BEFORE: Julie Hagerty carries over from "A Guy Thing", and here's another film that I missed out on years ago, from a time when I just didn't care about rom-coms or watching movies in a particular order, and now of course I'm still playing catch-up, it's been sixteen years worth of playing catch-up so far.
Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 11:
Best Original Song Nominees:
6:45 am "Mr. Dodd Takes the Air" (1937)
8:15 am "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944)
10:15 am "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964)
12:00 pm "The Triplets of Belleville" (2003)
1:45 pm "The Sandpiper" (1965)
4:00 pm "Calamity Jane" (1953)
6:00 pm "The Gay Divorcee" (1934)
Best Original Song Winners:
8:00 pm "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956)
10:15 pm "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1968)
12:15 am "Fame" (1980)
2:45 am "A Star Is Born" (1976)
5:15 am "Lady Be Good" (1941)
Finally, another day where I've seen most of the movies, 8 out of 12 today, everything BUT "Mr. Dodd Takes the Air", "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", "Calamity Jane", and "Lady Be Good". So now I'm at 49 seen out of 124, or 39.5%, I've still got a shot at this.
THE PLOT: When her twin brother decides to ditch for a couple weeks, Viola heads over to his boarding school, disguised as him, and proceeds to fall for his roommate, the school's star soccer player, and she soon learns she's not the only one with romantic troubles.
AFTER: This film is loosely based on Shakespeare's "Twelth Night", so some attention must be paid to this, just like "Ten Things I Hate About You" was based on "The Taming of the Shrew". I guess maybe whatever doesn't go back to "Cyrano de Bergerac" maybe can be traced back to Billy Shakes?
There is a set of twins in "Twelfth Night", fraternal twins of course, because one is male and one is female, Viola and Sebastian. All that carries over here, though in the Shakespeare play they are separated by a shipwreck, and here they're separated by the fact that Sebastian wants to go to London and tour with his band for a few weeks, and sure, he'll miss the first few weeks of high school, but there are never repercussions for that, are there? Umm, wait, shouldn't there be?
I get that Viola is upset because the girls soccer team at her high school got its funding cut, OK, that could happen if wrong-minded people think that boys sports are more important than girls sports, that's against Title IX, right? But it's where we find ourselves tonight, because Viola needs the motivation to dress up like a boy to prove that girls are just as good at soccer as boys are, umm, as long as they dress like a boy and act like a boy? OK, maybe that's a bit of a mixed message, because she transfers over from the Cornwall school to the Illyria school and pretends to be her own twin brother, only I have one question, doesn't anybody notice when VIOLA doesn't show up for the first two weeks of her school? Don't her parents get a phone call after she misses five days of school in a row or something? I'll admit, I don't have kids so I don't know how any of that works.
But you can imagine that things go very smoothly, with her masquerading as a boy at her new boarding school - it kind of HAS to be boarding school, because boarding schools have dorms and roommates, and if it were a regular high school, then she'd just live at home with one or more of her parents, and we wouldn't have a story here, would we? Yeah, the screenwriter needed a weird mix of high school and college dorms, so really, the only narrative solution was boarding school. But also there are TWO boarding schools in the same town or district? That's a little weird, but I think I also saw that same aberration last year in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser", right?
Also NITPICK POINT, did Viola not realize that she would have to shower with the guys after every soccer game? She kept making excuses for not getting naked in front of them (or her roommate, for that matter), but why didn't she factor this in from the start and realize that her plan just wasn't a very good one?
Viola (as Sebastian) doesn't make the first string squad, though, she only makes second string. AHA, so girls are NOT as good at soccer as boys, is that the mixed message here? But she makes a deal with her roommate, Duke Orsino, he'll teach "Sebastian" how to improve his soccer skills if Sebastian will put in a good word for him with his science lab partner, Olivia, because Duke wants to date Olivia. However (and you knew there'd be a "however", right?) Olivia only has eyes for Sebastian, because "he" just isn't like all the other "boys", he's more sensitive and caring, almost like.. a girl? Go figure.
Things get more complicated when Olivia DOES go out with Duke, but only to make Sebastian jealous so he'll notice her. They all double-date and Viola/Sebastian dates Eunice, and great, another person likely to fall for Sebastian and turn this love triangle into a love quadrangle. Then things get even MORE complicated when Sebastian's ex-girlfriend, Monique, appears on the scene and refuses to acknowledge that they broke up, she still thinks that she and Sebastian can make things work, and she fails to realize that he's both A) in London and B) also a girl now.
