courtship) drama and bringing that to film and shining an optimistic light on it.

so if you look at it like that, then the romantic comedy becomes a vehicle for women to address conflicts in the only narrative avenues they are lent space to address conflicts: the space of the home, or at least, the domestic sphere. you get mothers who are mediating matches or arguments between family members, you get the struggle between mothers and daughters who disagree about the direction of where said daughter's life should be going, you get the zaniness of the love interest meeting the family by accident or in the wrong way.

and it's just as much about platonic friendship. (for one thing, my best friend's wedding exists, i guess.) it's about seeking guidance from these people in your life who may be just as clueless as you are but love you enough to propel you through it. and think about it. when people think romcom chick flick, they think of the scenes post-breakup in-film where the girl is sitting around with her friends weeping wastefully into tubs of perfectly good ice cream. but let's not forget that those groups of friends serve a purpose. in the zany wacky up-is-down cats-and-dogs-living-together world of the romantic comedy, friends remain the unchanging fixture of sanity. the kind of straight-man group to the wacky family (think reese witherspoon's city friends coming down and clashing w/ the wacky southern family, or kathleen kelly's friends at the bookstore) unless of course they are the wacky family (like in four weddings and a funeral).

so when people show up and they talk about how romantic comedies are about outmoded social ideals, i get really mad because they're not, actually. they're an interesting bubble in that a) mainstream hollywood is looking to reflect mainstream ideals in an attempt to market the fare correctly to you and because stories are girded by really familiar messages and parables that they want you to walk away from the film from because you will both understand it and enjoy it; but b) hollywood also knows that you aren't going to go see a movie that is about something that does not reflect the attitude of the times. there's a reason most of the '90s romcoms faded to black and there's a reason why there's a lot of 'racy' sex scenes in romcoms now, or, at least, more than there used to be. and it's because the reality of the times is that people are a) having sex before marriage, b) really open about enjoying sex, and c) don't believe in the prospect of marriage as a final happy ending always.

i'm legitimately surprised no one's pitched a romcom about a lady sex columnist yet who gets taken in by some rogue's letters to penthouse.

romantic comedy is kind of like a mobius strip. it's got to see where it came from and keep going, but twist it in a way that it seems to address the times and seem original. if all of a sudden we decided that we weren't going to have sex anymore and just lock ourselves into pods and idk masturbate for the rest of our lives, somehow i'm sure that hollywood would come around to embracing that and coupling that with the idea of romantic love, as we know it.

i think of all the genres, romantic comedy is going to be one that survives for a long time because you're never going to run out of material. people's sex lives and sordid romantic dramas are always fascinating - how do we think the tabloids have made a living? - and the problem with small (or large) communities is that everyone ultimately becomes involved in these kinds of things bc people are nosy. people are always going to have a personal engagement with other human beings in relationships, people are always going to struggle with relationships (esp. in a society that privileges male voices over women's and pathologizes female aggression and assertion and behavior in general) so it's always going to have something to riff off of.

i think ultimately what the dudebro culture at large is reacting to here is the idea that in these narratives, they are nothing more than gift horses and prizes to be won; that in these narratives, it is sadly not about you and it is about the narrative of the grand gesture. so when dudes step up and say stuff like "oh this is why girls have unrealistic expectations of relationships" like we don't know how to differentiate between story and reality, or "this is a sexist stupid genre and girls should know better than to buy into it", what's really happening here is that women are becoming invested in a genre that really has little to no care whatsoever about serving your narrative priorities or interests, and focuses on the internal in every respect. the emotional, the mental, the quiet, the reserved, the domestic, the personal, and fights for it and makes you the buffoon, makes you the eye candy, etc. etc.

and besides, i don't know what people mean when they say cheesy anyway. like action movies aren't cheesy? like horror movies can't be cheesy? like romcoms have a definite unilateral 'dibs' on cheesiness? then i guess we can all forget that sahara ever existed.

there's a difference between expressing personal distaste for a genre and saying that it has no merit, and people have been doing the latter for like 30 years now and i'm tired of it.

go home, man.

