How Do You Know

Year 12, Day 60 - 2/29/20 - Movie #3,462

BEFORE: Owen Wilson carries over from "She's Funny That Way", and so do two other people, one major and one minor.  And I've hit the Reese Witherspoon section of the romance chain, she'll be here for two more films following this one.  (Sorry I don't have anything more appropriate for February 29, but I already watched the romantic comedy "Leap Year" two years ago, which is probably a good thing because it wouldn't have connected to anything in this year's chain.  But if you're looking for a perfect film to watch today, you can't go wrong with that one.)

Now, since it's the last day in February, which seemed like a month that just did NOT want to end, here are my stats for the month by viewing format:

11 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Hotel Artemis, Some Kind of Wonderful, Grace of My Heart, You Me and Dupree, Playing It Cool, Overboard, How to Be a Latin Lover, The Ugly Truth, The Bounty Hunter, She's Funny That Way, How Do You Know
8 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Love Happens, Long Shot, Happy Endings, Mermaids, What's Your Number?, Going the Distance, Waiting..., Still Waiting...
3 watched on Netflix: Laggies, Private Life, Frank and Cindy
1 watched on Academy screeners: I Love You, Daddy
1 watched on iTunes: Save the Date
1 watched on Amazon Prime: Dreamland
2 watched on Hulu: Lemon, Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
2 watched on Tubi: Paris, Je t'Aime, Before We Go
29 TOTAL

Cable is still providing me with 2/3 of my movies each month, it seems.  So no cutting the cord just yet - although I will admit that I fudged these numbers just a bit - if a film was recorded off premium cable and burned to DVD, a few times I opted to watch that film instead via Netflix or Hulu (when available) simply because then I could turn the closed captions on, which I can't do with a DVD that I made.  This choice was made purely for the sake of my (slowly) failing hearing, so that I wouldn't have to turn the volume way up or repeat sections I couldn't hear properly, which would probably wake my wife up.  But if I had burned the film to DVD from cable, I counted it as such, even if I ended up watching the film via a streaming service with captions.  OK?  (Perhaps the captions would work with my DVD player, but I lost the DVD remote years ago, and I've been using my cable remote to control the DVD player. I agree this is less than ideal, but it works.)

Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, Cesar Romero links from "Hot Millions" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links?  Answers below.

SUNDAY, MARCH 1 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 30)
6:15 am "The Thin Man" (1934) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 am "G Men" (1935) with _____________ linking to:
9:30 am "Johnny Belinda" (1948) with _____________ linking to:
11:15 am "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) with _____________ linking to:
1:30 pm "12 Angry Men" (1957) with _____________ linking to:
3:15 pm "The Song of Bernadette" (1943) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "A Letter to Three Wives" (1948) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Pinky" (1949) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 pm "Cabin in the Sky" (1943) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 am "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940) with _____________ linking to:
2:00 am "Black Narcissus" (1947) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 am "Great Expectations" (1946)

It's the next-to-last day of the Oscar-related programming, but I'm only hitting for three: "The Thin Man", "Days of Wine and Roses", and "12 Angry Men".  This month has served to point out how far I've come with classic movies, but also how many Oscar-nominated films I have NOT seen.  I'm only up to 114 seen out of 349, which is just 32.6%. Just one more chance to finish strong...

THE PLOT: After being cut from the U.S. softball team and feeling past her prime, Lisa finds herself evaluating her life and in the middle of a love triangle, as a corporate guy in crisis competes with her current baseball-playing beau.

AFTER: Honestly, it's a bit of a relief after "She's Funny That Way", which juggled about a dozen love triangles, to watch this one, which concentrates on just one.  That feels just about right, like this is the way it should be, with one person trying to decide between two potential lovers, and a love quadrangle or pentangle or dodecahedrangle seems quite outlandish by comparison.  I'm thinking somebody dared Peter Bogdanovich to co-write a screwball comedy with as many triangles as possible in it, what other explanation could there be?

Today's director, James L. Brooks, should know a thing or two about love triangles, since he directed "Broadcast News", which was one of my favorite films for a while, because I love the dry comedy of Albert Brooks.  But eventually I came to learn that Holly Hunter's character in that film ended up with the wrong partner, in my opinion - she had years of familiarity with Albert Brooks' character, and I was certainly rooting for him to win her over, but she opted for the more charming, but more phony, newsman played by William Hurt.  What a mistake - even that tacked-on ending that showed how all the characters were successful in their lives years later didn't make up for the fact that she made the wrong decision.

The scenario in "How Do You Know" is different of course, but the love triangle at the heart of the film is the same.  Will Lisa make the "right choice" between George and Matty?  Is there even such thing as a "right choice", or do you have to live with a person for years or marry them in order to find out?  And then, over time, will a "right choice" become a wrong choice?  People change, after all.  Or is the existence of a "right choice" just a matter of opinion, and instead maybe we all just have to make the best decisions we can and then live our lives in the best way after making them?  Discuss.

A big problem here is that this feels like two different stories that got mixed together - Lisa's story is about losing her place on a sports team, and then having to proceed with her life in some kind of different role, and figuring out what that is.  Then George's story is about someone being blamed for some kind of corporate wrong-doing, and being made the scapegoat in a federal investigation.  He does go on a date with Lisa, arranged by friends, and keeps pointing out why this is a terrible, terrible time for him to be starting a new relationship.  OK, so then, umm, why do it?  If I were single and I had WAY too much going on at work, maybe I'd wait for things to calm down a bit before looking for a date.  Besides, he was in a relationship already, it's just that his girlfriend wanted to take a break while he was the subject of a federal investigation.  That's not breaking up, that's taking a break, there's clearly a difference.  (OK, it's possible she was just looking for an excuse to dump him, but the film doesn't really clarify this.)

It's a bit annoying that we don't learn anything about the investigation, like what corporate crime George is accused of, until about 2/3 of the way into the film.  Before that, there's a large number of instances of characters saying, "I can't discuss this with you...." or "We can't talk about this here..." or in one case, George literally running away just as his father is about to discuss what the case is about. Doesn't it make more sense that a person would want to learn what crime he's being charged with?  If you were being arrested, for example, and you hadn't done anything wrong, wouldn't your FIRST question be "What am I being accused of?"  Instead it's a blatant case of delay, delay, delay because the film's writer or director has determined that the audience shouldn't know yet, but this doesn't really work from the character's P.O.V.  Nobody is so much of a doormat that they would just take the fall for whatever their father did and not even be slightly curious about it.  Or maybe the director doesn't think we can properly juggle the two storylines at once, so they have to get the love triangle to a certain place before we can learn about the criminal case?  I don't know, something was very odd here with this story.

