BEFORE: My sleeping schedule is now completely shot - the cold has subsided, and as a result I slept on Sunday from 5 am to 3 pm. That's some championship sleeping, and that was on top of all the sleeping I did while I was sick. I had some very vivid dreams, and I remembered them, which I don't often do. In the final one I was in a Chinese buffet restaurant with cafeteria-style service and trays, and right after getting my tray, I was given a free cup of beer. So far so good, right? But as I worked my way down the line, the people already seated in the restaurant would get up, jump into the line to get small plates of food and then return to their seats, while I was trying to move my tray down the line in a less chaotic fashion, so I could see all of the available food choices. But I kept losing track of my tray, or I would leave it on a part of the serving line that wasn't sloped properly, and it would fall off. This meant I had to go back to the beginning and tell the people that my beer spilled, to try and get another free beer, and they didn't want to give me another one. For one reason or another, I never got around to enjoying the delicious food, which is kind of par for the course for a dream, because you never taste anything anyway.
What does it mean? I don't know, maybe it's frustration at work from doing the same thing year after year, or maybe the lack of progress in never getting to the end of my movie watchlist, who can say? I guess it shows that the more time I spend planning and organizing (or avoiding) something, the less time I have for the DOING of the thing. Anyway, Kristen Wiig carries over from "Girl Most Likely".
THE PLOT: Two best friends decide to have a child together while keeping their relationship platonic, so they can avoid the toll kids can take on romantic relationships.
AFTER: It was completely unplanned, but this film fell into a time-slot just hours after NBC aired the SNL 40th Anniversary Show, and it stars two former SNL cast members - another in a long line of happy accidents. I was going to just speed through it because I expected an average clip show, God knows they've cut together clip shows for every major holiday, including Election Day and Veterans' Day, because they have that kind of library to draw from. But there was new material (and yeah, plenty of clips too) some of which was above the low standard of comedy set in the most recent season. SNL is sort of like my list - you just assume it can't go on for another year, and then it does.
But I want to use SNL to illustrate the two most basic components of acting, outside of "know your lines". Since they use cue cards, this element gets sort of nullified, leaving the comedians with just two basic jobs: speak your lines coherently, and maintain the proper expression. Simple, right? In the end that's all that acting is - however, at least two of SNL's most recent hires seem incapable of doing either thing. I won't name names here, but watch any recent episode and they'll stand out.
Unfortunately, so does the lead actress here, for the same reasons. OK, so she was simultaneously directing this film, perhaps she was distracted and forgot that her character needed to display emotions that changed over time, but I've acted enough to know how easy it can be, provided you can speak clearly, deliver the line, and match it with the proper expression. I could barely understand her lines, a major problem because as the lead actress, she had so many. It's like she couldn't move her mouth to form words in a coherent fashion and could only mumble. I don't think she fell for that Botox trend that was going around, which admittedly could explain lack of facial movement - or perhaps it's connected to the fact that she had only one facial expression throughout the entire film. Sort of a half smile but also quizzical, and looking like she could start to cry at any moment.
OK, rant over, let me move on to the plot. A pair of friends, who both eventually want kids of their own, witness the difficulties that two other couples go through while trying to have it all - happy marriages, fulfilling sex lives, and well-raised children. They try to beat the system by having a child together without being romantically involved, concluding that this will leave them both free to find their ideal mates, provided they split the costs and responsibilities of raising the child down the middle.
Right away, I spotted their error in logic, did you? Or maybe it's a math error. They saw how difficult it was for a couple to raise one child together, and even assuming that one person spent all of their time on the kid (impossible, but bear with me) and the other one pitched in part time, that would be the work of 1 1/2 people to raise the child. Their plan was to each spend half of their time with the kid, and 1/2 + 1/2 equals 1, not 1 1/2. Plus they both wanted to keep their jobs, maintain active social lives, and even sleep occasionally. No matter how you slice it, there just aren't enough hours in the day. Let's say they each work 8 hours per weekday, and then 8 hours is devoted to sleeping, eating and dating (I'm assuming some overlap here, because they're probably planning to dine out with their dates, and sleep with them as well). That means each has 8 hours left per day to devote to the child - but 8 plus 8 equals 16, and last time I checked, there were 24 hours in a day. So the plan could only work provided the kid can be left unattended for 1/3 of the time.
Maybe they worked out some kind of firehouse schedule, where each one is on duty with the child for 16 hours at a stretch, but I doubt it - each seemed to maintain a standard 9-to-5 job, so I've got to call shenanigans. Plus the cost factor doesn't work out if you want to believe that they could each maintain separate Manhattan apartments (the really good ones, like you see in movies, with multiple rooms) AND pay for child-rearing costs AND still have money for restaurants and other dating expenses.
The other problems with the plan are less practical ones, but they similarly are based on faulty logic - they assume that supporting each other means that they'll always be cool with watching each other date other people, that jealousy will never be a factor, that they'll always agree on what's best for the child, and that they'll never develop romantic feelings for each other. The one constant thing in life is change, so you can guess what happens here over time.
But by planning to avoid marriage, they forgot that marriage itself is a logical impossibility sometimes. At least it is for the people who go into it thinking that their feelings will never change, that they'll love another human forever and ever, they'll have perfect kids who won't aggravate them in any way, and they'll be able to handle whatever comes up. This is an impossibly high set of standards, basically setting people of that mindset up for failure. Forget gay marriage being a threat to marriage, the real threat to the institution of marriage is defining it so strictly.
My wife and I have attempted an end run around the problem by choosing not to have kids. On one level this seems selfish, because we both enjoy having some free time and some disposable income, plus we can go out with friends (separately or together) or drive off on a road trip to Atlantic City on short notice, we just need to call the cat-sitter. But the lead characters here manage to put us to shame - they want the (perceived) benefits of having a child (which are what, again?) with only half of the work and none of the downsides of marriage.
NITPICK POINT: I don't have a kid, and even I know that you don't save breast milk in the fridge if the mother has recently had alcohol. My co-worker had a baby and clued me in on the "pump and dump". Why would the woman in this film have milk bottles labelled "one glass of wine" or "two mojitos"? It makes no sense, there would be no reason to save this milk, the baby can't drink it.
Also starring Jennifer Westfeldt, Adam Scott (last seen in "Our Idiot Brother"), Maya Rudolph (last seen in "Grown Ups 2"), Chris O'Dowd (last heard in "Epic"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "Bridesmaids"), Megan Fox (last seen in "The Dictator"), Edward Burns (last seen in "Life or Something Like It"), Kelley Bishop, Cotter Smith, with a cameo from John Lutz.
RATING: 4 out of 10 strollers
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