[karenvstheromcom]

#16: Pretty in Pink (1986)

Written by John Hughes RATING: 4 ephrons SYNOPSIS: Andie Walsh (Molly Ringwald) is a teenager who lives in the dingy part of town with her terminally underemployed dad (Harry Dean Stanton). She works at a record store with eccentric Iona (Annie Potts) and is considered a misfit at her uppity high school, but somehow she rises above them all. Her oddball best friend, Duckie (Jon Cryer), is hopelessly in love with her, so he causes trouble for her romantic pursuits. When local rich kid Blaine (Andrew McCarthy) develops a fascination with her, they go out on a date together. Visiting the home bases of each social clique, they are basically ridiculed for their audacity to date one another. When Blaine eventually asks the delighted Andie to the prom, he is threatened by his rich friend Steff (James Spader). The romance versus high school social politics finally culminates at the big night of the prom. Source.

Let me start off by saying that I did not anticipate enjoying this movie as much as I did. Let me also start off by confessing that this was the second real John Hughes movie I've seen since I've mostly only seen Ferris Bueller like a lot. Let me also add that the racism of Sixteen Candles is so burned into my mind that I generally avoided watching the Molly Ringwald Brat Pack movies out of some kind of association thing, despite the fact that I think I generally on the whole enjoy John Hughes, which is a conclusion I extrapolated out of how much I enjoyed Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Okay.

Very clearly this movie is Cinderella. All of us know that, right? If not, yeah, this movie is basically Cinderella for the high school crowd. But what a Cinderella!

Like I said I was not expecting to like this movie as much as I did, and I was floored by so much of it. If a romcom's strengths are its emphases on women and their insecurities, then the teen romcom has all of that to deal with along with the general suckitude that accompanies with addressing the problems and struggles of adolescence. And this movie handled that all so well. Andie. Andie, Andie, Andie, my princess - she was incredible. I think she was imbued with enough general niceness and insecurity to make her an easily relatable vessel for your normal everyday teenage dame moviegoer, but there was so much I loved about her characterization. She was also endowed with an incredible strength and determination and pride about the kind of person that she was and the kind of place that she grew out of. Like, she was very much not ashamed of her roots and that showed. And that scene when she shows up at the prom determined to show these people how little she cares about what they think and about what her peers think of her in general is like, god, it floors me. She stands there and Hughes has that long shot so you can see her as this tiny isolated figure in the middle of the hallway, and then, in comes Duckie from the top of the stairs, to rescue her from her insecurity and let her do what she needs to do.

But yeah, let's talk about Duckie. Let's talk about that and the love triangle since love triangles are en vogue nowadays and nobody seems to know how to handle them well anymore, especially with respect to teen romance-related franchises. So, as we are all well aware, John Hughes is very much part of the American pop culture framework and very, very important within that framework. So let me preface this by saying that in high school, I clearly knew who the character of Duckie was, despite never having seen the film. And despite never having seen the film, and because I was the kind of person that I was in high school, I thought that Duckie/Andie would be the kind of ship that I would go for. Which… in retrospect, it's obviously built to be kind of a Nice Guy set-up.

Except that it's not. It could be, but it's not. Which isn't to say that Duckie doesn't have his supreme asshole moments. He does. But his narrative is very much one about friendship and unrequited love. He loves Andie, but he doesn't know how to tell her; he loves Andie but he's terrified that she doesn't reciprocate so he doesn't tell her; and then, when he discovers that she's seeing someone else because she cancels on him, it begins to feel like this enormous betrayal. So he throws a tantrum - she refers to it as sulking at one point and that's totally the accurate term - and he tries to get back at her by putting the moves on her stand-in mother figure who is Cool Adult Annie Potts, who is actually incredibly attractive in this movie, only to find out that it doesn't matter. And he comes back in the end and he DOES THE MATURE THING! GUYS, HE GROWS AS A PERSON. He shows up at the prom and rescues her and makes sure that she can walk into the prom because they're buddies, they're pals, and he's always going to be there for her, and then, when Andrew McCarthy - Blane, oh, that's a major appliance, that's not a name! - shows up again, he knows that that's what she wants to do and he is adult enough to tell her to walk away and go after what she really wants and loves. And he gets to walk off with Kristy Swanson at the end! SO! A narrative about a dude who is in unrequited love with a girl best friend who, at the end of the day, values her friendship and lets her date whoever the fuck she wants to. Go on with your bad self, John Hughes.

So let's talk Andrew McCarthy. Maaaaaaaaan, Andrew McCarthy. I totally get it now. He has the cutest, presh-est little face and just such beautiful eyes. He's a dreamboat. Who can help themselves? And here, he's pretty literally playing Prince Charming. Who swans in with his expensive car and his suits and his dumb charming smile and does things like break the class barrier by dating outside of it. He's just really cute. I have nothing to add here. I wasn't expecting to like him so much, but he's like, really, tremendously cute.