Instead we have to wait, while Lisa dates Matty, then has a date with George, then moves in with Matty, then moves out and seeks refuge with George, then goes back to Matty, then bonds with George again.  After several rounds of this, I just wanted to yell "PICK ONE already!"

Tony Shalhoub is VERY underused here as a therapist (or psychiatrist, not sure because he's only on screen for about 30 seconds).  Which is also a missed opportunity story-wise, because I think his patient, Lisa, could really have used some therapy or analysis.  It's not just that she had to decide between two men, it's the fact that she kept walking out on one boyfriend whenever he did something that she considered immature.  Do you know what else is immature?  Packing your bags and moving out whenever there's a small bump in the rocky road of relationships.  Mature people stick around, discuss their feelings, and let the other person know that what they did was inappropriate or immature - how else is the immature person ever going to learn how to grow up unless someone tells him?  She probably shouldn't have bothered to unpack when she moved in with Matty if she was going to move out at the drop of a hat.  Matty acted jealous one time, she stormed out.  Matty had different theories about monogamy, she stormed out.  So maybe Matty's not the only one acting immature - boy, if only there were a therapist that she could have talked to about this....

What woman gives up this quickly on a guy, and so many times?  I thought that if a woman marked a man as possible husband (or at least live-in boyfriend) material, she would consider any problems with his habits as "fixable" and then set out to change him.  Isn't that the way it's supposed to work?  Look, I might have been rooting for George over Matty here, but I still think that maybe Lisa didn't give Matty much of a chance to change his ways.  No matter what your gender, orientation or social status, I'm all for giving people second chances, even third chances, and doing everything possible to see if you can get a relationship to work out.  Only when you've deemed that it's absolutely impossible, that person is never going to change or try to improve themselves, that's when it's OK to walk out.  (Or if they're violent, or prone to violence, but that's another issue.)  I wanted Lisa to choose George for the right reasons, and I'm just not sure that "Matty's self-centered and being a bit of a jerk" are the right reasons.  But at least I agree with the choice this time, made by a character in a James L. Brooks film to settle a love triangle.  Matty might be like a Camaro and George is more like a Camry - you might want to test-drive the Camaro for fun, but you should probably buy the Camry, it's more reliable and requires less maintenance.

I wonder to what degree the character of Matty was based on Derek Jeter, who was notorious for giving his conquests lovely parting gifts after a one-night stand.  Here Matty's got a full selection of Washington Nationals sweatshirts that women can wear home, so they don't have to do the "walk of shame" in the same clothing that they wore on their date.  This film came out in 2010, and the news about Derek Jeter giving out gift baskets after his dates broke in 2011, so now I'm not sure.  Jeter had a good thing going, until he accidentally gave a woman the same gift basket a second time, thereby proving that he didn't really remember having dated her before.  Whoopsie.

By all accounts, this film was a box-office bomb - the budget was $120 million due to the high salaries demanded from certain cast members, and it only made $30 million in the U.S. and $48 million worldwide. (Somebody probably got fired over this...)  It came out 10 years ago, and Jack Nicholson has not been in a feature film since, even though this would be a terrible choice to be the last film in his career.  Sounds like somebody needs to lower his salary if he wants any kind of career re-invention like Joe Pesci got - then again, he doesn't have to work again if he doesn't want to, his filmography will always be quite respectable, if you discount this one.

Also starring Reese Witherspoon (last seen in "A Wrinkle in Time"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Jack Nicholson (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Kathryn Hahn (also carrying over from "She's Funny That Way"), John Tormey (ditto), Mark Linn-Baker (last seen in "Adam"), Lenny Venito (last seen in "God's Pocket"), Molly Price (ditto), Ron McLarty (last seen in "Heartburn"), Shelley Conn, Domenick Lombardozzi (last seen in "The Irishman"), Teyonah Parris (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), Tony Shalhoub (last seen in "Movie 43"), Dean Norris (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Andrew Wilson (last seen in "Whip It"), Yuki Matsuzaki (last seen in "The Pink Panther 2")

RATING: 5 out of 10 unopened toothbrushes

ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Harold Huber, Monty Blue, Charles Bickford, Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain, Ethel Waters, Rex Ingram, Sabu, Jean Simmons.

She's Funny That Way

Year 12, Day 59 - 2/28/20 - Movie #3,461

BEFORE: Jennifer Aniston carries over from "The Bounty Hunter", and like I said yesterday, it feels like deja vu, because Owen Wilson's back, so is Illeana Douglas, and Kathryn Hahn - the chain's circled back on itself several times over.

Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, Herbert Rudley links from "The Seventh Cross" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links?  Answers below.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 29 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 29)
6:15 am "Brewster's Millions" (1945) with _____________ linking to:
7:45 am "Gold Diggers of 1933" (1933) with _____________ linking to:
9:30 am "The Champ" (1979) with _____________ linking to:
11:45 am "The Four Musketeers" (1974) with _____________ linking to:
1:45 pm "The Swarm" (1978) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 pm "The Miracle Worker" (1962) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "The Graduate" (1967) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Tootsie" (1982) with _____________ linking to:
10:15 pm "Oh, God!" (1977) with _____________ linking to:
12:15 am "The Sunshine Boys" (1975) with _____________ linking to:
2:15 am "California Suite" (1978) with _____________ linking to:
4:15 am "Hot Millions" (1968)

All right, more populist material and fewer obscure films!  I've seen "The Champ", "The Four Musketeers", "The Graduate", "Tootsie", "Oh, God!", "The Sunshine Boys" and "California Suite".  I may have seen "The Miracle Worker", but I can't prove it, I might have seen the remake, as I did with "Brewster's Millions".  So I'm counting another 7 out of 12, which gets me to 111 seen out of 337, so I'm back up to 32.9%. Next step, breaking that 33% barrier one last time...

