BEFORE: With apologies to Colbert, tonight I'm going to play "Tip of the Hat / Wag of the Finger". First off, a Tip of the Hat to Turner Classic Movies, who's kept me readily supplied with material all this time. I merely have to say "Hey, maybe I should watch the Marx Brothers films" and only two months later, they run a marathon of 6 films, which gets me most of the way there. Will they run "Duck Soup" some time in the next 3 months? Probably, they're good like that. And the choice of Cary Grant as the December Star of the Month shows that they've got great taste, and someone over there in programming clearly thinks like I do - why watch 1 Cary Grant film when you can watch 20 or 30 of them in a row, and gain further insight into what his acting was all about?
But tonight I also send out a Wag of My Finger - to Turner Classic Movies, for slowing me down and making it impossible to make any progress in shrinking my list. Adding 6 films a day to the list when I can only watch one in that timeframe is not helpful, especially when their "31 Days of Oscar" marathon is coming up in February, and always features stuff I need. They're also starting to run films written by Neil Simon on Friday nights, which means I can grab the original "Out of Towners" with Jack Lemmon, and if I'm getting that one, I might as well also check out "The Prisoner of 2nd Avenue". Heck, if they're running the original "Heartbreak Kid" and "Goodbye Girl" films that could make a good pairing, and hey, I didn't know Simon also wrote "The Cheap Detective", which I accidentally caught some of two months ago, and it looked very funny.
At least now I'm not buried in incoming Cary Grant films any more - wait, who's the featured Star of the Month for January? Robert Redford? God damn it. That'll be another 6 films right there, I know it....
Meryl Streep carries over from "Into the Woods".
THE PLOT: After thirty years of marriage, a middle-aged couple attends an intense, week-long counseling session to work on their relationship.
AFTER: This is the year that I have to make some terrible decisions, if I'm going to wrap this process up in a definitive way. What happens when a film falls into more than one category, where does it go in the chain? I usually put relationship films in February, so is this a relationship film or a Meryl Streep film? Since I happened to have one extra relationship-y film, my choice this time was easy, but tougher choices lay on the horizon. Is "Charade" a Cary Grant film or an Audrey Hepburn film? Do I need to move my Hepburn films next to my Cary Grant chain so it counts as both?
I had another Tommy Lee Jones film on the list, and I had to separate this one from it when I flipped part of the list around. I can already see a lot of this happening, by programming thematically one Bruce Willis film has been separated from the rest, and ditto for a loose Harrison Ford film, which is sure to drive me crazy. Now that some madness has been injected into the method, I won't rest easy until I know that as many of the remaining films link to each other as possible.
Anyway, let's get this over with. They really should have put a warning on this film - if they can have warnings that kids shouldn't watch movies with adult material, they should also have a different warning for adults that a film's going to feature old people talking about sex and worse, maybe doing it. Rated "M" for "Mature Sex". Yeah, I get it, more Americans are living into their golden years, they have rights too, they lead active lives - but I shouldn't have to watch them do it. What if I was trying to eat or something?
I favor the portrayal of the husband as an aging curmudgeon - I look forward to my 50's so I can act curmudgeonly too, finally with good reason. But it's sad that this film has to fall back on so many tropes that should be seen as outdated by now. Men are bullies, women are doormats. Women are more likely to talk about their feelings, while men pretend they don't have any. Men take their wives for granted, while women cook eggs and bacon every morning. Men have orgasms, and women don't even think to ask for them. Give me a break. Of course this couple needs therapy, because they're fabricated to be blank test subjects straight out of a self-help book.
And since they have no therapists in their hometown (which is, where, exactly?) they have to fly to Maine (to one of those quaint towns where everyone seems to know each other's business) and spend thousands on an encounter weekend just to create an environment where they can talk about their sex lives. (Again, eww...) This leads to a lot of therapist-speak, like having to break the relationship before it can be fixed, tearing down the walls so we can rebuild them with trust, blah blah blah. If you came here looking for some hot Meryl Streep action, boy did you come to the wrong place. And why were you looking for that in the first place? Let's discuss that.
Look, I figured some things out when I was a kid. My grandparents slept in separate rooms, but even though the relationship wasn't working on one level, they stayed together, so you just have to wonder if that was only natural, for them. You can't paint every relationship with the same brush, each one finds it own rhythm, or it doesn't and it ceases to exist. And I don't know what's weirder, learning that my grandparents didn't sleep together, or knowing that my parents still do. Yeah.
I'm sure therapy/counseling helps a lot of people, but in my experience, it contributed toward ending a marriage rather than saving it. Sure, there were other factors involved, and in the end we were happier (first more miserable, though) but it's just too simple to show only the breakthroughs and benefits. The reality is that therapy has its complex ups and downs, just like anything else. And if someone's needs aren't being met, they shouldn't need a medical professional in the room to be able to express themselves. Why wasn't the husband's bullying nature and outdated 1950's outlook addressed by the therapy? That to me seemed like the larger issue.
That, and why the wife was trying to kill her husband slowly with all the cholesterol from the eggs and bacon every morning. Forget Viagra, this guy needs some Plavix. Did the therapist even check to see if these old-timers were even healthy enough to have sex? That seems like a glaring, ill-advised course of action.
Also starring Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Coal Miner's Daughter"), Steve Carell (last seen in "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone"), Jean Smart, Ben Rappaport, Marin Ireland, with cameos from Elisabeth Shue (last seen in "Cocktail"), Mimi Rogers (last seen in "Lost in Space").
RATING: 3 out of 10 bananas
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