Fig. 1: Look how cute.

At the end of it, though, I also think this movie was tackling some pretty relevant and pretty hard issues for a fluffy teen romcom. And by hard, I mean, idk, politically relevant. Which is to say: class. Obviously every Cinderella myth is about the rags-to-riches kind of thing, but this movie kind of tackles that head on. Because Andie doesn't necessarily marry out of her own tax bracket because they're in high school, hello. But what does happen is that she fights to be accepted, and she wins. Not by the rich kid clique, obviously, but by the one kid that matters. She never has to sacrifice the kind of person that she thinks she is, and rich Prince Charming gets to tell his asshole rich friends off because he likes her, regardless of how ~tacky or ~~~classless~~~ they think she is. I mean, it's nothing groundbreaking, but it's still great to see. Fight for us lesser wage earners, Andrew McCarthy. Keep on keeping on.

To be honest, I didn't really have any incredible problems with it that would be cause for a huge downgrade. It was actually really great. It was charming without being cloying; it was sentimental without being cliche; and it was all about teenage angst and self-discovery in a way that didn't turn out to be overly self-indulgent. The adults were kind of messes in the way that adults in teenage movies always are, but they were believable messes. Annie Potts was super fantastic, and the dad was kind of a wreck but it really was there to characterize Andie as the kind of take-charge, in-control, ordered girl that she really was.

The only thing was that I did not completely like 100% fall head over heels in love with the prom dress, which I think I was supposed to be floored by. I mean, the movie is called Pretty in Pink for god's sake, am I not supposed to be floored by the dress? It was '80s, and I'm fine with that, but idk, the shape was just kind of weird??? For those of you who haven't seen it, it looks like this: Some of you might disagree but, idk, it's just… I like it from some angles and from other angles, it is just not flattering at all.

Also, the kissing between Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald sometimes came off as like awkward teenage kissing, and just awkward head-knocking-together-ness, which sometimes I thought was supposed to be the narrative point and other times, I was like, this is just an awkwardly filmed scene. But whatever, the first kissing scene was incredible. Music was playing, she kissed him and there was a close-up shot of his hand on her back. It was great.

Man, this movie was just so delightfully squishy and gooey in the best way. Granted, it's like 5 am right now so I might not be thinking coherently - I made a dumb text post about this on my personal blog and thought I was watching Sixteen Candles and then was like isn't that the one with Long Duk Dong and the racism? and then remembered that no, this is the one about the prom, so, there you go.

This is the kind of romcom this blog was made for. Gooey and warm, a little cheesy, but with so much heart that it sings. Ugh, man, fucking John Hughes. Doesn't always get me, but when he does, he gets me like a lot. Right in the heart place.

[karenvstheromcom]

#15: Down with Love (2003)

RATING: 2.75 ephrons

SYNOPSIS: Barbara Novak (Renée Zellweger) is a sweet but savvy small-town librarian who has arrived in New York City with big plans to take on the town. Embracing a feminist philosophy years before it becomes common or fashionable, Novak writes a book called "Down With Love," in which she presents her theory that romantic relationships cause more problems than they solve for women, and urges women to focus instead on what will truly make them happy -- self-reliance, a solid career, and a healthy sex life (or chocolate if the latter is unavailable at the moment). Almost overnight, "Down With Love" becomes a minor scandal and a major bestseller, but not every man is America is happy with the new breed of liberated (and demanding) women spawned by the book's success, and Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor), a lady-killing bachelor who writes for Know Magazine, decides to put Novak to the test. Posing as a shy, retiring type, Block is determined to make Novak fall in love with him, and then share the details with the world through an article in Know. Block's editor Peter MacMannus (David Hyde-Pierce) thinks this is a splendid idea, but to Block's distress, he discovers himself developing real feelings for Novak. Source.

  Okay, kids, let's talk about sex comedy. No, not that kind of sex. Well, sort of.

I kind of don't know where to begin with this movie. After I watched it for the first time, Michele asked me what I would rate it and it's hard because let me iterate that I loved this movie, like a lot. Let me iterate that this is what all pastiche/homage movies aimed at the classic Hollywood era should act like. (You could feel how much they loved the genre they were riffing, and yes, let's have more of that instead of OOH SO PRETTY BUT OH NO NOT RESEARCH!!!!) But. But. As a rom-com, I don't know that it merits a higher rating on the Ephron scale than I gave it. We're going to get into this, and the historical progression of romantic comedy, guys, so hold onto your hats.

