BEFORE: I spotted this film over a year ago, while scrolling through Hulu looking for more material. But I couldn't work it in to last year's chain, so I just tabled it, then found it to be very useful when putting together my 2021 chain. Surprisingly, it's still on Hulu, so let me watch it and clear it off the list, and shorten one of my streaming queues by just a bit. I'm due for another scroll through the various streaming services, but I fear that things have exploded since the last time I did that. Just looking through everything on HBO Max and Disney added like a hundred films to my list, and I haven't even had time to chip away at going through those cast lists yet.
So thanks to the streaming boom, I'm starting to realize that I will NEVER be done with this project, even though the pandemic might have slowed things down a little bit, there must be hundreds of (probably mediocre) films that have migrated to all the new platforms - can there possibly BE any films out there that haven't found a home yet on some streaming service? I've talked my wife into not dropping Hulu because I've still got my list there (even though each time I visit, I see more films from my list are "no longer available" - umm, so why not remove them from my list, if I can't watch them, like Netflix does?).
The sad truth is that everything has an expiration date, and most of the time when I finally do circle back to a film that once interested me, it's now in a different place. And honestly, Google and all those "Where to Watch" sites just can't keep up - there are THOUSANDS of movies, after all, and I've found that after a search it often seems like a film's available on Hulu or AmazonPrime, but when I go to watch it, I'm told I can only watch it if I pay extra for "Cinemax on Hulu add-on" or "Amazon Premiere Super-Prime Rip-Off Subscription". That's not going to happen, Amazon, so either make the film available or not, quit trying to upsell me.
Alexandra Daddario carries over from "Hall Pass" - and today in Women's History, March 6 is the birthday of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806), pioneering Black female pharmacist Ella P. Stewart (1893) and Valentina Tereshkova, Russian general, pilot and cosmonaut (1937).
THE PLOT: Two friends on vacation compete for the affections of a handsome man when their flight is redirected due to a hurricane.
AFTER: Here's a film that's sure to set the women's movement back by a bit - it's on the too-common trope of two female best friends competing over a man. (Total Bechdel test fail!) What is it that drives two "friends" to put each other down and belittle each other when a man enters the picture? Is this only in movies, or is this very common IRL, too? Perhaps this just derives from one big male fantasy, to have two women want him so badly that they'll fight with each other, tear each other apart just to get at him. Keep dreaming, fellas, they don't really need us that badly, it turns out. This one's so over the top in using this device that I was starting to wonder if these two girls didn't secretly have a thing for each other, and the guy just got caught in the middle. Nah, that would have been a whole different film, I suppose - but I bet that's the plot of some movie somewhere.
To be fair, these two girls were fighting with each other from the get-go (and we all know that hate's not the opposite of love, right?) because they're roommates, and very different people. Meg's always shopping, engaging in random hook-ups and generally getting herself into trouble, while Kate's the more responsible one with a teaching job, seems to have a tougher time finding relationships, and is always bailing Meg out of trouble. Oh, and Kate likes shopping, too, because don't all women? Kate's the more down-to-earth responsible one, while Meg's the hot one, that's the important difference to keep in mind. So when Kate appears to have been fired from her teaching job, Meg somehow cashes in Kate's frequent-flyer miles and books them on a last-minute trip from Seattle to Fort Lauderdale. (Though, like "Crash Pad", those Seattle scenes were filmed in Vancouver.)
They barely make the flight (Meg cuts the entire line by flirting with the desk agent, which doesn't work, but then somehow it does) and then has trouble with the TSA because she has a soda, but instead of throwing it away, she chugs the whole thing - why is THIS an important plot point? Just so she can burp on the plane, and apparently her burps stink. Refined comedy, this is not. The premise gets fixed in place when Ryan is put in the middle seat between Kate's window seat and Meg's aisle seat. It's not clear why Meg got two seats that weren't together, I guess she wanted the extra room in their row, but that never works - you know they're going to try to fill every seat on the plane, right? Ryan chats up both women, as a polite man might do, but Kate's taken too many anti-anxiety pills so she can relax during the trip, and before long, she's knocked out - which leaves Ryan with Meg, and I'm not really sure why he didn't just request changing seats with somebody.