THE PLOT: On the set of a theater directors new project, a love triangle forms between him, his wife, and the call girl-turned-actress cast in the production.

AFTER: I wanted to like this one, I really did, but then the movie did everything it possibly could to make me HATE it, I'm sorry to report.  This seemed at first like it would be a fun romp, as a peek behind the scenes of a theater company's production, and the sort of on-again, off-again relationships that one might expect actors and other theater personnel to have.  In other words, it's rich territory for a rom-com, especially when things are happening on and off-stage that could reflect or bounce back on each other.  The director of this one, Peter Bogdanovich, also directed "Noises Off" back in the day, and while that was a very silly film, it was also complicated at the same time, showing us the same production several times, once from the theater audience's point of view and then again from behind the stage as things threatened to fall apart during a performance.

But as this one started to develop, I quickly realized that wasn't what was going on at all in "She's Funny That Way".  Instead it felt like Bogdanovich was doing some kind of tribute to Woody Allen's films, the way that NYC creative people argue when they're in relationships and then try to charm each other when they're not.  I'm reminded that a few of these actors have also been in Woody's movies, like Owen Wilson played a writer in "Midnight in Paris" and plays a theater director here - (I'm sure there are other examples, like Debi Mazar was in "Wonder Wheel" and Cybill Shepherd was in "Alice").  My point is, I got a very Woody Allen vibe off of this, and nobody can really do Woody but Woody, anyone who tries is doomed to fall short.  You can't just throw a huge cast together and explore all the improbable coincidences between them and come out with "Hannah and Her Sisters" on the other side.

Another Woody connection was "Mighty Aphrodite", which was also about a prostitute trying to rise above through a relationship with a writer.  And Mira Sorvino's character had a notorious New Yawk accent in that one, and the same goes for Imogen Poots' character here - only Poots' accent is downright terrible.  I know she's a British actress, forcing her to speak with a very phony Brooklyn-like drawl is some kind of movie crime. Some people (like Debi Mazar) were born into it, other people might be able to fake it, but this actress is just NOT one of them.  It was so strained that it was painful to listen to - maybe if you don't live in New York this might be the way that you THINK people here talk, but it just isn't.  She sounded like Alice Kramden from "The Honeymooners" with her jaw wired shut.  Very distracting.

But I think the biggest movie crime of all here is the very simplistic portrayal of gender politics - all the men are lying, cheating womanizers who can't stay faithful, not even the married ones, and then nearly all of the women are prostitutes or ex-prostitutes.  Well, OK, except two, but one of them runs the call-girl agency, and that's nearly the same thing.  How did we get to this, in modern times, where a story so neatly sells out BOTH genders?  Didn't this line of thinking feel very outdated to anyone else?  Look, I can accept it for the single characters, especially the actors, because we all know that actors have to get up on stage (or on a film set), and kiss (at the very least) other people as part of the job - sometimes the emotions are going to follow the actions, I get that.  And actors are also vain people to begin with - I know I'm generalizing, but work with me here - and then if they're FAMOUS to boot, there's probably a steady stream of people who know them and are interested in them, that's all fine.

But here's where my problem lies - Arnold, the male lead, Owen Wilson's character, is the married theater director, but as soon as he comes to NYC to start rehearsals on the new play, his first phone call is to order a call girl sent to his hotel room.  Already I don't like this guy, we're not getting off on a good note, I think.  After dinner, drinks and a roll in the hay, he offers the call girl $30,000 in cash to quit being a prostitute and start a new career.  It just so happens that she's interested in acting - boy, if only she knew a theater director who was casting a new play!  And if you notice, he offered her a case full of money to quit prostituting herself, only it was done AFTER he slept with her.  So what's his motivation?  Is he genuinely interested in helping a woman improve herself, or does he have some odd fascination with being her last client?  Is this being done to feed his ego, or what?  Plus, who the heck does this?  He's got no guarantee that she's going to get out of the life, so is this really the best way to help women improve their lives, or could the money be used better somehow, by donating it to charity?  On top of all that, I thought we were supposed to be more enlightened about sex workers now, but paying women to get out of that racket seems like rewarding them and stigmatizing them at the same time, and that's not cool.

Anyway, Isabella (or "Glo", her street name) takes the money and decides to become an actress, only to show up at the casting call for THE EXACT SAME PLAY that Arnold is directing - so he has to pretend not to recognize her, and she, well, honestly she seems so dim that she genuinely doesn't recognize him from the night before, which seems a bit odd.  She also doesn't think to ask why he's using a different name the next day - maybe she's on to his game, but somehow I don't think so.  The play's writer and the other actors convince Arnold to give her the role, which is great, that won't be awkward at all.  Essentially, the story here has to bend over backwards to avoid the usual convention of the "casting couch", where an actress had to sleep with the director to get a role.  Here she sleeps with him, and gets the role, but those two things aren't connected.  Except they ARE, because he gave her the money - so it's not much of an improvement.

By now, Arnold's wife has shown up - she's an actress in the play - and has no idea that she's co-starring with her husband's lover.  But her other (male) co-star is HER ex-lover, and the coincidences just keep on cascading over each other.  This is the start of a series of overlapping love triangles that strains the boundaries of believability.  Every person is romantically involved with at least two other people, it seems.  By the time the film gets around to revealing that the detective that the judge hired to follow around the call girl he's obsessed with just happens to be the father of the man who's ALSO in the play and is ALSO the boyfriend of the therapist who's got almost everyone else as her patient, it's so impossibly unbelievable as to nearly be a parody of the whole rom-com genre.  There are 7 million people in New York City - the chances of any 10 of them being this interconnected is utterly mathematically impossible.  The story is almost painful in its outlandishness.

Meanwhile, wherever Arnold goes, he encounters women who used to be prostitutes - and apparently he's pulled this $30,000 case-of-money thing (which the film improbably calls "throwing squirrels to nuts", for reasons).  The problem is, they all want to thank him for helping turn their lives around, and he can't let his wife find out how many hookers he slept with.  Ha ha, isn't that funny?  Well, no.