I think this movie hits a lot of good progressive beats, and I think this movie, in trying to stay true to the form, is pretty conservative overall. My biggest problem with this is that it's hard to read Barbara as a protagonist. We, of course, side with her because she's the hero of the piece. We side with her in the initial battle of the sexes kind of situation because he's being duplicitous and deceitful and has dishonorable intentions in trying to rope her as a partner (namely: to ruin her career and her name). And then this all turns on its head when we find out that she's been trying to get him all along and knew that this would be too much for him to resist, only to have the twist later on be that she's bought into her own philosophy. She's just pretty flat. I'm also like 85% sure that this entire movie is modeled on Sex and the Single Girl (1964) with Natalie Wood, but her character actually bought into her own philosophy from the beginning.

To be fair, Catcher's also not really much of a person but that's par for the course for the genre. To be honest, there's no real message behind the movie. Which is fine. But the narrative is kind of self-propelling to the point of matrimony and that's it. In the other sex comedy movies that I have seen, obviously everything works towards a clean conclusion but the point is also about women trying to balance new social and sexual mores with the prevailing social norms and about trying to juggle professional and personal lives, especially since professional women were very much in violation of this new picture of the '50s nuclear family. Blah blah sexual revolution blah. But this movie is from 2003, so what we're doing is laughing at the outdated sexual conventions of the '60s rather than having a frank discussion on what the expectations are and what they mean for women across the board.

Now, there is a lot that this movie gets right. The pastiche, the movie gets so, so, so right from the very beginning with the credits and the CinemaScope icon to the outfits and the general aesthetic. But what this movie really lands for me is that it manages to show the connection between screwball and this - the sex comedy - and the romantic comedy. In that terrible book I read not too long ago, she drafts the romcom timeline as being in that order and I think this movie really shows that the sex comedy is a fairly direct inheritor of screwball. And this movie gets those aspects right. There's a scene where David Hyde Pierce and Sarah Paulson struggle with Catcher's super chic, super techy bachelor pad and she gets caught underneath the murphy bed in the sofa that's hysterical.

Again, it's hard for me to rate a romcom high where you don't really root for the couple to get together and stay together. So much of the '60s sex comedies are really about sexual attraction and this movie plays this up to the nines, but it's hard to buy any kind of longstanding change in Catcher given what we see of him, so I buy that they're together and have really great sex but I don't think that the marriage is going to last very long. Which is a byproduct of the fact that this movie is out to engage with the morals of a particular time period rather than tell a distinct story. But if I had to rate this movie on its movie-ness, it would get 5 stars.

So let's talk history.

One of the reasons I find this genre to be so engaging is that it grapples with changing social attitudes. It needs to, because its stories are predominantly concerned with monogamous courtship (although not necessarily courtship that results in marriage any longer). So if social attitudes towards relationships change, then the genre needs to in order to still speak to its audience.

So screwball has its roots in sort of delivering this notion of rhetorical foreplay, right? You can't show the couple having sex, and they themselves can't have sex until they're married, so foreplay becomes this exchange of snappy rhetorical barbs. Then you have the sex comedy, which comes about because women begin entering the workforce in even larger numbers than before and this is in itself a reaction to the popularized notion of the nuclear family that emerges in the 1950s, and it's all about how women are no longer considering only marriage as their option for the future. So this becomes about the madness of finding a partner in a changing social climate where women are given the freedom and option to choose, but still need to find some kind of commitment. So you have these movies that begin to address the kind of revolving door type scenarios that occur when everyone is gadding around with multiple partners. This continues through to the '70s when conservatism and pushback against this idea in the '80s leads to the neo-romantic-comedy in the '90s. I hate that term, but that's what the book called out and for lack of a better one, it's what I'm using.

So to be honest, I think what this movie helped elucidate for me and what I got excited about the most - beyond its love for its parent - is the progression of the genre, I think. So I started thinking about all these movies that came out in the past ten years or so, the Friends with Benefits, the No Strings Attached, kind of thing where we're again grappling with changing social conventions where it comes to sex and coupling and I started wondering if this was a new trend. A new kind of sex comedy that's resisting against the staid morals of the '90s.

I don't know, but that's my running theory and I'm excited to get there to see if I'm kind of sort of right.