BEFORE: Seth Rogen carries over from "You, Me and Dupree" - I'll circle back to Owen Wilson in a couple of weeks, I promise.
Over on Turner Classic Movies, Steve McQueen links from "The Great Escape" to tomorrow's first film, can you fill in the other links? Answers below.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 12)
6:30 am "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956) with _____________ linking to:
8:30 am "Teresa" (1951) with _____________ linking to:
10:15 am "The Harder They Fall" (1956) with _____________ linking to:
12:15 pm "The Subject Was Roses" (1968) with _____________ linking to:
2:15 pm "The Hasty Heart" (1950) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 pm "Kings Row" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
6:15 pm "George Washington Slept Here" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "To Be or Not to Be" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 pm "My Man Godfrey" (1936) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 am "One Way Passage" (1932) with _____________ linking to:
1:30 am "Always in My Heart" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
3:30 am "Of Human Hearts" (1938) with _____________ linking to:
5:30 am "Pride and Prejudice" (1940)
Hmm, I think TCM and I are in the same boat, it looks like we both thought Presidents' Day would be a week earlier than it is - with "George Washington Slept Here" and considering the identity of one of their links. I feel you, TCM programmer. But I've only seen 2 out of these 13 films (Wow, they're really packing them in the early morning hours...), namely "Somebody Up There Likes Me" and "To Be or Not to Be", bringing my score up to 41 out of 139, or 29.4%. Sure, I could get my percentage up by WATCHING some of these movies, but who has that kind of time?
THE PLOT: Journalist Fred Flarsky reunites with his childhood crush, Charlotte Field, now one of the most influential women in the world. As she prepares to make a run for the Presidency, Charlotte hires Fred as her speechwriter and sparks fly.
AFTER: I hate the fact that I'm six days too early for President's Day - and I'd be lying if I said that I mistakenly thought the holiday was THIS week and not NEXT Monday. The worse truth is that I didn't even think about how this film would be a superior choice for a tie-in, with the lead female character running for President. In my defense, I rearranged my February line-up so many times in the last week that I barely even knew which end was which, or when to STOP messing with it. Could I have landed this film right on the holiday? Perhaps, but I think not without putting that sequel film back before its own prequel, which was my motivation to move things around in the first place. Anyway, back in Plan A this film was near the end of the chain, which would have placed it in early March, and it wasn't until Plan C and the addition of "You, Me and Dupree" that it got bumped up to February. Tearing apart the whole schedule NOW and re-building it just to see what MIGHT have been possible is a pointless venture.
But wait, today was the New Hampshire primary, there's your freakin' tie-in. See, these things do have a funny way of working out, don't they? Anyway, President's Day celebrates the founding fathers, the heads of state that came before, but a primary? That's for people running for office, as the Charlotte Field character does in "Long Shot" - so I'm an accidental scheduling genius, it turns out. There are worse ways to be regarded, I can assure you.
Anyway, that's about where the similarities between this film and real-life end, because the person serving as President in this film, with Field as his secretary of state, is a former TV star who has no idea how to be a real President, who is also nasty and vindictive and is deep in the pockets of big business, willing to cancel legislation on the instructions of his favorite conservative news network. See? Nothing like real life, only, wait a minute.... Look, it's a given that movies made after 2016 are going to portray any fictional President a certain way, only they usually haven't been TOO obvious about it - but now we're in Stage 3, with filmmakers saying, "Screw it, crazy is the new normal, and we'd be stupid not to work that into the fabric of our film." Now, President "Chambers" here is not a former reality TV star, he's the former star of a "West Wing"-like drama, but that seems just as bad. Such a man might be expecting all situations to resolve themselves in 47 minutes plus commercials, and have all the answers come to them in script form, as opposed to our current leader, who needs everything shown to him with pictures, like a small child would.
But, to be fair, all politicians have speech writers, not screenwriters, but they're the unseen forces that make politicians seem more eloquent than they really are, it's kind of a dirty little secret for all Presidents. But if you told me that Trump prefers to usually "wing it" rather than read a prepared speech, I'd be inclined to believe it. His rant about showers, sinks and toilets just makes no sense - look, I hate low-flow toilets as much as the next person, but two flushes usually does the trick, by exaggerating and saying that people are flushing 10, 15 time is just lunacy - which people? Where? And if you're not currently enjoying a brisk flow of water in your shower, I believe you can just buy a new showerhead that will focus the water better, and also turn the water flow UP, that's what the little dials in your shower are for...
