BEFORE: OK, mission accomplished - I got my first dose of the COVID vaccine today. I had to take a subway out to the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, near the airport - only a 45-minute subway ride for me. Had to bring all my forms, my health profile proving my qualifying underlying condition, and I got there about three hours early, which was a smart move. For something as important as this, I factored in what we call "stupid time", meaning that if I get on the wrong train, there's a sudden power outage, or I do something stupid like slip on the ice or get hit by a car, then I'd still have a chance of making it there. There's a casino adjacent to the track, so I figured I'd hit the food court, have a nice lunch, do some reading or even gamble and still make my appointment.
Well, I did a couple stupid things, I took the casino shuttle instead of walking across the highway, which seemed safer, only that dropped me off on the complete wrong side of the complex. I could still walk through the casino and eat lunch as planned - except the Food Court was still closed due to pandemic restrictions. So I figured I might as well take the long walk around the place and see if they would vaccinate me early, which they did, because there was no line at the time I was there. So I got my shot two hours ahead of schedule - or is that three months and two hours ahead of schedule? Anyway, I feel extremely lucky - maybe I should have played the slots, or had I already used up all my luck? Now I'm not sure.
It's a bit of an odd feeling, knowing that being overweight and having high blood pressure was a positive thing for once, it was good for my health in that I qualified early for a vaccine. And I just realized today is "Fat Tuesday", which now seems very appropriate.
Maria Bello carries over from "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Book Club" (Movie #3,472)
THE PLOT: Six Californians start a club to discuss the works of Jane Austen, only to find their relationships - both old and new - begin to resemble 21st century versions of her novels.
AFTER: I guess you really have to be a big Jane Austen fan to appreciate this movie - I've seen the movie versions of "Pride and Prejudice", "Sense and Sensibility" and "Emma", but I didn't commit all of those stories' plot points to memory, which really would have come in handy here. (I've also got two more Jane Austen-themed films coming up, the biopic "Becoming Jane" and the recent remake of "Emma" - sorry I couldn't slot them all in a row, the linking wouldn't allow it.)
So I kind of have to just watch this as a sort of ensemble comedy-romance with six main characters, and the interplay between them during book club meetings. I figured I could look up on Wikipedia which character here is meant to represent, or at least have something in common with, specific Jane Austen characters. The club is formed when Bernadette meets Prudie - Bernadette is meant to be like Mrs. Gardiner from "Pride and Prejudice", and French teacher Prudie represents the Anne Elliott character in "Persuasion", since she's having marital problems and is tempted by the possibility of romance with a student.
They invite four others to join the book club - recently separated Sylvia (representing Fannie Price from "Mansfield Park"), Sylvia's daughter Allegra (Marianne from "Sense and Sensibility"), Bernadette's friend Jocelyn (who's sort of like the matchmaking "Emma") and Jocelyn's writer friend Grigg, who represents all of Austen's under-written male characters. Each member gets to host the book club meeting at their house or apartment in successive months, and for the benefit of the audience, each month's meeting place corresponds with the novel that the host symbolizes, and they give Grigg "Northanger Abbey" for his hosting because nobody has ever read that book, not ever, so somebody has to be the first one, I guess.
(You can probably guess the Rules of Book Club - Rule #1, talk about books. Rule #2, talk about books. And Rule #3, if this is your first time at Book Club, you WILL talk about books.)
And so we check in with our group of players monthly, which allows for there to be a steady progression in each one of their romantic stories. Fairly ingenious format, I'd say, except that in-between there's so much footage of them READING the books. I've often commented here about how there's nothing more boring than a film that shows a writer writing, or worse, having writer's block, but it turns out that there IS something worse to show in a film, and that's watching six different characters READING. Can't we just take it as given that the members of a book club, you know, read the material? Can't we skip ahead to the discussion period each month? Nope, we've got to show all six people sitting in bed, or at a coffee shop turning pages to show proof of concept, I guess. And not one of them uses a tablet or an e-reader or cheats by watching the movie versions? Nope.