I've got a NITPICK POINT about the fact that Arnold's children are absent from most of the movie.  Why are they even part of the story, if they're not going to be around?  Why did his wife bring them to New York if they weren't ever going to see their parents, who are busy all day working on the new play, plus having affairs at night (which is why everyone comes to NY?).  I guess the kids are staying at their grandparents house?  We see SOMEBODY bring the kids to the opening night of the play, but the film doesn't explain this - so apparently I've already thought about this more than the screenwriter or director did.

For that matter, why is Arnold still alone in his room at the Barclay?  When his wife came to town, why wouldn't he share that room (or move to one at a different hotel) with his wife and kids?  And with his wife in town, why would he call Isabella up and invite her to his room?  I know, to set up the madcap bedroom-farce slamming door thing when his wife finds her there - but really?  Does he have two hotel rooms at the same time?  Because nobody does that.  I would IMAGINE that somebody cheating on his wife might want to use a different hotel, but we're in "improbable coincidence" land here, so everyone associated with this play just happens to be in the same hotel, on the same floor.  Again, mathematics tell me that this just wouldn't happen, unless it was pre-planned.

It's just too bad that this comedy fired off story bits in every possible direction, and then there was just no follow-up on anything - for example, at one point the dogs of two characters run off together, away from the stage, where all the love triangles have come to their boiling points, all the conflicts are raging and everyone is fighting.  But...nobody's going to chase after their beloved dogs?  If my pet ran off, I'd probably chase after it, but here nobody could seem to be bothered, I guess they didn't really like their dogs?  Or maybe the dogs were desperately trying to get out of this movie, and the actors really couldn't blame them - they probably would have run away too if they could.  At another point a taxi driver was driving Arnold and his wife across town and found them so annoying that he just abandoned his cab (which no NYC cab driver would EVER do) and hopped in another cab as a passenger to get away.  See what I mean?  But there was zero explanation, zero follow-up on what happened next, the characters in the cab just sort of shrug and walk off, they're too dumb to even drive themselves in the cab to where they needed to go...

Also starring Owen Wilson (last seen in "You, Me & Dupree"), Imogen Poots (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Kathryn Hahn (last seen in "Private Life"), Will Forte (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Rhys Ifans (last heard in "Exit Through the Gift Shop"), Austin Pendleton (last heard in "Finding Dory"), George Morfogen, Cybill Shepherd (last seen in "The Heartbreak Kid"), Richard Lewis (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Debi Mazar (last seen in "Wonder Wheel"), Illeana Douglas (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Jennifer Esposito (last seen in "The Bachelor"), Tovah Feldshuh (last seen in "Happy Accidents"), Joanna Lumley (last seen in "Paddington 2"), John Robinson, Ahna O'Reilly (last seen in "Marshall"), Lucy Punch (last seen in "Stand Up Guys"), Poppy Delevingne (last seen in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), John Tormey, Jake Hoffman (last seen in "The Irishman"), Jake Lucas, Sydney Lucas, with cameos from Tatum O'Neal (last seen in "Paper Moon"), Graydon Carter (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Quentin Tarantino (last heard in "The Hateful Eight), Colleen Camp (last seen in "Rumor Has It..."), Michael Shannon (last seen in "Pottersville") and archive footage of Charles Boyer (last seen in "Barefoot in the Park"), Jennifer Jones (last seen in "A Farewell to Arms"), Peter Bogdanovich (last seen in "While We're Young"), Lorraine Bracco (last seen in "Riding in Cars with Boys").

RATING: 4 out of 10 giant menus in an Italian restaurant

ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Dennis O'Keefe, Joan Blondell, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain, Patty Duke, Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Teri Garr, George Burns, Walter Matthau, Maggie Smith.

The Bounty Hunter

Year 12, Day 58 - 2/27/20 - Movie #3,460

BEFORE: Gerard Butler carries over from "The Ugly Truth". A couple of other actors who were seen before in the romance chain but were NOT used as links are back tonight, and then a couple more are coming back tomorrow - it turned out to be an intricate grouping of 42 films that was connected to itself in many different ways, so that's what enabled me to switch around the order at the 11th hour and put out a more coherent month-plus of programming (according to my judgment) that still also kept the chain going.

Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, Herman Bing links from "The Guardsman" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links?  Answers below.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 28)
6:00 am "The Great Ziegfeld" (1936) with _____________ linking to:
9:00 am "Mrs. Miniver" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
11:30 am "The Actress (1953) with _____________ linking to:
1:15 pm "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" (1972) with _____________ linking to:
3:30 pm "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958) with _____________ linking to:
5:45 pm "East of Eden" (1955) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 pm "Splendor in the Grass" (1961) with _____________ linking to:
12:15 am "Shampoo" (1975) with _____________ linking to:
2:15 am "Best Friends" (1982) with _____________ linking to:
4:15 am "The Seventh Cross" (1944)

Ah, I'm doing much better with tomorrow's line-up than I've done for quite a while - I've seen "Mrs. Miniver", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "East of Eden", "Rebel Without a Cause", "Splendor in the Grass", "Shampoo" and "Best Friends".  So another 7 out of 11 gets me to 104 seen out of 325, so I'm back up to 32%. I may finish where I wanted to after all. 3 days left.

THE PLOT: A bounty hunter learns that his next target is his ex-wife, a reporter working on a murder cover-up.  Soon after their reunion, the always-at-odds duo find themselves on an adventure, running for their lives.

AFTER: Let's get some of the weirdness out of the way first - parts of this film were shot in two places that I know very well - Atlantic City and Sunset Park, Brooklyn.  My wife and I drive down to A.C. two or three times a year, and we do the Sunday-to-Tuesday thing because the hotel rooms are cheaper (shhh, that's our little secret) and what's the point of going away if you can't take a Monday off from work now and again?  Geez, everybody goes away for the weekend, the real travel experts go somewhere off-peak, right?  Anyway, Jennifer Aniston's character's mother is performing at the Borgata, a place we've been to several times, and stayed at once (it's slightly off the main strip, in another section of town with Golden Nugget and Harrah's nearby).  Then both lead characters end up getting a room at the (Trump) Taj Mahal, a hotel we never stayed at, with good reason.  When we started going to Atlantic City regulary several years ago, people were picketing that hotel for unfair labor practices, and this was a couple years before anybody really knew how terrible Trump was.  But I think at the time he'd sold the casino, and there was still a dispute about the timetable for getting his name off the casino signs.  Then the casino closed - but ironically if they'd stayed open past 2016, the current owners probably couldn't have taken his name off the signs quickly enough.  Anyway, that building is now the Hard Rock Casino, and we went there last year to see a Pentatonix concert.

