BEFORE: After a day at home recovering, which essentially made for a three-day weekend, I'm ready to go outside and get back to work - only there's snow coming down, which is scheduled to turn into freezing rain later, which means ice everywhere. Great. But tomorrow it's going to be in the 40's, and then 50 degrees the day after that, which means everything's going to melt. Still, I'm sure my idiot neighbors will be out shoveling this afternoon, because unlike me, they have no patience.
Goldie Hawn carries over from "The Banger Sisters", and I'm going back to the long-forgotten year of 1987 for this one, which I think is regarded as a comedy classic now. I know they re-made it last year, and I just realized that the new version is available on Epix On Demand - since the remake has Anna Faris in it, I might have found a way to work that one in, linking from "I Give It a Year". But I missed that chance, and it's too late to go back and re-do it, so I'll have to put watching the remake on hold.
TCM is going even further back tomorrow for their "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for February 13, with a focus on silent films - I haven't seen any of those listed, but I've at least seen both films going head-to-head for "David Lean Best Picture Win" during prime-time, which are followed by two films vying for "Favorite Singing Cowboy":
4:30 am "White Shadows in the South Seas" (1928)
6:00 am "The Racket" (1928)
7:30 am "Two Arabian Knights" (1927)
9:15 am "A Woman of Affairs" (1928)
11:15 am "Our Dancing Daughters" (1928)
1:00 pm "The Divine Lady" (1929)
3:00 pm "Sadie Thompson" (1928)
4:45 pm "The Crowd" (1928)
6:30 pm "Speedy" (1928)
8:00 pm "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962)
12:00 am "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957)
3:00 am "Under Western Stars" (1938)
4:15 am "The Cowboy and the Lady" (1938)
"Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" bring me up to 64 out of 151, which is 42.3% seen. Damn those silent films.
THE PLOT: A cruel but beautiful heiress mocks and cheats a hired carpenter. When she gets amnesia after an accident, he decides to introduce her to regular life by convincing her they're husband and wife.
AFTER: This film is over 30 years old, and I don't think it's holding up very well. The main focus seems to be based on a class struggle, the rich heiress against the working-class carpenter, and that brings up all the Reaganomics-era debates over government's role in catering to the rich, giving tax breaks to the wealthy so that they will "trickle down" to benefit the working class in the long run (yeah, that didn't happen) yet this is sort of relevant again, because Trump's tax cuts turned out to favor the rich once again, and shafted the common man yet again. Oh, sure, people got to take more home in their paychecks, but that's a cut in WITHHOLDING tax, not in income tax. People are in for a shock this April when they fill out their returns, and find out that the only thing that got lowered was how much was withheld to pay their taxes, and they're going to owe just as much, if not more, with their returns.
But as for gender politics, this film totally strikes out. I can't even imagine what someone was thinking when they wrote this - somehow it seems to be OK, just because the rich woman stiffed her carpenter and wouldn't pay him $600 for building her a shoe rack in her closet, for him to track her down when she gets amnesia, and make her think she's his wife. Really? That's not only unethical, that's bordering on kidnapping, and then making her work as a cook, maid and caregiver for his five sons is something akin to slave labor, right? He calculates that he's getting $25 of work out of her per week, so she'll work off her debt to him in a few months. I know 1987 was a long time ago, but $25 per week? That's way below the minimum wage.
There's just got to be something wrong with lying to someone with amnesia, taking her home as your wife, and then (eventually) sleeping with her, right? Didn't anyone have a problem with this, back in 1987? I know, it was a different time, but COME ON, that's just too close to being rapey, I think. If someone were hanging out outside the mental trauma ward, trying to pick up dates, you'd call the cops on them, no? This is clear manipulation of an impaired person, even if movie amnesia isn't really a proper medical condition. I've got a real problem with this, even if she does feel like she's falling in love with the carpenter, that's all happening under false pretenses.
People who think this situation is "romantic" probably are the same people who think that the songs "Every Breath You Take" by the Police and "Keep on Lovin' You" by REO Speedwagon are love songs. Oh, no, they are not, when you read the lyrics you'll realize they're both stalker songs, but they SOUND like love ballads. Same goes for this film, it SEEMS like a romantic comedy, but I've got my doubts. It doesn't even matter if the heiress's husband didn't want anything to do with her, and took the opportunity to go partying around after his wife got amnesia, that's beside the point. You can't take a mentally impaired person and make her your slave, then your lover.
Whatever "love" she feels for him at this point is some weird variation on the Stockholm Syndrome, where people have been known to develop feelings for their kidnappers, right? Now I know why the re-make of this film did a gender role-swap, you'd sort of have to in order to tell this story in the more enlightened age of 2018.
Also starring Kurt Russell (last seen in "Deepwater Horizon"), Edward Herrmann (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Katherine Helmond (last heard in "Cars 3"), Roddy McDowall (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Michael G. Hagerty (last seen in "Speed 2: Cruise Control"), Brian Price, Jared Rushton (last seen in "Pet Sematary II"), Jamie Wild, Jeffrey Wiseman, Harvey Alan Miller (last seen in "Frankie and Johnny"), Sven-Ole Thorsen, Ray Combs (last seen in "Vampire in Brooklyn"), Frank Campanella, with cameos from Hector Elizondo (also last seen in "Frankie and Johnny"), Garry Marshall and the Wright Brothers Band.
RATING: 3 out of 10 miniature golf holes
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