Think Like a Man

Year 16, Day 41 - 2/10/24 - Movie #4,642

BEFORE: Well, we find ourselves at the confluence of February, the month of romance, and also Black History Month, and also Super Bowl weekend.  So that's all led me here, now there are sports stars listed in the credits for this one, but they turned out to be NBA stars.  Damn, I was so close!  Wrong sport, I know, but at least I watched a few days ago with Joe Namath in it, and he was in a Super Bowl once, a long time ago.  (I checked tomorrow's films credits, there's a boxer but no NFL stars, but there's a totally different way to tie this film's sequel to the Super Bowl...and to think Taylor Swift was in THREE films I watched last year, I stupidly used them all up)

Regina Hall carries over from "People Places Things".

EDIT: I forgot that Turner Classic Movies was starting their "31 Days of Oscar" programming  on February 9, so I'm going back and dropping them in post facto.  They're dividing up the movies by category this year, so today is Day 2, devoted to:

Best Supporting Actress Nominees:

6:00 am "Merrily We Live" (1938)

8:00 am "Caged" (1950)

10:00 am "Mogambo" (1953)

12:00 pm "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955)

2:00 pm "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)

4:00 pm "Harvey" (1950)

6:00 pm "Butterflies Are Free" (1972)

Best Supporting Actress Winners:

8:00 pm "Written on the Wind" (1957)

10:00 pm "The Miracle Worker" (1962)

12:00 am "Pollock" (2000)

2:15 am "A Patch of Blue" (1965)

4:15 am "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952)

I think I've seen 5 out of these 12, "Rebel Without a Cause", "Singin' in the Rain", "Harvey", "Butterflies Are Free" and "Pollock", so 12 out of 22 overall, already down to 54%. 

THE PLOT: Four friends conspire to turn the tables on their women when they discover the ladies have been using Steve Harvey's relationship advice against them. 

AFTER: Once upon a time, a game-show host wrote a book, and he said it was filled with helpful advice - it became a best-seller, and people started to say, "Huh, this guy might really know what he's talking about!"  By the time we all discovered he was a straight-up con man, and didn't know anything like he claimed to, it was too late, we'd already elected him President.  But then Steve Harvey, another game-show host wrote a book about relationships, and that seemed to be taken a little more seriously, somehow.  Wait, the guy from "Family Feud" was advising people on relationship matters?  That's where we found ourselves, and then it became a movie, again collectively we don't seem to be sure how these things happen, but they do.  

The book tried to break everyone down into certain stereotypes, in order for people to best understand their relationships, they first have to understand themselves, right?  And stereotypes are a great short-cut to doing this, it's just a faster way to quickly defining people and then we can learn about ourselves and our prospective mates and get on with our happy lives - and there's never been any negative repercussions from using stereotypes to define people, right?  Whew, that's a relief.  I'd hate to think that Steve Harvey just took the manuscript from "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus", slapped a new book-jacket on it and waited for the money to roll in.  (Umm, wait a second...)

So the movie takes eight of those stereotypes and turns them in to characters and makes them date each other, it's a bit like if some kids had a giant tea party with both Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes, and then the different personalities of those dolls came out, and, well, conflicts are sure to arise, because boys and girls are different, though frankly I think the clock might be ticking on that one, when you throw the women's rights movement, gender-neutral politics, trans issues and wokeness into the mix, I was kind of led to believe that our future society wouldn't fall back on all these simplistic thoughts like "Men are hunters, women are gatherers" or "Men work in an office and women take care of the house" or "Men drive the car, but women navigate and pack the lunch."  I mean, they're all stupid and outdated and need to be forgotten, right?  Stupid screenwriters can't seem to let go of some of these, and neither could my parents. I just want to live my own life, how about you?

So here are the four pairings, and notice that they managed to pair up the personalities in the WORST possible way, to create the most drama and conflict here.  I'm not saying these are wrong, and I'm not saying these pairings DON'T happen in real life, I'm just pointing out that if they had matched up these stereotypes in a different way, they might not have a movie that had situations that would make the most of the male-female differences.  First there's "The Mama's Boy" vs. "The SIngle Mom".  Michael can't connect with women because he's so devoted to his mother, he's got a standing dinner date with her every Sunday, and Candace is the single mom who won't date a man who doesn't accept the fact she has a young son, or sometimes she's afraid to mention this at all.  The relationship isn't really possible until Michael cuts the apron strings and decides to put his girlfriend ahead of his mother.  This is perhaps the easiest one to fix, it just requires a little re-prioritization on his part, and honestly, if Candace is a mother herself, she should understand this takes time, because she has a strong bond with her own son, and she would want that bond to continue when her son is an adult.  Right?  There's no real conflict here, this feels rather manufactured, because ideally there should be room in Michael's life for both a girlfriend and his mother - there should be no need for him to label his mother as "Work" on his phone so people don't know his mother is calling him.  That's just silly.

Next is "The Non-Committer" vs. "The Girl Who Wants the Ring".  This one's about the guy who just doesn't want to grow up, he's got sci-fi posters and action figures and plays video-games with his girlfriend, only she decides she wants him to have a better job, lose the teenage stuff and buy some real furniture.  Any resemblance to my own life is purely coincidental here.  But here conversation is key, this guy (the token white lead) has been living this way for so long that he doesn't realize something is wrong, he needs a woman to tell him that he's in his thirties now and he needs a job with benefits, also there's duct tape holding the couch together and it doesn't have to be that way.  Also if marriage is one of her goals, she might need to state that outright, rather than just hint about it, because he likes his life a certain way, and he's never going to change it unless there's a clear next step, some people just need practical advice, or a big push to get motivated to make a change.  

Then there's "The Dreamer" vs. "The Woman Who Is Her Own Man".  Dominic is a line cook, with vague aspirations to be a successful chef, however he also has to work as a parking valet to make ends meet, and doesn't quite know how to get from HERE to THERE.  So naturally the film pairs him up with Lauren, who's already the CEO of a company and appreciates the finer things in life.  Like, umm, good food and wine - OK, so dating someone who can cook her a restaurant-quality meal would seem to be a good match, right?  Wrong, because she can't take him seriously until he has a business plan, some investors and his own A-list restaurant.  They're not really on equal footing, but do they really need to be?  As Steve Harvey says, if she makes a six figure salary, does he have to?  If the relationship works out, doesn't someone have to cook dinner or take out the trash if the other one is a high-power executive?  Why can't HE be the eye candy at HER corporate functions? 