Fate intervenes when a hurricane prevents the plane from reaching Florida, where Ryan's supposed to attend a wedding. All the passengers end up in St. Louis, staying at the same hotel until the weather in Florida clears up. This sets up more competition between the women for Ryan's time and affection, and they keep having to go to greater lengths, and wearing skimpier and more revealing swimsuits, to do that. (See what I mean about setting back the women's movement?). Meanwhile there's a convention of jewelers in town, and a mostly male crowd of them staying at the hotel, all vying for time with the girls, who only have eyes for Ryan. And it's not that Ryan's such a great prize, or either of the girls is really that into him, but they each just want him because the OTHER girl does, and so it's all about winning. Ryan, meanwhile, doesn't mind being treated like a prize and having two women fight over him - but he's still got that wedding to attend.
So Ryan finds Craig, a jeweler from Florida and hitches a ride - conveniently the convention is over and Craig's headed in exactly the right direction. Both women charm their way into the car also, and now we've got a game, the love triangle is now a square, with Craig trying to hook up with the girls (either one, he's not picky) and the girls trying to hook up with Ryan, and as many unlikely hijinks as the filmmakers could squeeze into a 17-hour car ride. Yes, that checks out, but I do recommend that the drivers take shifts, only Craig thinks he can do it all. He's wrong, because the girl's competitiveness of course throws a spanner into the works. They only make it about halfway (?) to Florida before they're forced to find a motel, and this is really just a convoluted way to get these characters near some bedrooms to take the competition to the next level.
Craig uses a jewelry analogy to try to end the competition, and insert himself into the mix - most of his customers are only interested in diamonds, but there are a lot of other precious stones for sale. Even if Ryan's a diamond (umm, he's not) maybe Meg should consider a ruby or some jade instead of competing over just one type of gem. It's a solid argument, and you'd think it would end the girls' feud, only it doesn't. Lessons get learned here, but only after the fact - I guess some characters just have to make their mistakes in order to advance. What a shame. But the good news is that Kate didn't lose her job, she either misunderstood the school principal, or perhaps he was unclear. And Meg decides to move out because she'll never grow as a person if Kate's always helping her out - so maybe they can be friends again someday, if women ever learn to work together towards common goals. (Don't blame me, it's the movie making this point...)
NITPICK POINT: Once again, it appears that movie screenwriters have no idea how airplane tickets, frequent flyer miles, or airport procedures work. You can't cash in someone else's miles, you can't get a plane ticket on a moment's notice unless you fly stand-by, and you can't cut in front of 100 people in line at the airport without somebody complaining, or getting a beat-down. And once people HAVE those impossible-to-get, last-minute, non-refundable tickets, and they find themselves in St. Louis, they're GOING to use them to get to Florida. They're not going to just abandon those tickets and suddenly take a car ride instead. After a couple days in St. Louis, their trip was probably half-over already, PLUS the hurricane was just about to clear, so why waste another 2 days on a long car drive instead of salvaging whatever was left of the trip by flying on to Fort Lauderdale? Unless the airline suddenly offered these women a refund or a few thousand miles in compensation in addition to the free hotel - but I don't think this happened, because the airline's not responsible for bad weather (act of "God") so most likely they would only book them on the next possible flight to Florida and that's it.
Back in October 2017, my wife and I ended a road trip in Nashville and we had Sunday morning tickets back to New York - but a tropical storm (Philippe) was approaching the East Coast, and we kept getting e-mail alerts from the airline that we could change our flights for free if needed. We debated what to do - the safest thing was to switch to an earlier flight on Saturday, but that meant giving up our whole planned day tour of Nashville - we decided to not move our flight, make the most out of our Saturday in Tennessee, and roll the dice on getting back home. By Sunday, the tropical storm had been downgraded, and when it reached NYC it was just some heavy rain, thankfully. My point is that when traveling, sometimes panicking and making desperate moves is not the right thing to do - if Ryan here had just hung out in St. Louis another few hours, it's very possible he could have flew to Florida on time. A 17-hour car ride over a 3-hour or 4-hour flight doesn't seem like a smart trade-off. But I get it, then the film wouldn't have so many hijinks set in gas station bathrooms!
Also starring Kate Upton (last seen in "The Other Woman"), Matt Barr (last seen in "The House Bunny"), Matt L. Jones (last seen in "A Merry Friggin' Christmas"), Rob Corddry (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover") Kal Penn (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Molly Shannon (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Jennifer Cheon, Eric Gibson, Carrie Genzel, Michael Benyaer (last seen in "Deadpool"), Alvin Sanders (last seen in "Hot Rod"), John Cassini, Roark Critchlow, Mary Black, David MacKay (last seen in "The Shack"), Ross Linton.
RATING: 4 out of 10 road trip mix playlists
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