BEFORE: I'm working at a screening of "Cocaine Bear" tonight - I have no plans to WATCH "Cocaine Bear" tonight, because I can't really do both things, watch the film and manage the screening. But I also have little interest in the film, it does seem really out there, but also very silly and borderline ridiculous. Maybe at some point in the future, but it doesn't really fit in with my movie-watching plans at the moment. But sure, whatever, I'll put it on my list when it hits one of the streaming platforms, just not in a hurry to watch it now. My plans are already made for most of the spring - I think I'll wait a while before I try to connect Mother's Day to something for Memorial Day or Father's Day.
Greg Germann carries over from "The Night We Never Met". "Cocaine Bear" is just 90 minutes long, so let's see what I can say about today's romance-based film while that other film runs in the theater.
THE PLOT: A workaholic executive and an unconventional woman agree to a personal relationship for a short period, during which she changes his life.
AFTER: Wow, for a second there on IMDB I got excited, because this film has three nominations listed. Really? For Best Actor? Best Actress? Best Adapted Screenplay? Well, no, it got three Razzie Awards, so that means nominations for WORST Actor, WORST Actress and WORST remake or sequel. Jeez, I didn't think it was THAT bad, but hey, that was 2001, it was a different time. Standards were higher, maybe.
Or maybe people focused on Keanu Reeves' acting ability at the time, which, quite honestly, still needed some work, perhaps. He's come a LONG way since "Bill & Ted", movies, I think, even if he slipped back into that mode three years ago to make the long-awaited third film in the series. Here he starts out as a completely self-centered asshole who's incapable of having a lasting relationship (you know, because he hasn't done the work on HIMSELF). Someone who's completely career-oriented, somebody who think's he's the greatest creative mind in the world of advertising, who's so full of it that he can't take criticism, if the client doesn't like his campaign, then there MUST be something wrong with the client, not his own terrible ideas.
So I don't know why this film wasn't a bigger hit with women, don't all women just LOVE a bad boy, one that only THEY can change? That's what this film is really about, the free-thinking radical hippie-chick woman with some weird kind of love in her heart that makes her BELIEVE that she can convince a man to give up his jerk-like behavior, to dig beneath the hard candy surface to discover the soft, sweet and nougatty center within. Right? I mean, if a man and a woman get together and continue being the same people they were before, what's the point? Love is infectious, love is transformative, love makes you want to BE a different sort of person, the kind of person that your lover will admire. Otherwise, what are we even doing?
A woman wants to be the kind of woman who makes the man want to be a better man, and vice versa. Or am I way off base here? That was the quote from that Jack Nicholson movie, "As Good As It Gets", he said, "You make me want to be a better man." And if that's not love, well, at least it's something positive, something that enacts change and not stagnation.
Sara is a giver, and Nelson starts out as a taker - the troubles start when he needs to pass a driver's license exam and tries to cheat by asking her for the answers. SHE gets in trouble, not him, and has to wait 30 days to re-take the test - so then she bugs him for rides, since it's HIS fault now that she doesn't have a driver's license. It's kind of the opposite of a meet-cute, it's more like a meet-jerk. But she gives him a proposition, to move in with her for 30 days and live the way she does, this (theoretically) will give him a new outlook on life. Of course he says no, but then he loses his job and his girlfriend dumps him on the same day, and it's late October. So, with nothing more to lose, he spends a day with her, and then another, and before long, he's become her "November project". They have wild, happy times and fall in love, meanwhile he's slowly coming around to seeing things from her somewhat wacky point of view.
He comes so far, so fast, that he even proposes to her before the month is over. But there's something else standing in the way, some reason why she's convinced that the relationship is not going to last more than a month. No spoilers here... But bear in mind that she's clearly done this before in previous months with other partners. Maybe she knows something that we don't, about how every relationship has an expiration date, even if it's self-imposed by her rules. I'll admit that I found this all very corny and trivial, right up until the ending, that is, which then seemed very powerful, and again, I'm not sure why this didn't appeal to more women on a purely emotional level.
Quick question, though, which may have more to do with yesterday's film than this one - when Nelson moves in with Sara for a month, did he still have to pay rent on his other apartment? Did he sublet it for a month? Remember, he lost his job so maybe he can't really afford to pay the rent on the apartment he's not using. Am I the only one who thinks about these things?
Also starring Keanu Reeves (last seen in "The Matrix Resurrections"), Charlize Theron (last heard in "The Addams Family 2"), Jason Isaacs (last seen in "Operation Mincemeat"), Lauren Graham (last seen in "One True Thing"), Liam Aiken (last seen in "The Killer Inside Me"), Frank Langella (last seen in "Robot & Frank"), Ray Baker (last seen in "Hard Rain"), Michael Rosenbaum (last seen in "Hit and Run"), Robert Joy (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Jason Kravits (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Tom Bullock, Susan Zelinsky, Adele Proom, L. Peter Callender, June Carryl, Kelvin Han Yee (last seen in "Lucky You"), David Fine (last seen in "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"), Elizabeth Weber, Garth Kravits (last seen in "Don't Think Twice").
RATING: 6 out of 10 calendar pages
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