Finally theres "The Player" vs. "The 90 Day Rule Girl".  Here the man just wants to have a good time (sex) while the woman's been through too many one-night stands where the man splits the next morning and never calls again - so she follows Steve Harvey's advice to not be intimate for the first 90 days of the relationship, the number of days is arbitrary, but the point is to get to know each other on a deep personal level before well, you know. Keep the "cookie" in the cookie jar, don't feed it to the "cookie monster" because well, he'll just make a mess of it.  Honestly, this is a bit confusing because we still don't know why Mya has such a problem with men leaving the next morning, I mean, she gave each man the cookie, why don't they want another cookie?  Is there something wrong with her personality, is she boring or too clingy or does she just expect too much?  Either way, for this particular type of person the solution is to slow things down and connect on a deeper level, and this turns out to be just general good advice, I mean, really it's just what Zeke "The Player" needed to, so maybe men and women just aren't that different after all?  God, that would be terrible news for anyone trying to sell an advice book that's based on the different approaches that men and women have in relationships.  

Actually, I think Steve Harvey's going to do all right, because look what happened, a whole lot of women went out and bought his book.  Then when the men got together and talked about how all of their girlfriends wanted to know about their short-term goals, they realized that those girls were all reading the SAME self-help book - so they had to go out and buy it too, but only so they could get out ahead of this game, figure out what their women wanted and pretend to give it to them.  Because they couldn't just ASK what their women wanted, that would be ridiculous - and meanwhile, Steve Harvey's laughing all the way to the bank once the men had to buy his book too, to figure out the women's game.  So then the men know what the women know, and then the women know that the men know what the women know.  And then once the men know that the women know that the men know what the women know, maybe they can start to have a conversation about the best ways to move forward together. 

Nah, I'm just kidding, men and women are still going to keep on lying to each other and being selfish or not being completely honest about their feelings, and then people will keep breaking up when the relationships get too hard or they get their feelings hurt, because if the self-help books really could solve all the relationship problems through creating greater understanding, then all those counselors and advice-givers would be out of a job, right?  It's like peace in the Middle East, you can engineer a temporary truce but you're just never going to solve the larger conflict that's been going on for centuries.  

Also starring Kevin Hart (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), Michael Ealy (last seen in "Fatale"), Taraji P. Henson (last seen in "Term Life"), Terrence Jenkins (last heard in "Fatale"), Jerry Ferrara (last seen in "Empire State"), Gabrielle Union (last heard in "Strange World"), Romany Malco (last seen in "Top Five"), Meagan Good (last seen in "One Missed Call"), Steve Harvey (last heard in "Racing Stripes"), Gary Owen (last seen in "Get Hard"), Wendy Williams (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Chris Brown (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Keri Hilson (last seen in "Riddick"), Jenifer Lewis (also last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), La La Anthony, Caleel Harris (last seen in "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween"), Arielle Kebbel (last seen in "Be Cool"), Tika Sumpter (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Tony Rock (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Jessica Camacho, J. Anthony Brown (last seen in "xXx: State of the Union"), Thomas Miles, Sharon Braithwaite, Angela Elayne Gibbs (last seen in "Fled"), Bruce Bruce (last seen in "Top Five'), Omar Leyva (last seen in "Don't Let Go"), Chrisanne Eastwood, Melyssa Ford, Gwen Yeager, Andrew Rolfe, Noah Longo (last seen in "Still Waiting..."), Bunnie Rivera (last seen in "Bright"), Peter Arpesella, Danny Vola, Jamie Foster Brown, Will Packer, 

with cameos from Matt Barnes, Shannon Brown, Rasual Butler, Morris Chestnut (last seen in "Heist"), Darren Collison, Lisa Leslie, Luenell (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Metta World Peace, Kelly Rowland, Sherri Shepherd (last seen in "Cellular'), J.B. Smoove (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), 

RATING: 5 out of 10 one-dollar bills brought to the Ass Factory

People Places Things

Year 16, Day 40 - 2/9/24 - Movie #4,641

BEFORE: I'm not sure how long this film has been on my watchlist, but for sure it's been a while.  It was on Netflix or maybe Hulu and I just didn't get to it in time, and I think also I may have been confusing it with an Oscar-nominated documentary called "Faces Places".  But upon further review I looked at the synopsis and realized it really belongs in the romance section, which is February, and so it got re-classified and this year I found a slot for it.  Simple as that, only it's changed locations, now it's on the Roku channel, but also on AmazonPrime in the "FreeVee" section, which means I'll be seeing ads tonight no matter where I view it.  That's also not usually a good sign, if it's running free but with ads.  We'll see, though, I'll try to keep an open mind.  

Jemaine Clement carries over from "An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn".

EDIT: I forgot that Turner Classic Movies was starting their "31 Days of Oscar" programming today, mea culpa.  But I usually like to keep track of how many of their Oscar-nominated movies I've seen, so I'm going back and dropping them in post facto.  They're dividing up the movies by category this year, so today is Day 1, devoted to:

Best Costume Design Nominees:

6:00 am "Adventures of Don Juan" (1948)

8:00 am "Raintree Country" (1957)

11:15 am "The Band Wagon" (1953)

1:15 pm "Flower Drum Song" (1961)

3:30 pm "The Night of the Iguana" (1964)

5:30 pm "Gypsy" (1962)

Best Costume Design Winners:

8:00 pm "The Sting" (1976)

10:15 pm "Roman Holiday" (1953)

12:30 am "All That Jazz" (1979)

2:45 am "Camelot" (1967)

OK, I'm pretty sure I've seen 7 out of these 10, "The Band Wagon", "The Night of the Iguana", "Gypsy", "The Sting", "Roman Holiday", "All That Jazz" and "Camelot".  So, I'm off to a good start, 70% seen.  If I can stay above 50% for the whole month of programming, I'll be very happy.

THE PLOT: Will Henry is a newly single graphic novelist balancing parenting his young twin daughters and teaching a classroom full of art students while navigating the rich complexities of new love and letting go of the woman who left him. 

AFTER: Well, it seems I've transitioned from the romance films that were in the "I can't possibly get together with the person I'm in love with, because reasons, only wait, now it's possible" films to the grouping that demands to be called the "It's Complicated" films.  I know, how do I keep coming up with such clever names, right?  The easiest way to make romance complicated in a movie is to just do a love triangle thing, like "Alex & Emma" did (though they threw in the novel-within-the-film thing for good measure) and then after that came "An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn", which billed itself on its poster as "A love triangle with too many sides".  Only that's not really a triangle, if it's four or five people that's a love quadrilateral or a love rhombus or a love pentagon, to be more precise.   Anyway, even THAT'S not accurate, because Lulu Danger was in the middle of all of the relationships, she was married to one man, in nostalgic love with another, and sleeping in a hotel with a third one. Not a love triangle. 

