BEFORE: Josh Duhamel carries over from "When in Rome", and over at TCM, it's Day 8 of their "31 Days of Oscar" programming, and today's themes are "Members of the Press" (before 8 pm) and "Crime" (after 8 pm). Here's the line-up:
8:15 am "Five Star Final" (1932)
10:00 am "The Story of G.I. Joe" (1945)
12:00 pm "Designing Woman" (1957)
2:00 pm "Libeled Lady" (1936)
4:00 pm "Woman of the Year" (1942)
6:00 pm "The Year of Living Dangerously" (1982)
8:00 pm "The French Connection" (1971)
10:00 pm "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)
12:00 am "Gangs of New York" (2002)
3:00 am "The Public Enemy" (1931)
4:30 am "Shaft" (1971)
6:45 am "Robin and the 7 Hoods" (1964)
Finally, some films I've seen! I've seen everything after 4 pm except the original "Shaft" movie - I watched all the more recent "Shaft" sequels, though. But that means I've seen 7 out of these 12 films, which brings me up to 47 seen out of 93, which is just over 50%. BUT, this gives me an idea for a better way to organize the films, not some boring way like organizing them by genre. Why not have the last word of one film become the first word of the next film, to create little double-features? Look, right there, you could program "Designing Woman of the Year of Living Dangerously". What about "A Star is Born Yesterday" or "Life with Father of the Bride of Frankenstein"? Or "Around the World in 80 Days of Wine and Roses"? "The Music Man Who Would Be King Lear"? "Singin' in the Raintree County"? "The Magnificent Seven Days in May"? OK, I'll keep working on it.
THE PLOT: A small-town girl wins a date with a male celebrity through a contest. When the date goes better than expected, a love triangle forms between the girl, the movie star, and the girl's best friend.
AFTER: It's another film directed by Robert Luketic, who later went on to direct terrible films like "Monster-in-Law" and "The Ugly Truth". This just can't be a film that can be taken seriously, right? From the fact that according to many of the credits near the end of the list, a large number of actors played themselves, or lent their name to the characters - I heard that some film production companies do this to prevent other people who have the same name as a movie character from suing the studio for defamation. Like Jessy Moss and Marshall Goodman, probably close friends with the director, played "Jessy Moss" and "Marshall Goodman" and the studio may have had a contract with them to use their name as their character's name, and pay them a token sum of $1, this prevents anyone else named "Marshall Goodman" from suing. And if they made up character names, there's a chance that someone out there might share the same name - they probably also had to find a guy named "Tad Hamilton" and sign a contract with him just to be on the safe side.
But for a lot of these same actors, THIS is their only major screen credit - so I'm forced to conclude that director Robert Luketic was involved in a scheme where he cast people in non-speaking roles ONLY so that they could apply for their SAG cards, and this is what that guy in the movie "Narrowsburg" got in trouble for, this is a violation of union rules, assuming that these actors compensatied Luketic for their roles. (Look, I don't have any proof that they DIDN'T....). If this is true, then this movie isn't real, it's just part of an elaborate scam to get undeserving people their SAG cards. Seems about right.
For starters, the plot doesn't really work because nobody runs these "Win a Date with..." contests any more. These were big in the 1950's and 1960's because the studios couldn't let an movie fans know who the stars were dating, because it would blow their minds and ruin the clean, wholesome images that they wanted the Hollywood stars to project. Sure, win a date with Rock Hudson or Roddy McDowall, I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time, and they'll respect women and not try to sleep with them (Gee, I wonder why...). But it's a different time now, and while some stars live their whole dating life out in public (Leo DiCaprio, Taylor Swift) many more of them are much more discreet about it, celebrities may even date regular people who aren't in show biz, and for the most part, nobody cares. That is, until the #TimesUp and #MeToo scandals came around, and suddenly everybody wanted to know how many women James Franco had dated, and why he's never settled down, and jeez, maybe we should cancel him just to be on the safe side.
So there's liability issues, that's one problem, and if your star is noted for liking fast cars, booze and loose women, then a few publicity photos of him dating a nice, plain girl from West Virginia is just NOT going to solve your press problems. If anything, you've already proven that this person can't be trusted or reliable, and now you're not just letting the fox into the henhouse, but you're handing him a deep-fryer on his way in. So many ways this could spiral out of control, this serial dater is GOING to want to sleep with this nice girl from Hicksville, and his agents did NOTHING to prevent that, they didn't even act as escorts, and it was THEIR idea? Wouldn't you think they'd micro-manage the "date" to make sure everything was above-board?
Innocent Rosalee Futch is flown out to Hollywood for her "date" with movie-star Tad Hamilton. They don't really hit it off, because she's so star-struck and she's been warned by her best male (straight) friend, Pete, who's secretly in love with her, to NOT sleep with Tad, no matter what. She probably would have, too, if Pete hadn't warned her about it. And then where would we be? Rosalee would have had her heart broken by a movie star, Tad Hamilton's reputation would be even worse than it already is, but hey, at least Pete could have consoled Rosalee after, that should be worth something, no?
But instead Rosalee turns Tad down, and goes back to her hotel. THIS is probably what drove Tad crazy, he found the one woman who didn't want to sleep with him, and that's a serious blow to his ego. Now he just HAS to fly to West Virginia to try to win her over, it's a challenge, but hey, no risk, no reward. Before long he's bought a house in rural WV and he's hanging out with Rosalee and her friends, dropping in to the local movie theater that just HAPPENS to be playing one of his films, and getting farming lessons from Pete. But Tad already knows how to milk a cow and chop wood, because he's an actor, and those are skills he already learned for this movie or that one. Umm, sure, because there's so much cow-milking going on in Hollywood movies.
There's an OK message here, the "Love Tip" for the day - if you've got feelings for someone, you've got to SPEAK UP before they do something silly like win a contest or date a celebrity and leave your little town in their rear-view. If you don't, you'll just end up running the Piggly Wiggly or moving to Richmond by yourself and getting old and wondering what could have been. It's fine - again, this isn't Shakespeare, just a dumb old rom-com, but at least it's got a bit of a point to make.
NITPICK POINT: Now, WHY couldn't Tad's agents fly back with him on that private jet? Weren't they all going to Hollywood? There was plenty of room on that plane, just saying. Why make this a plot point, if it didn't matter?
Also starring Kate Bosworth (last seen in "The Rules of Attraction"), Topher Grace (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Ginnifer Goodwin (ditto), Nathan Lane (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Sean Hayes (last seen in "Hit and Run"), Gary Cole (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Kathryn Hahn (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Octavia Spencer (last seen in "The Witches" (2020)), Amy Smart (last seen in "Starsky & Hutch"), Ren Trostle, Wendy Worthington (last seen in "Crazy, Stupid, Love."), Stephen Tobolowsky (last seen in "The Grifters"), Moon Bloodgood (last seen in "Faster"), Mary Jo Smith, Joseph Convery, Deena Dill, Bob Glouberman, Sam Pancake (last seen in "Dumplin'"), Jay Underwood, Patrick O'Brien (last seen in "The Brady Bunch Movie"), Larry Agney, Willow Bay, Todd Eckert, David Wolrod, Jessy Moss, Marshall Goodman, Danny Weissfeld, Caleb Spier, Peter Iovino, Alex Kvassay, Jordana Brewster (last seen in "The Faculty"), Paris Hilton (last seen in "Wonderland"), Bonnie McKee (last seen in "August Rush").
RATING: 5 out of 10 cans of Pringles
No comments:
Post a Comment