BEFORE: John Michael Higgins carries over from "Still Waiting..." Eyes on the prize, only three days left in February, and 17 films left in the romance/relationship chain after today.
Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, Van Heflin links from "Green Dolphin Street" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links? Answers below.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 27)
6:00 am "Johnny Eager" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
8:30 am "Kismet" (1944) with _____________ linking to:
10:30 am "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1941) with _____________ linking to:
12:30 pm "Music in Manhattan" (1944) with _____________ linking to:
2:15 pm "Bombadier" (1943) with _____________ linking to:
4:15 pm "Captain Kidd" (1945) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "Beneath the 12 Mile Reef" (1953) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Broken Lance" (1954) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 pm "Kiss of Death" (1947) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 am "One Million BC" (1940) with _____________ linking to:
2:30 am "Topper Returns" (1941) with _____________ linking to:
4:15 am "The Guardsman" (1931)
Damn it, I've only seen one of these, "Topper Returns". I've seen "Kismet", but not the 1944 version, I watched the 1954 remake with Howard Keel. So another 1 out of 12 only gets me to 97 seen out of 314, but that's 30.9%. I'm hoping for a late rally, with just 4 days left in the countdown.
THE PLOT: An uptight television producer takes control of a morning show segment on modern relationships hosted by a misogynistic man.
AFTER: Somewhere in here is a workable rom-com, but there's just so much garbage to wade through, to try to get to it, I'm not sure why anyone would bother. In a way, this is like a Donald Trump speech, and I'll explain that analogy - if Trump wants to yell at one of his rallies about a topic like windmills, or low-flow toilets, you sort of get the feeling that there's a point being made, buried deep within it. Look, I hate low-flow toilets as much as the next guy, they were all the rage about 10 years ago, but most buildings and plumbing services eventually realized that they're more trouble than they're worth. So Trump had a point, water-saving devices suck and don't work well, but then he piles on so much hyperbole about how "people are flushing 10, 15 times" and "water's coming out of the shower drip, drip, drip" - what people? Who's flushing the toilet 15 times like an idiot? Give me ONE name of someone who does this, and "Donald Trump" doesn't count. Does he not know that you can have a plumber change the device inside the toilet tank to allow it to fill up more with every flush? Does he not know that you can adjust a showerhead to get a stronger flow of water, or if that doesn't work, you can buy another one and replace it? Same goes for windmills, there MAY be an argument to be made against them on some minor point, but then he covers that up with "their noise causes brain cancer" and "they're killing all the birds" and "if you live near one, the value of your house just went down 75%", all statements that can't POSSIBLY be true, and so he manages to invalidate his own argument by piling on so much nonsense.
So I acknowledge that there MAY be a germ of truth somewhere in this film, something about how men are not complicated and are driven by desire, while women tend to be more complex creatures who are driven by their ideals, but then there's so much crap shoveled on top of that, from the vibrating panties to the jello wrestling to the "advice" about how to eat a hot dog seductively, that any point is similarly buried and is no longer recognizable. Then with a Trump speech, you are left to wonder WHY he started that tirade in the first place - for the windmill rant, the motivation is simple, he once fought against windmills being built near the site of one of his golf courses - plus he's in the pocket of oil and coal companies, so you'll never hear him doing a 5-minute rant about offshore drilling, for example. So similarly we have to think about WHY this film decided to do a take on the differences between men and women - when it's a topic that's been covered so many times, including in the "Men Are From Mars..." books that the talk-show host makes fun of.
The rest is very formulaic - to the point where I have to check which film came first, this one or "What's My Number?" - the less-preferred guy that helps the woman win the man of her dreams is going to become her friend during the process, duh, and eventually she will realize that the right man for her is the one that gave her the relationship advice, not the (supposedly more desirable) man who she's been pursuing. I would point out that these tropes have been around forever, dating back to both "Pygmalion" and "Cyrano de Bergerac", but I think comparisons to either of those would give this screenplay too much credit.
Here's where we get some sort of clue about WHY this formula keeps coming up in movies - the screenwriter sees himself in the best friend role, the one who gives advice to beautiful women but is under their radar, not considered to be a suitable mate. So there's a cry for attention here, it's probably a case of a frustrated writer saying, "Hey, girls, please notice ME! I'm your friend, the one who listens to your problems and dispenses helpful relationship advice!" It might be a clever ploy if it weren't so pathetic. (EDIT: it turns out this screenplay was written by women, go figure...)
But if you can't see the direction this one's heading in, then you just haven't been paying attention to how romances work, at least in a Hollywood film. In real life Abby probably would have chosen Colin, the neighbor she was trying to attract in the first place, because he checked off all of her boxes - he liked dogs, but preferred cats, he had a solid job, they liked a lot of the same things. It's rare to hear a real woman say anything along the lines like, "Yeah, I dumped that guy that I had so much in common with, because I decided that the guy who helped me with relationship advice, the one I'm fighting with all the time and has horrible, stereotypical views about women was a better fit."
So I can't really recommend this film to anyone, unless of course you've been watching romantic comedies every February for 12 years and are practically running out of them, and you need to make a connection to the next film so you can justify watching "Marriage Story" 11 days from now. I think that might just be my experience alone.
There's a NITPICK POINT to be made about what constitutes "National TV" - Abby is producer of a Sacramento TV station's morning news, I think, but she gets upset when certain things are broadcast on "national TV" - but her show is not national, it's local. Does she have delusions of grandeur, or does she truly not understand how and where her own show is televised? She may work at a major network's affiliate station, but that's not the same thing - even if they may pick up a news segment or two for national broadcast. Then it's a big deal when Mike appears on a nationally televised late-night show, because up until then, he's only been seen in Sacramento. And before that, he was on public access in Sacramento, boy, this guy moves fast!
NITPICK POINT #2: Someone from the network, when learning that his producer can't make the dinner with clients because she has a date, would never say, "Well, OK, bring him along!" He would almost certainly say, "Well, reschedule your date, because the work dinner is more important!" Obviously they need to set up this (not really) hilarious moment where Abby can be embarrassed in front of both her date and her boss, but it just wouldn't go down this way. Some writer who never held a job in TV production apparently thinks so, though.
Also starring Katherine Heigl (last seen in "Killers"), Gerard Butler (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"), Eric Winter, Nick Searcy (last seen in "The Shape of Water"), Cheryl Hines (last seen in "Wilson"), Bree Turner, Kevin Connolly (last seen in "The Notebook"), Bonnie Somerville (last seen in "The Prince"), Yvette Nicole Brown (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Nate Corddry (last seen in "Ghostbusters" (2016)), Allen Maldonado (last seen in "The Equalizer"), Noah Matthews, with cameos from Vicki Lewis (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Rocco DiSpirito, Craig Ferguson (also last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World").
RATING: 4 out of 10 hot-air balloons
ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Edward Arnold, James Craig, Jane Darwell, Anne Shirley, Randolph Scott, Gilbert Roland, Robert Wagner, Richard Widmark, Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Roland Young.
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