Ah, but tonight's film really gets into the complications of being co-parents of twin girls and no longer living together, while each partner is dating or engaged to another person.  Yeah, that's more like a love rhombus for sure, only the triangle doesn't really get squared, that would involve the two other people being involved with each other, and that doesn't happen - so I guess imaging two triangles that touch each other on one side?  No, that's not right either.  Damn, now I have to draw a diagram or something.  Maybe we shouldn't even drag Euclidean geometry into this at all, it's just a couple that USED to be together, but now they're each dating one other person, simple as that.  So, really more like two "V" shapes than triangles, if that makes sense, and those two "V" shapes share a side, one's upside down so maybe that looks a bit more like a big letter "N".  That's "N" as in "Nobody really cares about the shape of the diagram but me." so I kind of have to drop it.  OK, we're going with the letter "N" and the big diagonal cross-bar of the "N" represents the relationship between Will and Charlie, who are the parents of twin girls.  But then after they split up Charlie dates Gary, and Will dates Diane. 

Gary is the guy that Charlie was cheating on Will with, and worse, it was during their twin daughters' birthday party, and that's also when Will found out about it when he walked in on them getting dressed. Whoopsie, but I guess that's a good a time as any to get everything out in the open, in that there really is not a good time to find out your life partner is not happy in your relationship and is banging someone else.  Maybe there could have been a better way to find out, but nah, they all suck, really.  Or maybe she could have TOLD him, but you know, reasons. It's more cinematic this way.  

Fast forward one year (because who wants to just watch a man cry and lose his mind for a year, right?) and Will's in a better place, mentally, and a different place, physically, because he moved to a crappy apartment in Astoria, which is in Queens, while Charlie still lives in the townhouse in Manhattan, or maybe a really nice part of Brooklyn.  They're supposedly 90 minutes away by subway, which is a problem every time Will needs to either pick up the girls or drop them off.  Also he's an art teacher specializing in comic book illustration, so I'm guessing he's teaching at one of those specialized high schools we have in NYC, I'd say maybe he's teaching at SVA only Kat, one of his students mentions applying to Columbia, which means she's still in high school?  

At first it seems like maybe this is going to be another one of those films where a teacher dates one of his students, only it's not, Kat wants to set Will up with her mother, Diane.  Which Will's not opposed to, he's got to get back out there at some point, as his ex-girlfriend, Charlie, who said she would NEVER get married to anyone, is considering marrying Gary - yes, the guy she cheated on Will with.  Well, this just gets better and better for Will, doesn't it?  

Will has dinner with Kat and Diane, and sure, it's awkward, but only because Diane is seeing someone else that Kat doesn't know about - still, she and Will sort of hit it off, I mean, there's something there, and they don't mind spending time together, so maybe?  The only thing that could complicate matters further would be if Charlie gets cold feet before the wedding and turns to Will for advice and they sort of both admit they still have feelings for each other.  Well, guess what....

This all feels very fresh, very modern, like I could see all this happening in the real world, like a woman saying she'd never get married, but then changing her mind.  Or Will thinking that his dating life is over after splitting up with Charlie, but then finding out that doesn't have to be the case, and being pleasantly surprised by that.  Or Will wanting to spend more time with his daughters, and seizing the opportunity when Charlie wants to start taking improv classes, but then also learning along the way how hard it is to be the parent that makes sure the kids follow their cello rehearsal schedule and also get to bed at a reasonable time so they can make it to school and not be an hour late every time. 

It's a very grown-up thing to co-parent, and it's another very grown-up thing to realize that life is constantly changing, and that you're not the only one who doesn't really have their emotional act together, and we're all just making it up as we go along, trying to roll with the changes and not be overwhelmed by them.  And it's very grown-up to not think of a failed relationship as a mistake, but instead as something that worked for a while, until it didn't. 

I was reminded by Will's lessons to his students about a book called "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud.  I was sure I'd see that man's name somewhere in the credits, as a consultant or an on set-artist or something.  Well, I was wrong, but I did see in the credits that most of the illustration work was done by Gray Williams, but some was also done by Dash Shaw, who I know went to the School of Visual Arts, and who animated the films "Cryptozoo" and "My Entire High School Sinkng Into the Sea".  I do happen to know several teachers at SVA and I'm working on meeting more of them, you never know where that could lead for an animation professional like myself.  

Also starring Regina Hall (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Jessica Williams (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore"), Stephanie Allynne (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Michael Chernus (last seen in "The Kindergarten Teacher"), Aundrea Gadsby (last seen in "Joy"), Gia Gadsby (ditto), Nancy Eng (last seen in "Premium Rush"), Celia Au (last seen in "She Said"), Paul Castro Jr. (last seen in "An American Pickle'), Jason Dyer, Matthew Maher (last seen in "Air"), Dionne Audain (last seen in "Lemon"), Derrick Arthur (last seen in "Delivery Man"), Gavin Haag. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 posters for Gary's one-man monologue show

An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn

Year 16, Day 39 - 2/8/24 - Movie #4,640

BEFORE: Yeah, I don't know about this one.  I put it on my list because it was on Netflix for a while, but it scrolled off at some point, can't watch it there, that's not a good sign.  It looks really weird, which is another not-so-good sign.  But at least it's serving a purpose, it's connecting the first week of romance movies with the bigger part of that section, I had to kind of Frankenstein several smaller chains together this time around to get the big chain, so naturally there will be some films that serve as mortar to connect the bigger bricks, and if I can clear a film off the list that I just didn't know what to do with it or when to screen it, that's even better. 

Michael St. Michaels carries over from "Alex & Emma".  I'm not even 100% sure he's in this movie, because Wikipedia listed him in the film's credits, and so did several other web-based sources, but the IMDB didn't, not at first, anyway.  So I'm taking a chance tonight, I hope he's in here. 

THE PLOT: Lulu Danger's unsatisfying marriage takes a turn for the worst when a mysterious man from her past comes to town to perform a musical event "For One Magical Night Only". 

AFTER: Man, this is a weird film, I watched and I still don't really know what to make of it, or what it's really about in the end, if I'm being honest.  It kind of comes from that "Napoleon Dynamite" school of filmmaking, where somebody just wanted to hire a bunch of character actors, give them all funny names, and just let them run wild and be weird, hoping that the comedy would follow.  Umm, it really didn't here, unless I missed it or I wasn't in the right mood to receive it.  

But at the core of the story there's a woman who's unhappy with her life and her marriage - her husband was also her boss at the diner and he had to fire her to cut costs.  But to be fair, if he had fired one of his other useless employees and kept Lulu on staff, he could be accused of favoritism, or she could be accused of sleeping with her boss to keep her job.  So I can see it, but here all that is just one little thread in a weird tapestry of a story populated by weird characters, most of whom don't seem to understand this whole "acting" thing very well.  I like Jemaine Clement fine, but he's another one of those people more known for taking weird roles and being all weird with it instead of being super-serious about delivering his lines believably.