But's let's get back to the fictional politics, because that's where the romance comes into play. Shortly after his Brooklyn newspaper gets bought out by conservative conglomerate Wembley Media, reporter Fred Flarsky quits and then gets consoled by his best friend, who takes him to a fancy party that just happens to be attended by the Secretary of State. And she just happens to have been Flarsky's babysitter from his youth, she was three years older and running for class president in high school. He had a crush on her back in the day, back when three years made a world of difference, only that gap seems much smaller when you're an adult. She remembers him, checks out his writing, and before long he's touring the world with her, helping write speeches for a multi-national environmental program.
To write speeches in her "voice", he's got to get to know her all over again, figure out her likes and dislikes, and by this point, you can probably see where this is all going. Traveling together, working closely together, avoiding gunfire together, making sure the candidate is up-to-date on pop culture like "Game of Thrones" and superhero movies. Charlotte may flirt with the Prime Minister of Canada, but she'll ultimately be charmed by the funny guy who really knows her. Pro tip, clever humor beats empty-headed hotness, most of the time anyway.
But naturally there has to be some conflict - after all that work on the environmental bill, the President's puppeteers want him to kill it, or at least the parts that interfere with their chairman's business plans. And when Charlotte starts campaigning for herself, to replace the President who wants to go back into entertainment (wishful thinking, right?) her handlers all point out how bad the optics are for the beautiful, intelligent candidate to be seen dating a scruffy guy who dresses poorly and looks like he probably smells like weed and stale beer. Hey, at least Seth Rogen owns up to it.
Thankfully, this is a comedy that remembered to be funny, unlike other recently-watched films I could name. Ten films in to the romance chain, and this is the highlight so far. It might have done better at the box office if it hadn't opened one week after "Avengers: Endgame", I'm not sure what bonehead scheduled that. If I've got a NITPICK POINT it's the overuse of the same gag, having Seth Rogen's character falling down, notably twice. He jumps out of a second-floor window in the opening sequence and lands hard on a car, but still manages to limp away, which is not believable. Contrary to popular belief, fatter people don't bounce, they get just as hurt by landing on hard surfaces as skinny people do. Though I did have a bad slip on the ice last year, missed the curb and fell flat on the sidewalk, landed hard on my chest. Based on the number of people who rushed to help me, it must have looked terrible, but I got up and walked it off. Still, you won't catch me jumping through any second-floor windows.
I don't know if this got covered, back when Hillary Clinton was running - if she had been elected, what would her husband's title have been? Would he have become "First Gentleman" or "First Mister", or something else? I'm surprised the PC police haven't already been calling for us to change "First Lady" to "First Spouse" or something equally gender-neutral - we're going to have to figure this out sooner or later, might as well do it in advance. We'll hit the same language problem if a gay man were to be elected, right?
Also starring Charlize Theron (last seen in "Dark Places"), O'Shea Jackson Jr. (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Andy Serkis (last heard in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), June Diane Raphael (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Bob Odenkirk (last seen in "Movie 43"), Alexander Skarsgard (last seen in "Mute"), Ravi Patel, Randall Park (last seen in "Snatched"), Tristan D. Lalla, James Saito (last seen in "The Sea of Trees"), Lisa Kudrow (last seen in "P.S. I Love You"), Kurt Braunohler (last seen in "The Big Sick"), Paul Scheer (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Claudia O'Doherty, Daniel Rindress-Kay, Aviva Mongillo, Braxton Herda, Aladeen Tawfeek, with cameos from Lil Yachty (last heard in "teen Titans GO! to the Movies"), Boyz II Men.
RATING: 7 out of 10 alt-right skinheads
ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Pier Angeli, Rod Steiger, Jack Albertson, Patricia Neal, Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan, Jack Benny, Carole Lombard, William Powell, Kay Francis, Walter Huston, Ann Rutherford, Edna May Oliver.
No comments:
Post a Comment