BEFORE: Well, we finally got some winter weather in NYC, first time since November that there was snow worth talking about, of course today it's going to be 50 degrees, so it's all going to melt. I kind of like the new climate, where I don't have to shovel as much. Sure, I'm against global warming but since the change has already happened, is it selfish of me to be OK with the fact that we've damaged the earth to the point where I only have to shovel snow once during each winter? OK, let's not let it get any worse, let's get off of fossil fuels and fix that hole in the ozone and get the plastics out of the ocean if we can, but let's not hurry back to that point where we get crazy thundersnow and 18 inches of thick heavy snow several times in January, is that too much to ask? New York doesn't have to turn into a tropical paradise, just a little milder winters than we had before, that's what I want.
I've still got 15 romance films left after this one, and for the record, I don't recommend that anyone else watch this many Hollywood romances in a row - they do tend to warp my perspective after a while. Fortunately I can counter-program by choosing TV shows that are polar opposites, like right now I'm working my way through the second season of "Counterpart" on Starz. It's a spy-like thriller, only the agents come from two parallel worlds, and sometimes someone is good on one world but bad in the "mirror universe", and a lot of cool things happen when some characters cross over between the worlds. J.K. Simmons gets to play a meek, low-level agent on one world and also his tougher, higher-level counterpart on the other. Plus there's a lot of that split-screen effect where people get to interact with their "others", even though they're not supposed to. Anyway, I'm halfway through the season and they're finally getting into explaining how the whole dual-dimension thing happened in the first place. Naturally it's set in Berlin, which kind of makes sense because it's a city that used to be divided by the Berlin Wall, and people used to cross over there between the capitalist world and the Communist one, plus the whole idea of meeting one's doppelgänger is very German to begin with.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan carries over from "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding", speaking of people who can play both types of characters - I'm used to seeing him as The Comedian from "Watchmen" and also clips of him as that villain from "The Walking Dead", and then last night he played the furniture maker / amateur musician / nice-guy and rebound boyfriend, and I think that also shows a lot of range. Mind blown.
Tomorrow, February 22, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", it's "Animal Stories" during the day, "Best Movie Mutiny" during prime-time and "Favorite Liz and Richard Face Off" overnight:
5:30 am "The Day of the Dolphin" (1973)
7:30 am "Mighty Joe Young" (1949)
9:30 am "Umberto D" (1952)
11:15 am "Sounder" (1972)
1:15 pm "Born Free" (1966)
3:15 pm "National Velvet" (1944)
5:30 pm "The Yearling" (1946)
8:00 pm "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962)
11:15 pm "The Caine Mutiny" (1954)
1:30 am "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1966)
4:00 am "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967)
I'm claiming 6 out of these 11, I'm sure I saw "Born Free" and "National Velvet" when I was a kid, I've seen every version of "Mutiny on the Bounty" that there is, plus I've seen "The Caine Mutiny" and both of those Taylor & Burton films. That brings me up to 100 seen out of 250, which is exactly 40% seen. If I can finish at 40% or above, I'll be happy.
THE PLOT: A young widow discovers that her late husband has left her 10 messages intended to help ease her pain and start a new life.
AFTER: I get it, this is supposed to be a sentimental film about the road to recovery after a spouse dies, but I've got some large concerns about the whole structure and then the little details about how this film gets from Point A to Point B. Basically, it's replaced the standard 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) with a new model - 1. whiskey shots 2. karaoke 3. vacation 4. accidentally sleeping with dead husband's best friend and 5. reconnecting with friends.
I hate to sound like a broken record here, because this has become my recurring pet peeve, but this film is way too flashback-intensive, and there's just no reason for it. In the first scene, we see married couple Holly and Gerry having (we assume) a typical argument, about their apartment being too small, Holly being angry over him telling her mother that she's "not ready" to have kids, and then of course they reconcile and snuggle. But the third (?) major scene is Gerry's funeral, and we the audience have barely gotten to know him at this point, and what we DO know is that he fights with Holly regularly, so honestly, my formed opinion was not great. Throughout the following flashbacks we then get to know what a great guy he was, but if those scenes that portrayed him better had appeared EARLIER, in proper chronological order, then his funeral scene would have had a greater impact. If we knew what a great guy he was (something the film reveals LATER), then we could feel his loss, just like Holly did. Moving the funeral up to the start of the film makes no sense, and removes any possible dramatic tension. Would it really have been so bad to tell the story in the right order, instead of having to struggle to keep the pieces of their developing relationship straight in our heads?