Craig Robinson's usually good, too, except here his title character is non-verbal for most of the movie, so there's a lot of communicating through grunts and growls, and that kind of leaves me scratching my head, also.  What is the point of all that?  Beverly Luff Lynn is some kind of musical superstar, scheduled to perform for one night only at the Moorhouse Hotel's lounge, but he's also got a bad case of gas or constipation or bloating or something, and midnight swims in the hotel pool don't seem to be helping, nor does the care of his platonic male life companion, who also serves as his road manager and caregiver.  

But first there's Lulu, who made the mistake of mentioning to her no-good husband, Shane Danger, that her brother keeps his life savings in a lockbox in his spice store, leading Shane to plan a robbery with the help of the other two non-fired employees of the diner, but for some reason they think if they just put on brightly colored wigs, then Adjay won't recognize Shane, his own brother-in-law.  Huh?  Don't most robbers think to, you know, wear a mask or cover their face somehow?  So really, there's no shock over who robbed Adjay, who then hires mystery man Colin, while at the laundromat, to get his money back.  While Colin is trying to rob the robbers, Lulu gets the bright idea to grab his gun and basically take the gunman hostage, but together they get away with the money and more importantly, Lulu gets away from her husband.  

Lulu and Colin get a room with twin beds at the weird Moorhouse hotel, which has a weird front desk man, a weird bartender and a weird DJ, but the hotel's manager is the weirdest of all.  Lulu really wants to see that musical performance by Beverly Luff Linn, and eventually we find out that Beverly (which is a man's name, according to half the characters here) was her college professor and her first love, but he disappeared during a long swim while they were on vacation, and Lulu had assumed for years that he was dead.  

Instead Beverly Luff Linn became a mysterious musical sensation, and is out on tour playing the finest hotel lounges in California, only the show keeps getting delayed by 24 hours due to his gastro-intestinal problems.  After three days of this, the crowd at the Moorhouse can't wait to see him perform, and neither can we.  But I'm sorry to say that the build-up for the big fantastic show is a lot stronger than the show itself, which is basically just a few Scottish folk songs sung by Beverly and his platonic male life companion and road manager.  Then the whole thing gets interrupted by a fist-fight when Lulu's husband shows up with a birthday cake for her and tries to win her back, and it does not go well.  

Well, I guess Lulu had to settle things with her long-lost love Beverly before she could move on,  dump her terrible husband, and look forward to her new life with the mysterious hit-man (?) Colin.  That's how things go, if I understood this one correctly, but still, I'm just not sure that I did, because it's that obtuse about everything that took place.  Perhaps it's best to just have another cocktail at the bar and try not to overthink it. I can see this maybe catching on with a certain crowd of cinemaphiles as a cult hit, maybe, but as a straight film, there's really not much here to work with, just weird people being weird. 

Also starring Aubrey Plaza (last seen in "Ingrid Goes West"), Emile Hirsch (last seen in "The Darkest Hour"), Jemaine Clement (last seen in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Matt Berry (last seen in "Christopher Robin"), Craig Robinson (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), Maria Bamford (last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Zach Cherry (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Jacob Wysocki (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Michael D. Cohen (last seen in "Suburbicon"), Sky Elobar (last seen in "Under the Silver Lake"), John Kerry (last seen in "Babylon"), Bettina Devin (last seen in "Rent"), Mellanie Hubert (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Sam Dissanayake (last seen in "This is 40"), Carl Solomon, Kirsten Krieg, Russ Burd (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Gil Gex, Luis Molina, Bruce Paz. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 microwaved tamales from the gas station

Alex & Emma

Year 16, Day 38 - 2/7/24 - Movie #4,639

BEFORE: I don't know what happened with this film, it was on the list of films that I had either on DVD or on my movie DVR, those titles are underlined on my main watch list, which means that I have a copy in my possession, and I tend to favor those films when I'm scheduling, because for each film I watch off that main list, I allow myself to add one.  Also, clearing the movies off my DVR whenever possible is favored, because then I allow myself to record one more on premium cable, to fill its space.  

But I looked up and down the list of films on my DVR, and it just wasn't there.  I looked through the document on my computer that holds all the names of the films I have on DVD, and it wasn't there either - I even kept an eye out for it as I re-alphabetized my DVD collection this past weekend, and I didn't spot it there either.  So what happened to it?  It's unlikely I'd burn the film to DVD and then misplace the disc, I file all the new DVDs away immediately, but then it's re-ordering them that takes time later.  It's possible I mean to record this one on the DVR and forgot, or it's possible that I programmed it to record and then my DVR crashed whenever it was supposed to record the film.  Come to think of it, my DVR was down for a few days last fall, due to some bad wiring juju in the neighborhood.  It's possible that my DVR was supposed to record this film that week, and just couldn't maintain a connection.  This is why I keep photos on my camera of what's recorded on my DVR, in case the whole thing crashes I would at least want to know what movies were lost.

Anyway, it's Roku to the rescue tonight, as the film is available there for free, provided I watch a few ads during the movie.  Hey, it beats paying for movie rentals.  And I'm sure it will come around again on cable sooner or later.  

Cloris Leachman carries over from "The Wedding Ringer". 

THE PLOT: A writer must turn out a novel in thirty days or face the wrath of loan sharks. 

AFTER: Sorry, I'm late in posting today, because "Tournament of Champions" is back on Food Network, and I can't believe it's been a whole year almost already, but that's a must-watch in our household.  Oh, sure, it's only the qualifier rounds, to figure out which 4 out of 16 chefs who didn't make the first cut will get those last spots in the bracket, but since this show combines the combatants we know from "Top Chef", "Chopped" and "Master Chef", among others, really, it's the all-star event of the week, there just couldn't possibly be another big sporting event this week that could out-do it, not a chance.  

But let me get through this quickly so I don't fall behind, I've still got to watch tomorrow's film tonight, thankfully I'm not working tomorrow so I can stay up really late and sleep as long as I want, as long as I wake up in time to go out for bagels or heart-shaped donuts tomorrow.  This is a very corny film, almost like a throwback, because it's set in a world where a writer would hire a stenographer to help him finish the manuscript for his book - just the presence of a stenographer alone should place this back in the 1960's or 70's, but then again I guess there's a thing that still exists, or did still exist in 2003, anyway. 

The problem is, the writer has writer's block, which is something I think I've seen in just about every film about writers.  I guess writers who have no problems coming up with creative fresh ideas and getting them down on paper just aren't very interesting, because every writer in movies seems to have the dreaded W.B.  Sure, tennis players get tennis elbow, athletes get athlete's foot and writers get writer's block, but come on EVERY ONE of them?  And they all seem to have such trouble getting started, they stare at that blank first page or they re-write the first sentence of their novel over and over again, implying that if they could only JUST START and get that first bit done, then the rest of it will flow more easily. 

