BEFORE: Chris Evans carries over from "Playing It Cool". A side-effect of the final February re-organization was being able to put three Chris Evans films next to each other, as they should be. Some other actors weren't so lucky during this year's romance chain, I had to split up the Martin Starrs and the Owen Wilsons and a few others - but it will all come out in the wash by the end of the year, and it's worth it if that means a stronger romance chain in the end, right? One that includes "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "Grace of My Heart", which both fit in with the theme, and I also got to postpone a few films that didn't seem to fit. It's a win all around, I realize, as I approach the middle of the scheduled films on this topic - I'll let you know when I'm at the creamy caramel center, though I think there may be a little cayenne pepper hidden in the center of this chocolate bon-bon.
This is another one that I missed on Netflix, and I think I missed it on Hulu too, but I'm catching it on Tubi. I realize there's always iTunes, which makes for a great safety net, but Tubi films are free, no rental fee or subscription fee, just a couple random ads during the film. I know it's annoying, but whatever saves me $2.99 at this point that also keeps the chain alive is worth doing.
Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, Shirley Jones links from "Pepe" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links? Answers below.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 20)
6:00 am "The Music Man" (1962) with _____________ linking to:
8:45 am "Tulsa" (1949) with _____________ linking to:
10:30 am "Smash Up: The Story of a Woman" (1947) with _____________ linking to:
12:15 pm "Experiment Perilous" (1944) with _____________ linking to:
2:00 pm "Algiers" (1938) with _____________ linking to:
3:45 pm "After the Thin Man" (1936) with _____________ linking to:
5:45 pm "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "The Talk of the Town" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
10:15 pm "My Favorite Wife" (1940) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 am "The White Cliffs of Dover" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
2:15 am "Too Young to Kiss" (1951) with _____________ linking to:
4:15 am "Torch Song" (1953)
Another 5 films tomorrow that I've seen: "The Music Man", "After the Thin Man", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", "The Talk of the Town" and "My Favorite Wife". After the romance chain in 2015, I watched a whole chain of films starring link #8, glad to see that paying off. Anyway, 74 seen out of 231 brings me up to 32%.
THE PLOT: Two strangers stuck in Manhattan for the night grow into each other's most trusted confidants when an evening of unexpected adventure forces them to confront their fears and take control of their lives.
AFTER: If you're not that familiar with New York, it might seem unlikely that two different people independently could be "stuck" there, actually only one is truly stranded, with her phone broken and having missed her train out of Grand Central, she's really kind of screwed. It turns out her bag was also stolen, so she can't get a hotel room or a cab out of town, with no credit card or bank card she might as well be stranded on a deserted island (that's right, I said "deserted", not "desert", because you can't survive more than a few days on a desert island, so it's not really the right term for a place to be stranded, despite being stuck in the common parlance as a phrase.). Let's not forget that Manhattan IS an island, and it costs money to enter it, and it costs money to leave - really, they get you coming and going, don't they?
But it's a bit of a NITPICK POINT here that they depict both Grand Central Terminal (that's right, "Terminal", not Grand Central "Station", that's also incorrect...) and Penn Station shutting down for the night. I'm not sure this is what happens - isn't New York the city that never sleeps, or completely shuts down? I've been at Penn Station to catch that red-eye train, and I don't remember being kicked out by the staff - I remember all of the restaurants shutting down, so I had to cross the street and eat an overnight meal at (shudder) Sbarro's one time. But then I think I went back to the waiting area in Penn Station, where they will let you sit or even lie down (if you dare) while you wait to board that 5 am train.
Ah, OK, I just Googled "When does Grand Central close" and it turns out that the whole place DOES shut down each morning at 2 am, and re-opens at 5:30 am. Makes sense, they probably need some time to disinfect everything and perform basic maintenance on the place without millions of commuters getting in the way. But by contrast, Penn Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal are open 24 hours, so the movie is partially right, but so am I. I will concede that she could not have caught another train to New Haven out of Grand Central, but instead of doing what they did in this film, they could have walked across town the short way to Port Authority, and she probably could have caught a bus. So my NITPICK POINT stands, with a slight alteration.
But then, we wouldn't really have the same movie, would we? Together these two people, clueless on how to get her out of town with little money and no I.D., have ample time to get to know each other, learn each other's strengths and weaknesses, and become the type of people that would offer the proper encouragement to the other to get them to do that thing that they're so afraid of doing, the thing that is holding each one of them back from moving forward. (Again, I hate to harp on this, but buses are usually cheaper than trains, so they probably could have scraped together some bus fare for her, and that means movie over, no personal connection made. Curse me for wanting to solve the immediate problem in the quickest and most efficient manner.)
Also, I'll let you in on a little-known secret about Manhattan - nobody really lives there. I know what you've seen in movies and on TV, there are hundreds, if not thousands of buildings in that borough, how could nobody live there? It's all a giant real-estate scam. Oh, people USED to live in Manhattan, and millions of people work there every day in various office buildings, stores, restaurants, movie theaters, etc. but all those greedy landlords and real-estate companies kept raising the rents and forced everyone out, except for a few billionaires, who each bought up like a whole block's worth of buildings and took out all the interior walls, so that each long row of buildings you see on a Manhattan block is just ONE big building that looks like a dozen non-connected buildings. But inside each giant mega-building is just enough room for one billionaire, his family and maybe a few friends. High-rise apartment buildings? Same deal - each one holds ONE billionaire and he (or she, let's be fair) needs all those different floors to store all their stuff - billionaires have a lot of stuff, see? How many times have you seen a TV sitcom set in Manhattan, and the apartment looks impossibly huge and you think, that can't be right, Manhattan apartments are all tiny and the bathtub is in the kitchen, or there's a Murphy bed that turns into a dining room table to save space. The TV shows actually get this right, the Manhattan apartments are very big, the only thing wrong with the scenarios on TV is the income level of the people who live in the apartment. All the middle-class and poorer people moved out to Brooklyn or up to the Bronx years ago, didn't they?