The other place I recognized was Sunset Park - I'm out in Brooklyn 2 days a week working at an animation studio there, and I recognized the BQE overpass on Third Avenue, and I often stop at that EXACT same Dunkin Donuts (at 3rd Ave. and 35th St.) to get a dunkaccino on cold days, before heading home.  I never would have guessed that Jennifer Aniston was in that Dunkin parking lot about 10 years ago filming exteriors - that's where her character, Nicole, finds her contact's car after he goes missing.  I was just there today, but they were out of the special February Brownie Batter heart-shaped donuts, so I just got a coffee.

Unfortunately, I found the rest of the suicide/murder cover-up case very hard to follow.  This plot ran concurrently with the "bounty hunter has to bring in his ex-wife" storyline, and in my defense, it's hard to track a case that a reporter's working on when every few minutes her ex-husband is throwing her in a car trunk or handcuffing her to something.  It's very obvious that this plot was conceived to get these two exec to spend time together again, and they're forced to work together to get back to NYC and also solve this case or whatever, so nobody will be that surprised when they start to have feelings for each other again.  OK, at first maybe one or both of them is just pretending to have feelings, but before long they'll be genuine, I guarantee it.

I didn't know we had any bounty hunters in the NYC area - I also didn't know that it's somehow OK to send one out to catch his ex-wife when she doesn't show up for her bond hearing.  Isn't this some huge kind of conflict of interest?  Bounty hunters aren't supposed to get personally involved, and that's probably impossible when he's been previously married to the target.  OK, so maybe he'll enjoy this, but then again, he's not supposed to enjoy his work this much.  Anyway, this film is outdated now because NYC's drastically reduced the use of bail for most non-violent offenders, so the news has been full of cases where people keep committing dozens and dozens of petty crimes, and just keep getting released back out on the street to do it again.  That pendulum just keeps swinging too far in each direction until we (never) land on a happy medium, doesn't it?

Somehow their investigative journey back from Atlantic City to Manhattan takes them to a golf course, the bed and breakfast where they spent their honeymoon, a tattoo parlor and then a strip club, but by this time I'd lost most of my interest in connecting the dots of the case, plus there were too many criminal parties looking for our wayward couple, and I also lost track of who was working for who, and what everyone was trying to accomplish.  I'm glad these two solved the case and were able to reconcile, but by that point I'd already tuned out.

Also starring Jennifer Aniston (last seen in "Love Happens"), Jason Sudeikis (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Jeff Garlin (last seen in "Lemon"), Christine Baranski (last heard in "Trolls"), Cathy Moriarty (last seen in "Another Stakeout"), Ritchie Coster (last seen in "Let Me In"), Joel Marsh Garland (last seen in "The Week Of"), Siobhan Fallon Hogan (last seen in "Dogville"), Peter Greene (last seen in "Permanent Midnight"), Dorian Missick, Carol Kane (last seen in "The Sisters Brothers"), Adam LeFevre (last seen in "Adam"), Adam Rose (last seen in "The Squid and the Whale"), David Costabile (last seen in "13 Hours"), Matt Malloy (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Jason Kolotouros, Charlie Hewson (also last seen in "Going the Distance")

RATING: 5 out of 10 horses racing at Monmouth Park

ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Reginald Owen, Teresa Wright, Anthony Perkins, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, James Dean, Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, and Jessica Tandy.

The Ugly Truth

Year 12, Day 57 - 2/26/20 - Movie #3,459

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.

Still Waiting...

Year 12, Day 56 - 2/25/20 - Movie #3,458

BEFORE: Justin Long carries over from "Waiting..." as do NINE other actors, which is really something, but I supposed it's not too unexpected for a sequel film.

Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, William Frawley links from "Something to Sing About" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links?  Answers below.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 26)
6:00 am "My Wild Irish Rose" (1947) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 am "Captains of the Clouds" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 am "They Were Expendable" (1945) with _____________ linking to:
12:15 pm "The Long Voyage Home" (1940) with _____________ linking to:
2:15 pm "The Enchanted Cottage" (1945) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 pm "Foreign Correspondent" (1940) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "Primrose Path" (1940) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Swing Time" (1936) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 pm "Royal Wedding" (1951) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 am "Good News" (1947) with _____________ linking to:
1:45 am "The Three Musketeers" (1948) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 am "Green Dolphin Street" (1947)

Doing a little better today, thanks to my previous chains where I watched every outstanding Alfred Hitchcock film and every film starring missing link #8.  So another 3 out of 12 gets me to 96 seen out of 302, but that's still only 31.8%.

THE PLOT: More misadventures of the staff of the fictional chain restaurant Shenaniganz as they cope with competition from a Hooters-esque restaurant called Ta-Ta's Wing Shack.

AFTER: I don't know if it's possible for a 2-film franchise to "lose its way" in its sequel, especially when the first film didn't have much of a "way" or a "sense of direction" to begin with, but they sure tried.  The biggest stars from "Waiting..." were Ryan Reynolds and Anna Faris, and neither appeared in this sequel, released five years later.  About half of the second-level stars, like John Francis Daley, Dane Cook and Wendie Malick didn't come back either, or perhaps they weren't asked to.  So the promotions department found themselves having to champion a film where the biggest stars were actors who are usually in supporting roles, like Luis Guzman and Chi McBride.  Guzman's a lot of fun, but have you ever heard anyone say, "Hey, let's go out and see that new film with Luis Guzman in it?"  Outside of the Guzman family, I don't think anyone has ever made their selection at a cinema based on his involvement.  Virtual unknowns like Robert Patrick Benedict are also front and center on the poster, and so is Andy Milonakis, who made his fame as "that annoying fat white kid who thinks he can rap" on an MTV comedy series and who most people were trying their best to forget about by 2009.