It doesn't help that Alex borrowed money from some Cuban loan sharks, and they're expecting to get paid when he finishes the novel and gets that big check from his publisher.  Maybe he should have requested a contract where he gets paid in installments, but then again that wouldn't help if he can't even get the novel started, he can't turn in the first chapter if he can't even write the first liine, right?  So maybe that explains why he borrowed money from loan sharks?  No, actually it doesn't at all.  When the two burly guys come around, they hold him outside his window over the sidewalk below (also very stereotypical) and they break his TV and his phone - well, as they point out, now there will be no distractions to keep him from finishing the novel.  

Now, it also seems like it wouldn't make much difference whether he types the novel or dictates it, like it's just as hard to think up the plot either way, but no, I'm going to allow this one.  If he tells the story to someone else, I could see how it might flow better, like he's just telling a story to another person, or relating an anecdote as part of a stand-up routine to an audience.  He can gauge her reactions and alter the story, use her as an instant sounding board, and she also might notice something that doesn't seem to work right off, and he can make alterations.  Sure, it makes perfect sense except for the fact that nothing here really does.  

But we see the novel acted out, it's kind of a period piece like "The Great Gatsby", set in the late 1800's or early 1900's perhaps, as a man named Adam Shipley travels to a small Maine island to be a tutor for a rich woman's children, and of course he meets a man on the train journey there who is also loaning that woman money, with the intent of also marrying her.  But Adam also falls in love with this French woman, however there's a love quadrangle set up her between Adam, Polina (who hired him), John Shaw (the man he met on the train) and the au pair who helps raise the children.  When Adam asks the au pair (Ylva, Elsa, Eldora, her name keeps changing) for romantic advice, she assumes that Adam is interested in her, not Polina.  

Ot course, the same actors who play the writer and the stenographer appear in the acted-out fictional story, too, so their budding romance in the real world ends up getting reflected in the story, or perhaps vice versa.  So Emma, the stenographer, starts to wonder if there is a real-life analog for Polina, perhaps an ex-girlfriend of Alex that he is still in love with, or pining for.  Of course she's right, because every actor's playing double duty in this one, this must be cheaper according to SAG rules to structure the story this way.  This is a classic technique to represent the "real" fictional world in the film-within-the-film, it goes all the way back to "The Wizard of Oz" and probably further back than that.  But sure, it also represents that the fantasy world has its roots in the real world, as things in our dreams are based on things that happen to us during the day.  But more importantly, it must be cheaper to hire each actor to play two roles. 

(EDIT: The classic film this one most resembles, though, is "Paris When It Sizzles", which feaured a screenwriter hiring a secretary to type up his script as he dictates it, and we also see them footage of them acting out the scenes in a film-within-the-film.)

Alex & Emma do grow closer together over the 30-day marathon novel writing and dictation session, by the end they're not just author and stenographer/sounding board, but they're bedmates and they've probably shared many meals together as well, all of that quality time should translate easily into a relationship, except that's when the real Polina shows up, and she's between relationships and wants to take Alex with her back to Paris.  (Damn, it's even a bigger dilemma than trying to choose the perfect woman he met at the airport over the one he had a bad blind date with.).  While he still might be in love with Polina, he's now grown accustomed to spending time with Emma - however in the novel Adam ends up alone, he managed to bungle things with both women because he wasn't ready to settle, or had fear of commitment, whichever.  

Life nearly imitates art, and Alex turns down Polina to be with Emma, however he took too long to make the decision, and nearly lost both opportunities, like the character in his book.  Ah, but the solution presents itself, just hire Emma to help him change the ending of the book, and in doing so perhaps convince her that both he and his character deserve a relationship with the more down-to-earth, reliable person who makes them laugh and feel special.  There's nothing wrong with that intention, what's more important is making that decision quickly and without hesitation, because your life partner (whichever one you choose) deserves that, at the very least.  If you can't make a decision in due time, you just may end up alone for a while longer. Well, that's the "good advice" love tip of the day, anyway. 

I didn't know that a similar set of events happened to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who dictated a novel titled "The Gambler", which he wrote in 26 days with the help of a stenographer.  He fell in love with Anna, the stenographer during the process and they married and had four children. 

OK, that's the first full week of the romance chain down, now just five more weeks to go. 

Also starring Kate Hudson (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Luke Wilson (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), David Paymer (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Sophie Marceau (last seen in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"), Rob Reiner (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Chino XL, Lobo Sebastian (last seen in "The Mule"), Paul Wilson (last seen in "The Goodbye Girl" (1977)), Alexander Wauthier, Leili Kramer, Rip Taylor (last seen in "The Dukes of Hazzard"), Gigi Bermingham (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Jordan Lund (last seen in "Species") Francois Giroday (last seen in "Permanent Midnight"), Robert Costanzo (also last seen in "The Goodbye Girl" (1977)), Earl Carroll (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Jordi Caballero, Michael St. Michaels, Danica Sheridan (last seen in "The Great Buck Howard"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 Boston tourist attractions

The Wedding Ringer

Year 16, Day 37 - 2/6/24 - Movie #4,638

BEFORE: My schedule's been a bit on-again, off-again, I'll be at the theater every other day for a week at a time, then I won't get a shift for the next week and a half.  However, there's always the chance that someone will call in sick, and the management knows that I'm happy to cover a shift if I'm available. That's the thing about us older married people, we don't mind working on Friday night because it's date night, or Saturday clubbing or whatever it is the kids do, so I'll be there on Friday night or Sunday morning on short notice. 

So Friday was a screening of an episode of "Lawmen: Bass Reeves", Sunday was "Nyad" with a Q&A panel after that had Kathleen Turner interviewing Annette Bening, and I got to run the elevator that allowed both actresses to appear on stage, as if by magic - just like how Taylor Swift gets on stage at her concerts, really.  So that was fun, and tonight's another screening of "Maestro" with Bradley Cooper doing a Q&A after the film. Just another shift, right? 

Jorge Garcia carries over from "The Wrong Missy". 

THE PLOT: Two weeks shy of his wedding, a socially awkward guy enters into a charade by hiring the owner of a company that provides best men for grooms in need. 

AFTER: I'm now six days in to the romance chain - not even a full week and I'm already showing signs of thematic burn-out, that's not good.  But those first five films all had something in common, they basically followed the same formula, with two people NOT in a relationship because events keep preventing them from getting on the same page.  In the case of "The Wrong Missy", those two people weren't just on the same page, they were in different books that were also not stored in the same library.  But then, just before the end of the film, the situation changes, the stars align or someone has a revelation, and the relationship is now possible.  Maybe it's easier to spot the formula once you watch five rom-coms in a row, but is this how screenwriters think relationships work - it's not possible, it's not possible, it's still not possible, oh, wait, now it's possible!  Hurray!