Yeah about that, unfortunately the twins don't even look very much alike, and that's a problem for anyone who knew Sebastian before, they should realize that Viola is not him, or that he has a different face now, but nobody really seems to notice, except for the audience? OK, sure, if they never met Sebastian before, they might buy that Viola is Sebastian, but COME ON.
(Also, why is there a carnival in every teen romance film? They all just need someplace for the double dates to go that isn't a movie or a restaurant, right? This is the third movie with a carnival or fair in a week, after "Whatever It Takes" and "Sex Drive". But do they still have kissing booths at carnivals? That seems so outdated, sexist and out of touch with today's sensibilities, I'm pretty sure the kissing booths have gone the way of the dinosaur, there's just too much objectification of women involved, along with a lack of consent, no bueno.
Then things reach the acme of complication when the REAL Sebastian finally shows up after two weeks on the road, and he thinks he can just slide right into the life that Viola has crafted for him at the new boarding school. OK, there's a hot blonde girl who's kissing him out of the blue, that's something he can work with, but then his teammates wake him up in time for the big soccer match against rival Cornwall, and he's got absolutely no soccer skills whatsoever. Also he doesn't look like the Sebastian his teammates know, but some convenient face-painting helps take care of that.
The rival characters think they have Viola/Sebastian's number, the school nerd, Malcolm (who really isn't as nerdy as he should be, also I'm unclear why he hated Sebastian so much) calls Sebastian out as being a girl masquerading as a boy, but by this point the real Sebastian is back, and can prove his gender just by dropping his pants (there simply HAD to be a better way to handle this...). But then Viola takes his place again so their soccer team can win the game, however she then reveals that she is, in fact, a girl, by flashing her breasts (again, there simply HAD to be a better way to handle this, too...)
We could get into a whole debate here about gender in college sports, whether there should even be a separation into men's sports and women's sports, or whether girls should play on the boys team if there is no girls team, but the film can't seem to bring itself to make any coherent points on this matter. Just saying, 'Well in OUR school we don't separate people by gender" doesn't really accomplish anything, because you haven't actually changed the rule book, you just let one girl play on the boys team for one game, because she's super at playing soccer. Nothing really got settled here, and the debates on this topic will continue - there's a female college basketball player who just broke some kind of record for points, now do we acknowledge that she's just a good of a basketball player as most men, or do we belittle her accomplishement by pointing out that she was playing against a team full of girls?
Look, this isn't just a follow-up to Shakespeare (and remember that back in the Elizabethan age, women weren't allowed to be actors, so all the females were played by men in dresses) and all the original storyline's transvestite issues, this is also a pre-cursor to all TRANS issues that we have today - what happens when someone changes their gender temporarily is also symbolic of what could happen when someone changes their gender permanently. Right? We have to give these people their rights and their dignity and not make them take their clothes off in the middle of a playing field just to prove some pointless point that we want to make for no reason. Right?
This particular storyline with the soccer game and the weird boarding school and the debutante ball is very, very wonky, but it hints at something greater that was yet to be, like what happens when a boy falls in love with a girl who looks like a boy, or wants to be a boy? Or what happens when a girl falls in love with a boy who is really a girl? Shakespeare couldn't really GO there, but movies today can, and perhaps they should, because that would create some new narrative possibilities, and anyway, the old ones are really getting worn out.
Also starring Amanda Bynes *last seen in "Easy A"), Channing Tatum (last seen in "Dog"), Laura Ramsey (last seen in "Middle Men"), Vinnie Jones (last seen in "Freelancers"), David Cross (last seen in "Obvious Child"), Robert Hoffman (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Alexandra Breckenridge (last seen in "Orange County"), Jonathan Sadowski (last seen in "Live Free or Die Hard"), Amanda Crew (last seen in "Sex Drive"), Jessica Lucas (last seen in "Pompeii"), Brandon Jay McLaren (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Clifton MaCabe Murray (last seen in "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"), James Snyder, James Kirk (last seen in "Frankie & Alice"), Emily Perkins (last seen in "It" (1990)), Robert Torti (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Lynda Boyd (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), John Pyper-Ferguson (last seen in "Drive"), Katie Stuart (last seen in "The Edge of Seventeen"), Colby Wilson, Jeffrey Ballard, Patricia Idlette (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), Ken Kirby, David Richmond-Peck (last seen in "Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball"), Mark Acheson (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Emma Jonnz (last seen in "Last Christmas").
RATING: 4 out of 10 penalty kicks
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