Jocelyn (the matchmaker) invited Grigg to join the group so she could set him up with newly-divorced Sylvia, but Grigg doesn't pick up on this at first, because he joined due to his attraction to Jocelyn. So there's one love triangle that's bound to resolve itself sooner or later, provided longtime independent single Jocelyn can change her thinking. Sylvia, meanwhile, learns to be more independent after her divorce, but she still stays in touch with her ex-husband, and their accident-prone daughter Allegra might bring them back together again. Allegra, meanwhile, dates another 20-something woman, but finds out her girlfriend has been stealing story ideas from her, so that leads to a bad break-up. Prudie's insensitive husband leads her to consider a romance with her student, but eventually she forces her husband to read a Jane Austen book, and this magically changes his life and makes him a better person, so they decide to stick with it and give it another go. (Who needs couples counseling when you can just make your husband read a book that he doesn't want to read?) And Bernadette eventually finds love at the end of the film, but honestly this part felt very tacked-on, as there was no set-up for it.
OK, a couple of NITPICK POINTS. Prudie's husband cancels their trip to France, because his boss sends him on some basketball-based client trip instead. If the first trip was a work trip, then Prudie has every right to be disappointed, but she does act a bit childish and bratty about not going to Paris. If her husband had refused his boss's request, he could have been fired, and I think Prudie should have cut him a little slack here. It's better for them both if he keeps his job, and Paris will always be there, they can just go another time. It's a bad situation, sure, but it's not really his fault. Also, you can't make somebody read a book or watch a movie that they just don't want to read. (N.P. #2 - Prudie's husband takes that week-long basketball client trip and then appears to be gone for three or four months. WTF?)
Unless, of course, you consider Jocelyn's situation. Grigg gives her MANY opportunities to read some good sci-fi books that he recommends - Ursula LeGuin - and she never gets around to it. After the 30th time he asks her to read one small book, at that point she's just being contrary. Is she that afraid that she might like a little science fiction? I'm torn here because of the above point, that you can't force someone to read your favorite books, but you also can't wait forever for them to come around and like the things that you like. At that point it's probably easier to instead find some things in common that you both hate.
Prudie's mother is also a very weird character - an older, pot-smoking hippie British woman who seems to have been only introduced into the story for one reason, and that's to pass away later in the film, so that Prudie is forced to travel to San Diego for her funeral, and be away from the group for an extended period of time. I'm not sure that the end justifies the means here, plus it's so blatantly obvious why this character exists in the first place.
The Allegra character stands out, also, because she's a lesbian character, and this calls into question whether same-sex couples follow the same rules as heterosexual ones, and if not, then why have one here? Representation, sure, but notably there are no lesbian characters in Jane Austen's novels, not obvious ones anyway, because authors back then just didn't write about this topic, it wasn't considered proper. I'm sure there were lesbians back then, but they lived in secret, more or less, and thus I'm having trouble making the connection here. This plot point also seems only to exist for one reason, and that's to make things awkward for Grigg when he thinks Jocelyn is trying to him up with Allegra, not Sylvia. (Just how dumb IS Grigg, anyway?)
Perhaps I've just become accustomed to more focused romance stories - most of this year's February films have concentrated on just one romance, like in "Like Crazy" or "Almost Friends" or "Manglehorn" or "Destination Wedding". "Happythankyoumoreplease" juggled three romances, and even that felt like a bit too much. With SIX characters here, and no less than FIVE potential romances going on at a time, this felt very scattershot, all over the place, firing in all different directions at one time in hopes of hitting something.
NITPICK POINT #3 - the film opens with a montage of the characters going about their daily routines - pumping gas, ordering coffee, getting money out of ATM's, making the point that life is filled with annoying encounters with technology, but this seems very disconnected from the rest of the film, and hardly even seems related to the plot or even any point that the rest of the film makes. For God's sakes, why is this montage even there? Unless this is meant to show contrast to the simple pleasure of reading books and then discussing them, I can't find any reason to open the film this way.
Also starring Emily Blunt (last seen in "The Young Victoria"), Kathy Baker (last seen in "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her"), Amy Brenneman (ditto), Hugh Dancy (last seen in "Late Night"), Maggie Grace (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Jimmy Smits (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), Marc Blucas (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Lynn Redgrave (last seen in "Peter Pan" (2003)), Kevin Zegers, Nancy Travis (last seen in "Internal Affairs"), Parisa Fitz-Henley (last seen in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"), Gwendoline Yeo, Myndy Crist, Miguel Najera.
RATING: 5 out of 10 Rhodesian ridgebacks
No comments:
Post a Comment