Sure, I may be oversimplifying things just a bit, but I've been single, I've been married, divorced and married again, so I know a bit about what I'm talking about.  I've also dated people who put me in the "Friend zone" and we've stayed that way for years, that's definitely a thing, but I don't think I would pursue someone for years with the hope of the impossible or improbable becoming possible, that feels like it would be a waste of time.  Still, I guess I have to acknowledge that it's possible for the impossible to become possible, given enough time and enough changes due to circumstance.  But that's not what we're dealing with tonight, this film's lead character is already engaged, to a woman that he feels is out of his league, and he'll do just about anything she requests, because he feels extremely lucky to be in the position he's in.  

So, naturally, she wants a big elaborate expensive wedding, and he's afraid to tell her that he doesn't have any close friends willing to serve as his best man, hell, he doesn't really have any male friends at all.  So that's the set-up, and when he hears there is someone out there who is providing best man services to various loner men in the same situation, he checks it out, and sure enough, he can hire a stand-in best man for the right price.  Because that's so much easier than telling his wife the truth, that he has no friends, he's convinced himself that will be a deal-breaker for her.  Also, I'm sure that starting off your marriage by turning your wedding ceremony and reception into a giant deception will have no repercussions whatsoever, right? 

OF COURSE a wedding is a big production, and OF COURSE people try to out-do each other and show off, and OF COURSE it's a chance to spend money and demonstrate to other people that you have money to spend, but at the center of it all, ideally it should be about two people joining together in front of their friends and family and expressing and celebrating their love and commitment. However, collectively we've all built up these wedding rituals to be the end-all and be-all, and if something doesn't go perfectly right, if you don't get the centerpieces you wanted for the tables, or the band doesn't stick to your playlist, it's NOT the end of the world. However, for some people it might feel that way.  So the question becomes, to what degree is everyone involved being sincere about everything, or has society turned the wedding game into some giant form of competition?  And is this a healthy thing or an unhealthy thing? 

Doug Harris, tax attorney, made the horrible mistake of lying to his wife, instead of saying that he had no available male friend, he concocted a fake one who's hard to contact because he's in the military, and even gave him a fake name, so stand-in best man Jimmy Callahan has to impersonate "Bic Mitchum" for two weeks leading up to the wedding, and Bic is supposedly an army chaplain. Now, Jimmy's in the habit of changing his name and back-story for every occasion, provided the price is right, but impersonating a priest is going to put a damper on his proclivity for getting some action from the bridesmaids. Also, Doug has no groomsmen, while his wife has seven bridesmaids, so Jimmy's organization has to re-hire some previous employees as stand-ins, to deliver the never-before-attempted "Golden Tux" level of service from The Best Man Inc. - provided that Doug's willing to pay $50,000 for the deluxe package.  

There's a bachelor party involved, even though Doug said he didn't want one, and told his wife there wasn't going to be one, but hey, when you pay that much for seven groomsmen, I guess you get a bachelor party at the Sports Action Park thrown in for free.  But the details of the wild bachelor party and ensuing high-speed chase with the police are probably best omitted here.  Later the ragtag bunch of nine random strangers with new identities gets challenged to a brutal game of touch football with the bride's father, who somehow knows a bunch of football legends, including Joe Namath.  Damn, if only I'd known, with a little more effort and a little more moving some movies around, I might have gotten this one to line up better with the Super Bowl - I was just six days off.  But the football game and the bachelor party are there for a clear narrative reason, to get these nine men to have shared experiences, so they will bond better and be somewhat more believable as a group of friends during the reception.  (Nope, they still really come off as nine random strangers who somehow know details about each other's fictional pasts.)

As for the relationship between Doug and his fiancée, Gretchen, there are some signs that maybe they're not the perfect partners for each other, after all.  Doug's been acting like a doormat and conceding to all of her wedding demands and relationship rules because he lacks confidence, and he's convinced himself that this is necessary, because she's so out of his league.  We're all just co-inhabitants of this crazy spaceship Earth, and so we're all just going to keep bouncing around and having both successful and unsuccessful relationships with each other, because what other choice do we have?  Doug will never know if there's a better partner out there for him as long as he's with Gretchen, and I'm OK with that if he is, except that stripper from the bachelor party was pretty hot...

I'm not sure I agree with the attempt to make the bride the "villain" here, at least to some degree.  When we find out that she's marrying for financial security, not love, is that really such a bad thing?  People used to have arranged marriages where love wasn't even part of the picture, it has a much longer history as a business arrangement and a social construct than as a representation of "true love", if that phrase has any meaning at all. Also, she had her heart broken by her ex-fiancé Steve, so can you really blame her for marrying a guy that she's quite sure would never, ever cheat on her because he thinks that she's out of his league?  It feels kind of like a smart decision made to ensure she never gets divorced, and I think that's kind of OK?

The important takeaway here - men are different than women, men are solitary types who don't enjoy making friends, unless that is somehow involved with deceiving women or in trying to sleep with them.  Women, on the other hand, are more social creatures who only care about having elaborate weddings to impress their frenemies and using marriage as a construct to advance themselves in society. Yeah, we're going to have to look elsewhere for signs of true love, I'm sorry to say.  

Still, this was good for some laughs, and a neat twist on the "Wedding Crashers" concept, like what if there weren't just two guests at the wedding who were pretending they belonged there, what if the best man and the groomsmen (and the bride, ultimately) were ALL pretending they belonged? 

Also starring Kevin Hart (last seen in "The Man from Toronto"), Josh Gad (last heard in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"), Kaley Cuoco (last seen in "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"), Alan Ritchson (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl"), Cloris Leachman (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Mimi Rogers (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Ken Howard (last seen in "Better Living Through Chemistry"), Affion Crockett (last seen in "Pixels"), Jenifer Lewis (last heard in "The Addams Family" (2019)), Olivia Thirlby (last seen in "The Darkest Hour"), Justine Ezarik, Josh Peck (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Joe Namath (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), John Riggins, Ed “Too Tall” Jones (last seen in "Semi-Tough"), Aaron Takahashi (last seen in "Yes Man"), Dan Gill (last seen in "Crash Pad"), Corey Holcomb, GloZell Green (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Tristin Mays, Colin Kane (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Ignacio Serricchio (last seen in "The Mule"), Nicky Whelan (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Whitney Cummings (last seen in "How It Ends"), Jeffrey Ross (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Nikki Leigh, Lisa Donovan, Lindsay Pearce, Patrick Carlyle (last seen in "Rough Night"), Robert Towers, Neal Israel (last seen in "Johnny Dangerously"), Peter Gilroy, Amy Okuda (last seen in "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), David Burr, Anthony L. Fernandez, Ashley Jones, Trevor Brunsink, Mimi Gianopulos, Arianna Gomez, Sina J. Henrie, Trae Ireland.