Still, a couple of comedy stars like David Koechner and Justin Long returned, though their roles were minimal, basically long cameos, and their requests to be left off the poster and out of the credits were apparently granted. That's, umm, not a good sign, when actors, traditionally an attention-craving bunch, don't mind having their efforts not mentioned.  Another bad sign, I recorded this from Epix's "Drive-In" channel, but you can also watch this film for FREE at imdb.com - or on Tubi or Vudu, also for FREE.  In this new streaming age, is any film that you can watch without paying really worth watching at all?  Amazon and iTunes are both renting "Still Waiting..." for $3.99 but I bet they don't get many takers - like, why would anyone pay four bucks if they can watch this on another service for nothing? 

Anyway, because I'm a completist - basically I'm watching "Still Waiting..." so that YOU don't have to, so "You're welcome." - let's catch up with the remains of the Shenaniganz crew after Monty, Serena, Mitch, Amy and Floyd all moved on to other jobs.  Raddimus is still cooking, but he moved over to Ta-Ta's, which is doing great business just because they have sexy waitresses in tight shorts and halter tops.  Gee, what restaurant does THAT sound like?  Calvin also moved over to Ta-Ta's after he finally got his swagger back and can urinate again, he's now the manager of the Wing Shack.  Naomi and Natasha are still working at Shenaniganz, but manager Dan got bumped up to district manager, and Dean somehow leapfrogged over him and is HIS boss (he explains late in the film how this happened).  And dishwasher Bishop is gone, too, only he shows up here as a customer to dispense more philosophical wisdom.  (I was kind of hoping he was the secret regional manager, but alas, it wasn't to be.)  Oh, and Nick and T-Dog are still taking out the trash, seems appropriate. 

Ugh, already I feel I care too much about these characters' lives, when none of them are really interesting enough in the long run.  The newcomers include manager Dennis, who's a restaurant lifer who thought that with each step up the corporate ladder he'd finally have access to more money and all the hot women, only that just hasn't panned out for him.  There's also "playa" Agnew, who seems like about what you'd expect to get when you cast a "Ryan Reynolds replacement", cook Mason who can't talk to girls because of a speech impediment, other cook Chuck who loves to torment Mason, bartender Hank who's in a band (nuff said) and dweeby Joshua, who has stress dreams about four tables being seated at once in his section, then being naked in front of those customers. 

When you get right down to it, "Still Waiting..." is nothing but one stress dream after another, which for all I know, could be a very accurate portrayal of working in a busy restaurant.  There's the "everybody's suddenly ordering French onion soup" stress moment, there's the "we need to have our best sales day ever to make our quarterly profit margin" stress moment, and over at Ta-Ta's there's the attempt to turn the "penis-showing game" into the "vagina-showing game" (Umm, didn't they establish in the first film why that can't be a thing?) and the "manager wants to sleep with all the hot waitresses" stress moment.  This was filmed years before the #metoo movement, but I'm pretty sure that sort of behavior was a whole stack of H.R. violations, even back in 2009.

If you want to watch a film about a mismanaged restaurant, with a bunch of screw-up waiters trying to hit a sales quota in order to satisfy a clueless manager, then please, I beg you, watch "The Slammin' Salmon" instead.  At least that film is funny the second time you watch it.  Again, "You're welcome." 

Also starring Robert Patrick Benedict, David Koechner, Luis Guzman, Alanna Ubach, Chi McBride, Vanessa Lengies, Max Kasch, Andy Milonakis, J.D. Evermore (all carrying over from "Waiting..."), John Michael Higgins (last seen in "Shimmer Lake"), Steve Howey (last seen in "Game Over, Man!"), Rob Kerkovich, Erin Foster, Philip Vaden, Chris Williams, Rocco Botte, Kirk Fox (last seen in "The Patriot"), Amanda Loncar, Tania Raymonde, K.D. Aubert, Danneel Harris (last seen in "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas), Janet Varney (last heard in "Norm of the North"), Maggie Lawson, Jennifer Howard, Jennifer Rhodes, with cameos from Missi Pyle (last seen in "Captain Fantastic"), Adam Carolla (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet").

RATING: 3 out of 10 hula hoops

ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Dennis Morgan, Louis Jean Heydt, Ward Bond, Mildred Natwick, Herbert Marshall, Joel McCrea, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Peter Lawford, June Allyson, Frank Morgan.

Waiting...

Year 12, Day 55 - 2/24/20 - Movie #3,457

BEFORE: Justin Long carries over from "Going the Distance", and Anna Faris is back after a short absence.  Honestly, I wasn't sure if this film qualified as a romance film, and it may not, but that's OK, I could sure use a break from rom-coms, even a straight com would be appreciated right now.  I chose this film to go here because it links one section (let's say #2) of my romance chain with the next - otherwise I would have had a gap here, or a break in the chain.  But including this film (and its sequel) allowed me to fit two big chunks of romance chain together and continue on.  And both "Waiting" films link heavy to each other, but not to many other films - so sticking them in February helps to get them off my list, and free up some room for other films, so it's a win-win, even if they don't 100% fit here thematically.

But hey, Drew Barrymore's character in "Going the Distance" worked as a waitress, so this fits here no matter what, because I say it does.

Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, Janet Leigh links from "The Naked Spur" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links?  Answers below.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 25)
6:30 am "That Forsyte Woman" (1949) with _____________ linking to:
8:45 am "Varsity Show" (1937) with _____________ linking to:
10:15 am "Cain and Mabel" (1936) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 pm "Bachelor Mother" (1939) with _____________ linking to:
1:30 pm "B.F.'s Daughter" (1948) with _____________ linking to:
3:30 pm "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" (1934) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "The Divorcee" (1930) with _____________ linking to:
9:30 pm "Night Must Fall" (1937) with _____________ linking to:
11:45 pm "Sister Kenny" (1946) with _____________ linking to:
2:00 am "The Sea Wolf" (1941) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 am "Something to Sing About" (1937)

Damn, I've only seen one of these, "Mutiny on the Bounty". I made it a point a few years back to watch every version of that story ever filmed.  But 93 seen out of 290 is starting to look like a failing grade, and there are only 6 days left to redeem myself.  Down to 32% seen.

THE PLOT: Young employees at Shenaniganz restaurant collectively stave off boredom and adulthood with their antics.

