BEFORE: It's Super Bowl Sunday, and it's tempting to switch gears and watch a film like "Black Sunday" or even "Semi-Tough". But I spent so much time drawing up the February schedule, I'd hate to undo it. I will have a sports wrap-up sometime this year, lumping a couple baseball, football, and basketball films together, plus "Invictus" and "Bend It Like Beckham". There's got to be some commonality between them, I figure.
Linking from "Lars and the Real Girl", Emily Mortimer was in last year's film "Our Idiot Brother" with Paul Rudd, who had an uncredited role in "Year One", along with Michael Cera (last seen in "Year One"), who headlines tonight.
TCM Roadtrip, Day 5: Another day of England-themed films - I'm going to pick up two Errol Flynn films today, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "The Sea Hawk". Since I've got a few pirate-themed films on the list, and a couple versions of "Robin Hood" already, I figure I might as well go for it. This means I'm going to pass on "Camelot", "The Entertainer", "Far From the Madding Crowd" and "The Lavender Hill Mob". Also screening today is "The Ladykillers", which I watched last April. The list stands at 265 films, which is where it's been for the past few weeks.
THE PLOT: While his trailer trash parents teeter on the edge of divorce, Nick Twisp sets his sights on dream girl Sheeni Saunders, hoping that she'll be the one to take away his virginity.
AFTER: Speaking of commonality, sometimes I'll program a week of films on a particular theme (romance, in this case) and find that they all have something else unexpected in common. In this case, it's characters with psychological problems. We had an egotistical entitled prince in "The Princess and the Frog", a sheltered princess in "Rapunzel", Lars and his mannequin girlfriend last night, and tonight the main character creates an alter ego. OK, so it's not really a split personality - just a split screen - but it's another case where a young man clearly has some issues to work out, and he chooses to do that through his dark side persona, Francois.
While at first it seems outrageous, when I think back on the trouble I had dating women in college, it makes a crazy kind of sense. I talked up girls who said they wanted to date nice guys, and I figured, well, I'm a nice guy, so here's my chance. Only to find they already had a boyfriend, or were about to start dating some jerk the next day. So what they really meant was, they just didn't want to date ME.
I wondered what was wrong with me - what made the girls choose the bad boys over the quiet ones? Did they just want guys with more experience? And if they wouldn't date me, how was I ever going to gain this experience and become dateable? Logic seemed to dictate that one must act like a jerk in order to get laid - however, I had a feeling that this logic may have been faulty. But that's the path that Nick follows in this film to gain a girl's attention. Here it leads to a lot of awkward situations where Cera ends up in his underwear.
It's clearly meant to show the lengths that a horny teen boy will go to for the love of a girl, or at least some action - but when running from the police and living your life as an outlaw seems to be your best option, it means that something has gone very wrong with your plan.
This came across as a spin on "Superbad", mixed with a sort of low-rent version of "Fight Club". I feel sorry for Michael Cera, who's now 22 but still probably getting offered roles as a high-schooler. About a decade ago Justin Long was the go-to for this sort of thing, but I think he kind of aged out of the program, and Cera picked up the torch.
Also starring Portia Doubleday, Jean Smart, Steve Buscemi (last seen in "The Messenger"), Zach Galifianakis (last heard in "Puss in Boots"), Ray Liotta (last heard in "Bee Movie"), Fred Willard (last heard in "WALL-E"), Justin Long (last seen in "Happy Campers"), M. Emmet Walsh (last seen in "A Time To Kill") and Mary Kay Place.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Sinatra records
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