RATING: 6 out of 10 varieties of ranch dressing

The Wrong Missy

Year 16, Day 36 - 2/5/24 - Movie #4,637

BEFORE: David Spade carries over from "Loser".  Yeah, this one's been on the Netflix list for a while, it comes from Adam Sandler's production company but he's not in it - that made it a bit harder to link to, I could have worked this in last year if only Sandler had starred in it. But David Spade's fine - well, OK - well, acceptable. 

Look, I'm looking for something that's a cut above just a below-average romantic comedy, and I"m fairly sure this will be exactly that, but jeez, at least I'll be able to clear it off my to-do list after today, that's got to count for something. 

THE PLOT: Tim thinks he's invited the woman of his dreams on a work retreat to Hawaii, realizing too late he mistakenly texted someone from a nightmare blind date. 

AFTER: We've become accustomed to SNL being an important step on the road to being a movie star, because enough comedians who put in their time on that NBC sketch show went on to do movies we love, that ultra-talented first group that produced Aykroyd, Murray, Belushi, Chase, Curtin, Radner, Morris and Newman, and then everyone who followed, from Eddie Murphy to Will Ferrell to Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristin Wiig and so on and so on, right through to Pete Davidson and Andy Samberg and Kenan Thompson.  Then there are those few who barely worked again after being on the show, like Terry Sweeney, Victoria Jackson and Pamela Stephenson.  Maybe some had personal reasons, maybe others had personal problems.

Then there are those comedians who are kind of in the middle, they didn't become "A"-level movie stars after SNL, but they probably will continue to work in movies and TV for as long as they want to.  David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Bobby Moynihan - there are roles for them, they're just probably not going to headline movies, they just don't put asses into the movie theater seats.  Spade had some successes with "Black Sheep" and "Tommy Boy", but then what the hell was "Joe Dirt"?  Never gonna watch it.  He did have success in animated films, like "The Emperor's New Groove" and also the "Hotel Transylvania" movies, but "The Wrong Missy" represents the first time I've seen his name above the title in quite some time.  

So maybe that's part of why this feels like it started out as an Adam Sandler film, and then either Sandler wasn't available because he was filming "Uncut Gems", or he just took a producing role and threw a bone to his buddy, David Spade.  I'll try to investigate this later to confirm.  Either way, I have to judge the film as a David Spade film because that's how it ended up.  I can't help but notice that he was 56 years old when this film was released, and he's still trying to play characters who are in their mid-thirties - at some point that's just not going to work any more. 

Here Spade plays Tim Morris, a man who works for some kind of financial credit company based in Oregon, and we see him go on a disastrous blind date, one where this woman, Melissa, acts very rude and talks about inappropriate things, almost gets him into a fight with a MUCH bigger guy, and also, she carries a huge knife around.  Tim tries to escape from the restaurant via the bathroom window, but for some reason she followed him into the men's room, and made his escape impossible.  But still he persists, and apparently breaks his ankle jumping out of the window, but Melissa finds him and somehow pops his ankle back into place.

Three months later, Tim bumps into a beautiful woman (also named Melissa) in an airport, and they accidentally switch bags, and this causes her to miss her flight.  After catching up with each other and sorting out the luggage, they realizing they're reading the same book, they both don't drink alcohol, and have many other things in common.  They exchange numbers and don't have time for much more, because she still has to catch a flight.  

Tim waits a respectable amount of time before texting her, and they seem to hit it off even better that way, plus there's a work retreat coming up in Hawaii, and Tim can't wait to invite Melissa because they can spend time together in a beautiful setting and see where this all leads, only there's one problem, when the other Melissa shows up at the airport, he realizes he's been texting the wrong one, it's the woman from the nightmare blind date.  I guess you've got to allow some leeway here for the comedy to be possible, I mean I could get all into who booked that ticket, and didn't somebody need to know Melissa's last name for the ticket, didn't she have to produce a photo ID for his company to book the ticket?  (Yes, I deal with a lot of flights bought for my boss by film festivals, and yes, I always have to e-mail a scan of his passport AND make sure the ticket matches his name exactly, or there could be trouble at check-in.). 

So yeah, NITPICK POINT, this mix-up should not have been possible, but if we don't allow this to happen, then we don't have a movie.  Tim figures, what's the worst that could happen during a corporate retreat?  Well, we find out because the movie of course has to take this to the extreme, Missy continues to act inappropriately around Tim's co-workers, she nearly gets him fired and also nearly breaks up his new boss's marriage, not to mention she tries cliff-diving and that goes horribly wrong, plus she keeps trying to have sex with Tim, even though he's trying to avoid that, he wants desperately to be with the OTHER Missy, the hot one that he has so much in common with.  

I'd like to say this movie has something relevant to say about the mysteries of dating, how people come together more or less at random and then have to decide if they share enough things in common to make it work, or what happens to people's personalities when they start dating someone seriously, or also what happens to people's personalities if they're dating the WRONG person, someone who annoys them or gets under their skin.  It can be complicated, so of course this plotline doesn't see the need to deal with it at all, not really, it just wants to reduce things to an "all or nothing" breakdown, someone is absolutely 100% the right person or they're absolutely 100% the wrong person, and I'll just put out there that the truth for any two people coming together is probably somewhere in-between.  

 

Here the "Wrong" Missy means well, but in my opinion that's one of the worst things you can say about somebody.  "Oh, he means well..." is just code for "Oh, he keeps screwing up, he can't do anything right."  And that's her, but the movie can't seem to stick with its definition of her, and through a bizarre combination of her strange set of impractical skills combined with some form of hypnosis, she turns around Tim's new boss's opinion of him, and therefore by extension she saves his career.  And her reward for that is to be told that her invitation to the retreat in the first place was a mistake, and she leaves Hawaii in shame.  

But you can probably guess where this all is going to end up, Tim finally meets the "right" Missy again but also feels the absence of the "wrong" Missy, but the film just can't be bothered to explain how this happened.  I can, I think in some cases just spending time together enhances the attraction between any two people, I mean, it's not rocket science because you just can't appreciate someone who isn't THERE.  But as to whether Tim's newfound feelings for the "wrong" Missy are a result of the time they spent together, some kind of evolution or re-awakening on his part, or the fact that he sustained a head injury, the film is notoriously silent.  I guess if you want to figure out the how or why of love, you'll just have to look somewhere else. 

Umm, but also, WHY were you looking to a silly stupid David Spade comedy to try to figure out how love works?  I guess maybe I was expecting too much. 