AFTER: Well, I think there's at least a tangential connection to romance, because Ryan Reynold's character has a reputation as a prolific dater, even though most of his partners tend to be under the age of 18.  Yeah, that's not good.  But hey, there's room for some character growth as he learns to NOT sleep with underage girls, so that's good, right?  The rest of the film is way off theme, but I'll still need to watch this film's sequel tomorrow for a particular actor who's NOT in today's film that will link me back up to the scheduled romance chain.  Anna Faris, Justin Long, you can see how I got here, right?  And then Ryan Reynolds, who's NOT in the sequel, will be back again for 2 films when I get near the end of the romance/relationship chain.  It's all part of the plan...

Maybe I would have had more of a connection to this film if I had ever worked in a restaurant, but I haven't - the closest I ever came was a summer at the concession stand in Showcase Cinemas in Dedham, MA before my last year at NYU.  Like, we still had to know a little about proper handling of food and such, but not much.  Most everything was packaged, like the candy and the ice-cream bits, except for the popcorn and soda, and really, food cleanliness is just common sense stuff like washing your hands and not directly touching people's food.  But of course those rules go right out the window at Shenaniganz, especially if a customer is rude or bossy to the wait-staff.  Then their food is going to get all the "special toppings", from spit and dandruff to "fromunda" cheese, which involves rubbing someone's garlic bread in a very personal place.  Yeah, this is every diner's nightmare, right up there on screen...reasons why it's always good to be polite to your waiter in a chain restaurant.  And tip well, or be a regular customer with a good reputation if you can.

I've seen other takes on this in other comedies, of course - most notably that "other" comedy about no-good waiters, "The Slammin' Salmon", plus "South Park" did a hilarious take-down of self-rightesous Yelp! reviewers with a song about all the bodily fluids that waiters could put in their food... (featuring the unforgettable lyrics "Boogers and cum, you like that queefy quarter pounder?  Boogers and cum, how 'bout some feces with your flounder?"  And we see all this through the "training" of a new employee, as the irresponsible wait-staff instructs him in the finer points of playing a game where the men try to drop their pants at random places and times, just to get the other men to see their genitalia, the weirder the angle the better, just so they can call the other guy "queer" and then kick him in the ass.

But come on, even the "get back at the customer" jokes lose some of their bite just because we all know this is a movie, and you can't force an actor to eat a plate of food that people have spit in and done other bad, naughty things to.  You know that someone just yells "cut" and then they can replace the tainted food with a different plate, right?  I mean, I know that actors are little more than trained monkeys, but even they have rights on a set.  At the very least they filmed the scene with the customer eating the food first, and then shot the scene with the waiters fouling up an identical-looking plate later, or even the next day, because that's how editing works.  People are still talking about that John Waters film "Pink Flamingos", where the drag-queen Divine appeared to eat dog crap - you're really naive if you think that's really what happened.  Everything in making movies is built on illusion, and I don't believe for a second that any actor willingly did this - not when it's so easy to fashion a piece of chocolate to look like a dog turd.  Don't believe the hype.

OK, so maybe this isn't exactly "Pride and Prejudice" here.  Really low-brow humor, and of course I watch most of my movies by myself, and maybe that's not the best way to do things sometimes.  I didn't think much of "The Slammin' Salmon" after watching it alone late at night, but my wife told me she found the movie very entertaining (we both love the other Broken Lizard movies, especially "Beerfest" and "Super Troopers") so I watched it again with her, and it was a totally different experience.  Some comedies are best watched in groups larger than one, I guess.  So as always, your mileage may vary, but my rating is based on my solo experience, how I feel TODAY about the movie I watched last night.  And that wasn't very encouraging, there wasn't much of a message in the film, except that jobs tend to suck, and I knew that already.

Then there are all sorts of story diversions that never really pay off, like the guy who's very pee shy - where can that story possibly go?  Or the two white rapper busboys who just get stoned while taking out the trash - they don't even know how to properly inhale the CO2 from the whipped-cream cans, it looks like they're eating it instead, which doesn't even get you high.  Their whole storyline also goes nowhere - is that the point?  That the plot, by going nowhere most of the time, symbolizes their dead-end jobs?  I think assuming that is giving the screenwriter too much credit.  I'm still "Waiting..." for some kind of pay-off, but I don't think it's coming.

The one thing that I think the film gets right is the fact that only the VERY BEST waiters are able to remember an order without writing it down.  Most who attempt this end up forgetting some items or details, or they have to go back to the customer and ask them to repeat their order again and again.  For God sakes, unless you're a genetic freak with a superlative memory, write that down!  Even if you don't think you have to, at least just write the order down for appearance's sake, because that will make the diners feel more secure.  We had this happen to us on 25-cent Wing Night at our local pub, I had a complex order with three flavors of wings, plus an app, and the guy just WOULD not write it down.  BUT then he had to double-check the order, and STILL forgot the app.  PLUS he had to write down the order for the check anyway (because he hadn't put the app into the POS system, clearly) as "proof" that he got the order right in the first place, but because it was hand-written, it only proved to me that he wrote it all down AFTER I complained about what was missing from my order.  Nice try.

Also starring Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "The Captive), Anna Faris (last seen in "Overboard"), David Koechner (last seen in "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse"), Luis Guzman (last seen in "Top Five"), Chi McBride (last seen in "The Great White Hype"), John Francis Daley (last seen in "Game Night"), Kaitlin Doubleday (last seen in "Catch Me If You Can"), Robert Patrick Benedict, Alanna Ubach (last heard in "Coco"), Vanessa Lengies, Max Kasch (last seen in "Holes"), Andy Milonakis, Dane Cook (last seen in "Mr. Brooks"), Jordan Ladd (last seen in "Death Proof"), Emmanuelle Chriqui (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Wendie Malick (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel"), Skyler Stone, J.D. Evermore (last seen in "The Host").

RATING: 3 out of 10 training videos

ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Halliwell Hobbes, Walter Catlett, E.E. Clive, Charles Coburn, Spring Byington, Charles Laughton, Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell, Alexander Knox, Gene Lockhart.

