BEFORE: Love in the Time of Corona, Day 6 (Final day). The hits just keep on coming, after forcing restaurants to only operate at 50% capacity, suddenly today all bars, restaurants and gyms have been told to close. Take that, gym rats. But the one silver lining for my wife and me was knowing that we had reservations at a hotel in Atlantic City next weekend, and we figured if anything would stay open, it would be the casinos - which, until today, showed no signs of being willing to close. But then the announcement today that all the casinos in A.C. would close at 8 pm today, with no definite date for re-opening. OK, that's one planned trip down, now we're waiting to hear if we need to cancel our trip to Florida in May. I know the theme parks are closed temporarily (though that's not why we're planning the trip, a day at Epcot or Busch Gardens would have been nice) but I'm thinking that at some point, life needs to return to normal, only nobody can predict when that will be, or what the new normal will feel like. NYC schools also closed today, after a week of the mayor saying they would stay open, so I'm half-expecting the announcement tomorrow that nobody but first responders and caregivers should go to work, and everyone else should stay home. I'm willing to comply if it comes to that - but man, this thing has been bungled every possible way. From telling people to go to work, not go to work, go to restaurants, then don't go to restaurants, school will stay open, schools are closing, casinos will stay open, casinos are closed - nobody even knows if any of this will help the spread of the virus, or if it's already too late.
But this is the last entry in a 44-film chain all about romance, marriage, divorce, hooking up and breaking up. The whole world seems to have changed since I started it on Feb. 2 with "I Love You, Daddy". You see, I watch one banned Louis C.K. film, and a month and a half later, there's a global pandemic. Sorry, everybody, if my actions had anything to do with it - I'm thinking this would have happened anyway, but you never know, it could be that butterfly effect. I'll try to be more careful.
John Pankow carries over from "Morning Glory" - obviously I would have preferred to have all the Kevin Kline movies or the Mary Steenburgen movies together, but it just wasn't meant to be. It was all about ending the chain on THIS film so I can make the connection to something else tomorrow. I've learned a little about not being so hard-nosed about grouping, often a little space between one of the films starring a particular person is the best way to do things, it ends up being more inclusive even if it may not seem like the most efficient way of doing things.
THE PLOT: When a man is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he takes custody of his misanthropice teenage son, for whom quality time means getting high, engaging in small-time prostitution, and avoiding his father.
AFTER: This is more of a relationship-based picture than a romance-based one, though there's some romance in this California (?) neighborhood where there's some unlikely coupling going on. One suburban mother is getting it on with one of her daughter's friends, and that daughter is up for just about anything, like showering with the new boy in town, a teen that she used to know when he lived across the street. The mother used to date George Monroe, who lives across the street and is the central character here, but he's divorced and things aren't really going well for him, he works building house models for an architectural film, but gets fired when he refuses to switch to using computer models instead of practically built ones.
George's teen son lives with his mother and stepfather, but he's at that difficult age where he's wearing make-up, coloring his hair, doing drugs and "huffing" while choking himself and getting off. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. But after George collapses after being fired, the hospital informs him that he's got cancer, and since no one is discussing possible treatments, he figures he's only got a couple months left. Instead of giving up, though, he files a permit with the city to tear down his house and build a new one, after moving in to the garage for the duration of the build. He enlists Sam, his teen son for the summer to help him with the build, practically kidnapping him to force him to live with him in the garage, get clean and stay clean, lose the chin piercing and the Goth make-up.
Sam doesn't really seem interested, not until he learns about that cute girl who lives across the street, who thinks he's gay and can't resist trying to turn him back. Meanwhile Sam is not gay, although he does seem to dabble in amateur prostitution, mostly random men in cars. So, umm, OK, he's not gay, he just needs the money? A drug habit is a powerful motivator, I guess. But given the choice between risking jail time and helping to build a house, he eventually comes around to picking up a hammer.
This is a bit like "Darling Companion", in that a simple act has unforeseen consequences, and just as losing a dog somehow fixed the marriage and all the family relationships in that other film, deciding to build a new house eventually fixes the relationship between George and his son, plus it also puts him back into a good relationship with his ex-wife, eventually even the drug-dealing teen and nearly every other character in town is working on the house in some fashion. We usually think of construction as an expensive, laborious process, but who knew it also had healing and redemptive properties? Never discount a decent metaphor, I guess.
I didn't realize this film was probably a better fit for Father's Day than the romance chain, that's the kind of thing you can only learn by watching it, I guess. Actually, this film is full of absent fathers, George hasn't been there for his teen son Sam, meanwhile he ex-wife's husband sort of becomes an absent father, too, halfway through the film, and then where's the father of Alyssa, the girl from across the street? Is he deceased, or did he just take off one day, too? Anyway I have SO many other films that are appropriate for Father's Day, I could spend half of June on them. Most of them do link together so that may be what I'm gonna do - but for tomorrow I've got other plans, and then I have to link to Mother's Day first, anyway.
Now, for the results of the March Marriage Madness Tournament - I'm going to give "Life as a House" a bye into the second round, no matter what the score, because "Morning Glory" just didn't concern itself with marriage at all, so that's a DQ. So the Elite 8 films in the second round are: "Home Again", "Set It Up", "Rent", "A Good Woman", "Marriage Story", "Definitely, Maybe", "Darling Companion" and lastly, "Life As a House". I'll just match them up in order and hope the cream rises to the top: "Home Again" and "Set It Up" got the same score, so that's like a push - same goes for "Rent" and "A Good Woman", then "Marriage Story" ties with "Definitely, Maybe", but "Darling Companion" beats out "Life as a House". So let's say the final four are "Home Again", "Rent", "Marriage Story" and "Darling Companion" - I think in the end it's got to come down to "Home Again" vs. "Marriage Story", and the clear Tournament winner is "Marriage Story". Take that, NCAA.
Also starring Kevin Kline (last seen in "Darling Companion"), Kristin Scott Thomas (last seen in "Darkest Hour"), Hayden Christensen (last heard in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Mary Steenburgen (last seen in "Dean"), Jena Malone (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Jamey Sheridan (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Ian Somerhalder, Scott Bakula (last heard in "Source Code"), Sam Robards (last seen in "Bounce"), Mike Weinberg, Scotty Leavenworth (last seen in "The Majestic"), Sandra Nelson (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street") and archive footage of Owen Kline (last seen in "The Squid and the Whale").
RATING: 5 out of 10 turkey sandwiches
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