Also, this causes problems for us because at the same time that Holly's trying to move forward, we're stuck in flashback mode, because we never got the information about how they met cute in the first place, so we're always gazing back further and further into the past at the same time that she's supposed to be moving on. Is this to symbolize that she's not really moving on as she's supposed to? Even if this is true, it still feels like a disconnect to me, because the film's supposed to chart her journey moving forward and letting go, as instructed by Gerry's letters to her, and it doesn't feel like it's happening on schedule because we keep flashing back. So it's a horrible structure, no matter how you slice it. Who the hell looked at this scene breakdown - (scene 3: Gerry's funeral; scene 27: that time Gerry got Holly to sing in a bar; scene 43: How Gerry and Holly met in Ireland) and said, "Yep, that looks right to me! No problems with the space-time continuum there at all!" It's madness.
There's also another character that can't read social cues, which I've seen several times this month already. They fall short here of saying he's got Asperger's, or adult autism, or anything like that, but if you don't put a name on it, they you sort of leave open the possibility that he's just an asshole, right? Anyway, it's a really bad use of this technique here, because it seems like some screenwriter just said he has no social graces so that he'll be blunt, and this ends up being a quicker way to advance the plot. Within the course of like three scenes, this character is introduced as a possible rebound boyfriend, they go on an awkward date which is made even more awkward by his condition, and then he can't help but be blunt about dating her, and this sort of forces the issue. What a crock this is, playing on a character's disability to avoid the chore of writing realistic human dating dialogue.
NITPICK POINT: Gerry and Holly complain about how small their apartment is, even though it's clearly a soundstage, not an actual NYC apartment, and seems large enough to host a soccer game, if you just moved the furniture to the edges of the rooms or something. I know couples who have lived in NYC basement apartments easily half the size, and they never complained. You don't get to bitch about the size of your apartment unless the toilet is in a closet and the bathtub is in the middle of the kitchen. SO these two should shut up, already. Then, after Gerry dies, and she ships some of his stuff back to Ireland and cleans out his closets, WHY is "get a bigger apartment" the first item on her vision board? Logically, she should have twice the space she had before, and the place would probably feel too big anyway, with her husband gone. AND how can she afford this place without his income? Her next goal should be to get a SMALLER apartment that she can afford, but why expect logic out of a Hollywood romance?
NITPICK POINT #2: "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues - it makes sense that this would be an Irish man's favorite song, but they really shouldn't use this song in a movie because it contains an homophobic slur. For that matter, we should really stop playing "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits on the radio because it contains the same offensive word. If white people can't sing or say the "n word", then straight musicians should be similarly sensitive and not perform a song with the "f word" in it (not that "f word", the other one). For some reason radio still plays this song with the slur intact, saying that it's "satirical", but this is a poor excuse. If even the BAND doesn't play that lyric any more, then it should be bleeped out. Just to be on the safe side, isn't it easier to just give the character a different favorite song?
NITPICK POINT #3: I didn't see what the big deal was about Gerry's urn. So it was a black Borg-like cube, so what? Why did everyone make a fuss over the fact that she designed the urn? Was this just to foreshadow her future career as a designer? Anyway, if she was so distraught over Gerry's death, where did she suddenly find the creativity to design something, if she was at such a low point in her life?
See, I've got a feeling that if you start picking away at this one, the whole plot's just going to unravel. They thought they could cover this up by moving the scenes around, and while we're all so busy trying to piece together what order everything happened in their relationship, we wouldn't notice how many little things just don't make any sense. Like, that's not how a karaoke night works, or the whole business about who Gerry got to help send his wife the letters. I guess that's the big "mystery" here, only it's not really a mystery at all, and it doesn't make any sense either. When we finally find out, that person claims to have thought it was all a bad idea - but then, that doesn't explain why they went along with it. Gerry was dead, he couldn't force someone to send the letters, so if they thought it wasn't going to be part of a helpful healing process for Holly, they just would not have done it. Plot logic fail.
Also starring Hilary Swank (last seen in "New Year's Eve"), Gerard Butler (last seen in "Gods of Egypt"), Lisa Kudrow (last seen in "Table 19"), Gina Gershon (last seen in "Pretty in Pink"), James Marsters, Harry Connick Jr. (last seen in "Copycat"), Nellie McKay, Kathy Bates (last seen in "Love Liza"), Dean Winters (last seen in "Rough Night"), Anne Kent (last seen in "The Commitments"), Brian McGrath, Michael Countryman (last seen in "You Can Count on Me"), with a cameo from Mike Doyle (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), and archive footage of Bette Davis and Judy Garland (last seen in "Easter Parade").
RATING: 3 out of 10 shot glasses
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