Going the Distance

Year 12, Day 54 - 2/23/20 - Movie #3,456

BEFORE: Kicking off the second half of the romance chain, but I find myself counting the days until I can watch an action-packed sci-fi or comic book movie again.  Now I'm regretting making this chain so damn long, but I go where the linking tells me - I suppose I could have saved some of these romance films for next year, but part of me wants to just clear the category as best as I can, because more films will come in to fill up the empty spaces.  However, I have no idea if those new films will help form a coherent chain for next year, it's way too early to know that.  Thankfully I don't second guess myself by looking back on which films I could have NOT watched the year before that could have helped me with my linking during the current year, I think I'd rather not know.

Rob Riggle carries over from ""How to Be a Latin Lover"

Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, Mel Ferrer links from "Knights of the Round Table" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links?  Answers below.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 24)
6:15 am "Lili" (1953) with _____________ linking to:
7:45 am "The Story of Three Loves" (1953) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 am "The Red Shoes" (1948) with _____________ linking to:
12:15 pm "La Ronde" (1950) with _____________ linking to:
2:00 pm "The Young Girls of Rochefort" (1967) with _____________ linking to:
4:15 pm "Le Plaisir" (1954) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "That Man from Rio" (1964) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Two Women" (1960) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 pm "A Special Day" (1977) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 am "8 1/2" (1953) with _____________ linking to:
2:30 am "The Professionals" (1966) with _____________ linking to:
4:45 am "The Naked Spur" (1953)

0 for 12 today puts me back at 92 seen out of 278, or 33.1%.

THE PLOT: A romantic comedy centered on a guy and gal who try to keep their love alive as they shuttle back and forth between New York and San Francisco to see one another.

AFTER: According to my completely unscientific study of what happens to someone who forces himself to watch 20 (or so) Hollywood romantic comedies in a row - I'm allowing that one or two of the films I've watched in February either don't qualify as comedies, or were made outside the Hollywood system - the results are, well, troubling.  Perhaps it was this film specifically, or perhaps it was just one too many and this one was like the straw that broke the camel's back, but I had nothing but long, complicated stress dreams last night.  Now, they weren't specifically about romance, I was doing things like looking for my boss's car in a giant parking lot because I needed to give John Leguizamo a ride uptown so he could sign a contract to be in an animated commercial, and I couldn't even remember what color car I was looking for.  Bear in mind, I haven't driven a car in at least 10 years, so that alone would cause me stress, and while I've never met John Leguizamo, my other boss did do some animation for him, and I think he was probably a stand-in for Justin Long (same initials, I just realized) who I did meet back in 2003 when I cast him in an animated film.

The rest was probably my brain trying to deal with the stressful situations presented in this film, as two people try to make a bi-coastal relationship work.  Since I've never had to do that, my sleeping brain probably substituted some stresses that I WAS familiar with - driving, looking for something, trying to make a deadline - and took off from there.  Let's just say that February, for all its positives, is also a tough month for me to deal with mentally, as they tend to pepper these romance films with a lot of conflict - a film can appear to have higher highs when it also has lower lows.  There's the high of two people meeting each other, forming a connection over an arcade game here, then spending time together and both feeling like they've made a match, somehow cracked the relationship code - only she's headed to the West Coast in 6 weeks to finish her degree at Stanford.  It turns out she was only interning at this NYC newspaper, and didn't mean to fall into a long-term relationship.

They have a terrible goodbye at the airport, only to have him rush inside to find her at the ticket window, and neither one wants to end the relationship, so they agree to keep it going by phone and text, and planning to visit each other when they can.  Halloween's out, but maybe Thanksgiving, that sort of thing.  Hey, relationships can be a struggle even when they're going well, and now they're going to pile on long periods of separation, the agony of missed calls, cryptic texts, the possibility that each will be attracted to other people that they spend time with, etc. etc.  It's a wonder that anybody manages to make this work.  Some people do the bi-coastal thing together, 6 months here and then 6 months there, and then you've got people who travel a lot, like sales reps, musicians and actors.  I don't know how any acting types keep a relationship going when they're always on the move, bouncing between Broadway shows, filming on location, and then there's press junkets that can have them touring all over the country.  (I sent my boss out once on a 13-city tour so he could appear at theaters playing his animated feature, it was a nightmare to organize but so worth it when I didn't see him for over 2 weeks.)

So of course we want things to work out for our lead couple here, only they didn't in real life - Justin Long and Drew Barrymore dated for a while, made this film together, got back together as a couple, and then broke up again.  Whether this was due to the usual problems inherent in relationships between actors (spending time apart, making out with other people as part of the job) or other factors were in play, I have no idea.  But that does add a dose of reality to this story, however it also highlights the implausibility of these characters being able to make things work out, when the actors playing them couldn't.  Still, we can't look at every past relationship as a failure per se, maybe we have to view every relationship that ended as one that was successful, but only for a limited time.  Everything ends, so perhaps we should just celebrate the fact that these things existed in the first place.  Right?

It's also worth noting that a successful relationship involves compromise - this is just perhaps the ultimate expression of that notion, where if they're ever going to live under the same roof, either she has to give up her new job at the San Francisco Chronicle, or he has to give up his job at the NYC record label.  They certainly can't afford to maintain apartments in both cities, after all.  She'd already put her life on hold for a man years before and has regretted the need to play "catch up" in her career ever since, so thankfully they found a way to compromise where she didn't have to do that again.

Also starring Drew Barrymore (last seen in "Everybody's Fine"), Justin Long (last seen in "Movie 43"), Jason Sudeikis (ditto), Charlie Day (last seen in "I Love You, Daddy"), Christina Applegate (last seen in "Wonderland"), Ron Livingston (last seen in "Tully"), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Jim Gaffigan (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Natalie Morales (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Kelli Garner (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), June Diane Raphael (last seen in "Long Shot"), Sarah Burns (last seen in "Enough Said"), Matt Servitto (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Leighton Meester (last seen in "The Judge"), Kristen Schaal (last seen in "The Boss"), Terry Beaver, Mike Birbiglia (last seen in "Adult Beginners"), Meredith Hagner (last seen in "Irrational Man"), Happy Anderson (last seen in "Bird Box"), Sondra James (also last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Maria Di Angelis (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Mick Hazen, Ron Bottitta (last heard in "Overboard").

RATING: 5 out of 10 high scores on "Centipede"

ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Zsa Zsa Gabor, Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Danielle Darrieux, Henri Cremieux, Jean Servais, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Robert Ryan