But let's get back to the issue that kicks off the film - helping out a stranger. Not all superheroes wear capes, and of course Captain America is one of those heroes. Sorry, "Steve Rogers" is actually going by the name of "Nick" in this film, and you can tell he's not a true New Yorker because he picks up the pieces of a woman's broken cel phone as she's running for a train, and he follows her to give her those pieces. Then he offers her money for a cab out of town after Grand Central closes - only the cabbie wants $1000 to drive her to New Haven (or is it Boston? the story keeps changing - for that matter, after they've established that she needs to go to New Haven, nobody seems able to determine if New Haven is in Connecticut or Massachusetts. Umm, it's Connecticut, why wouldn't she know that if she lives there?) Taking a cab to Connecticut is a TERRIBLE IDEA, and nobody does that. I remember there was an elderly couple years ago that hired a NYC cab to take them to Colorado or something, and it cost them thousands of dollars, and they had to pay for 2 hotel rooms everywhere in-between, one for them and one for the cabbie. Again, nobody else ever does this.
When she rebuffs all of his efforts to help her, which again, is atypical for New Yorkers, he follows her anyway, helps her out of a jam when she's cornered by street ruffians, then looks after her for the night, trying to raise $500 bucks so she can get out of town, also trying to get her stolen Prada bag back from the Chinatown fence who's selling it. Jesus, I'm good for helping somebody with directions in NYC, or telling someone a good place to eat BBQ, but this is really above and beyond the call of duty. Turns out that Nick has a hidden agenda, he'd rather do anything than attend an engagement party where he's likely to run into his ex-girlfriend. Geez, when you see someone playing trumpet in a subway station, you may not realize what an interesting back-story they could have.
You can probably guess where this all is headed - over the course of a crazy night in Manhattan, they get to know each other well, stop hiding behind fake names, and offer up advice to each other - in some quirky turn of coincidence each one might speak the proper advice that the other one needs to hear, and if Brooke can get Nick to confront his ex before his audition, and Nick can influence Brooke to deal with her stagnant relationship, then where do you suppose that leaves the two of them? Single and ready to mingle, after shaking off the emotional shackles of their pasts, anyway.
In some ways, Hollywood just never stopped remaking "When Harry Met Sally", I'm disappointed to learn. By that, I mean that any film where two people get together, become friends and have to watch the other person get hurt by others, and then come together as a couple in the emotional fallout of their doomed relationships, that reminds me of that Billy Crystal-Meg Ryan thing. The elevator pitch for "Before We Go" was probably "It's like 'When Harry Met Sally', but it all takes place in one night." And that pitch could get somebody's attention. Or maybe this is the NYC version of "Before Midnight" - then for good measure, they borrowed a bit of "The Blues Brothers" as Nick and Brooke pretend to be the band hired for a party, in an attempt to raise a quick $500.
I think I'll be a little kind with my rating tonight, because a lot of this feels like it could happen, there's something that rings semi-true about it, except for that confusion over the train station stuff. When both parties need to consciously decide to put the past behind them and move on, they get some free relationship advice from a psychic who is also a widower, and his message is that no relationship is perfect, it's always going to be a struggle, but you can choose who you want to fight those battles with - and preferably you'll be fighting battles WITH your partner, and not AGAINST. To some extent, that can be a conscious choice, but it all comes down to the personalities involved. As a comedian once said, you and your partner don't need to like all the same things, but you at least need to hate some of the same things, especially if it's going to be the two of you against the world.
There are some parts that are WAY too cutesy, like the lead characters using old payphones to pretend to call the past and deliver advice to their younger selves - but there's still a lot of good material here, especially for viewers who may feel bogged down by the past and unable to move forward. There's also a lot of stuff that wasn't spelled out, like why was Brooke in New York specifically? And what was written on the other side of the hotel comment card? But I guess some mystery gets preserved that way, and we don't need to know everything.
Catch this one on Tubi if you can - it's FREE, so why wouldn't you? Anyway, the film cost $3 million to make and didn't break half a million at the box office, and that's probably why it's on Tubi. But show it some love and help spread the word about it, that's what I'm doing.
Also starring Alice Eve (last seen in "Criminal"), Emma Fitzpatrick (last seen in "The Social Network"), Mark Kassen (last seen in "Jobs"), Daniel Spink, Elijah Moreland, John Cullum (last seen in "The Conspirator"), Scott Evans (also carrying over from "Playing It Cool"), Kevin Carolan (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Fenton Lawless.
RATING: 6 out of 10 cups of diner coffee
ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Robert Preston, Susan Hayward, Carl Esmond, Hedy Lamar, Josepha Calleia, James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Van Johnson, Gig Young.
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