I didn't get the shadow dance thing during the company talent show AT ALL, I mean, why would anybody do that at a corporate retreat, plus it's so obvious the movie production company went out and hired that group that was on "America's Got Talent", which was clearly made up of very fit, active people and then tried to make us think that the pudgy, doughy actors in this film were doing the shadow dance performance, I mean COME ON, you can't make magic happen just with editing, it has to be somewhat believable.  

There's also a threesome scene that goes horribly wrong, but this seems wildly out of place, even for this movie.  It also makes the entire situation way more complicated than it ever needed to be, and it isn't even mentioned in the plot breakdown on Wikipedia, that's how much of a throwaway it is - and it doesn't make any sense, and it's not even funny at all.  Like, at least try to remember you're making a comedy film, that's my suggestion.   Same goes for the whole scene with the shark cage, there's not even an ounce of funny in that, so why is it even there? 

Also starring Lauren Lapkus (last seen in "Blended"), Nick Swardson (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Geoff Pierson (ditto), Jackie Sandler (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Molly Sims (last seen in 'Yes Man"), Sarah Chalke (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), Chris Witaske (last seen in "Unicorn Story"), Rob Schneider (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), John Farley (also last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Jonathan Loughran (ditto), Chris Titone (ditto), Sadie Sandler (ditto), Sunny Sandler (ditto), Robert Harvey (ditto), Allen Covert (ditto), Jorge Garcia (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Joe Anoai, Jared Sandler (also last seen in "Blended"), Arlene Newman (last seen in "Aloha"), Candace Smith (last seen in "End of Watch"), Emma Rose Goldstein, Bobby Lee (last seen in "How It Ends"), Vanilla Ice (also last seen in "That's My Boy"), Lori Pelenise Tuisano (last seen in "Fun Size").

RATING: 3 out of 10 Tropical Itch cocktails 

Loser

Year 16, Day 35 - 2/4/24 - Movie #4,636

BEFORE: Jason Biggs is back, but it's Twink Caplan that carries over from "I Could Never Be Your Woman".  The last two films were last minute drop-ins, so the original plan was to get here straight from "Boys and Girls".  I reserve the right to re-program at any time, not just to avoid an unexpected break in the chain. 

The director carries over too, Amy Heckerling, though she made this one a few years before "I Could Never Be Your Woman". She also directed "Clueless", "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Look Who's Talking".  It makes sense that a director might want to use the same actors again and again, especially in the minor roles, some directors love to cast their friends in those.  So it also makes sense that if I link movies by actor, naturally once in a while I'll see a couple films in a row from the same director, especially if I"m also organizing by genre. 

THE PLOT: A college student, branded a loser by his roommates and booted from the dorm, falls in love with a coed who has eyes for their condescending professor. 

AFTER: Amy Heckerling is known for one high-school film, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", which was set in L.A.  I was willing to bet she grew up in Callfornia, but she didn't - it turns out that "Fast Times" was based on a year in the life of Cameron Crowe, from when he was a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine who went undercover to observe high-school students. But Heckerling DID go to college at NYU, and that means I'm looking for something autobiographical here, not just for her but also for ME, because that's where I went to film school.  

I don't think they ever SAY "NYU" in this film, but come on, there are lots of shots of Washington Square Park, and at one point somebody mentions Rubin Hall, which I remember was the name of one of the dorms, and I'll bet that was the one that Heckerling lived in, or at least it was the easiest name for her to remember.  The girl that Paul is pining for is actually in a relationship with their literature professor, and so yep, it's another love triangle tonight, student to student to teacher.  The difference NOW, though, after the #metoo movement is that teachers would be so paranoid about getting caught in an affair with a student and afraid of losing their tenure that they would probably take great care to NOT get into that relationship in the first place.  But apparently back in 2000, the "solution" to the problem would have been a little different, namely "we've got to keep this secret".  Umm, sure, that'll fix it.  

Paul also has a problem with his three roommates, because he's the odd man out, the "LOSER" and the non-cool one, while the other three are tight and they're all party animals.  Paul's there on a Regent's scholarship, which means he has to maintain at least a B average, or he'll lose that scholarship money.  I could be wrong, but I don't think that's how scholarships work.  I got a little bit of a money myself from a National Merit Scholarship, due to a high score on the PSATs, but really, compared to NYU's tuition, it was just a drop in a very large bucket.  But I grok his struggle, he's got to watch his expenses, and that means he can't just buy beer for everyone in the room or afford to eat anywhere but the Student Union on the meal plan.  Yeah, that brings me back.  I burned though most of the money I saved up in high school just on expenses while I was at NYU, it's a tough town - and that was back in the late 1980's.  

Paul's roommates, after excessive partying and a burst waterbed, make up some bogus charges about Paul being racist and non-hygienic and hard to get along with, and convince the housing board to remove him from their room, and he ends up living in a veterinary clinic, where he can apparently sleep at night, as long as he agrees to feed the animals in his spare time, and also act as a night watchman of sorts.  Yeah, this really makes no sense, no college would have some kind of crazy arrangement with a vet clinic, but after the initial orientation of his duties there, we never see another vet or nurse or staffer again, which is more than a little strange. 

(I was in something of a situation like this at NYU, a room with 5 students living in it, one of whom was just a bit weirder than the others, and I was honestly kind of glad that it wasn't me.  But the other four of us did make that guy's life miserable until he moved out by his own choice, and I kind of regretted that for years, but I encountered him somewhere down the road and apologized for my culpability in that madness. I think I just wanted to be on the cool kids side for once, but we for sure took things too far.)

Dora, meanwhile, is working as a waitress in a strip joint, but the club owners give her the worst section of the club to sell drinks to, and then get mad at her when she doesn't sell enough drinks.  She doesn't have to strip (because she's a good girl, after all) but if she had, that could have been a solution to her money problems BUT no, she gets fired and then applies for every job under the sun, modeling or making posters or trying to work in a convenience store, but she comes up empty every time.  This also doesn't really feel like how strip clubs or job-hunting works, either, it just feels like the screenwriter is manufacturing a lot of problems for both Paul and Dora, if I'm being honest.  Eventually she lands on a scheme to sell her unfertilized eggs, which, sure, some women do but she fails to investigate what the long-term medical risks of doing that might be.  

Meanwhile, Paul's roommates face a drug and alcohol crackdown in their dorm, because one student OD's, and they come up with the crazy idea of reconciling with Paul, just to use the vet clinic where he sleeps to run a phony fundraiser for a fake charity, and at the same time providing drugged drinks to all the girls that party there, in order to make it easier for them to have sex with them.  Yes, Paul unwillingly helps his roommates date-rape a bunch of college girls, which, you know, sure sounds inappropriate NOW, but I guess back in 2000, it was a different time?

Also meanwhile, the professor Dora's sleeping with, who insists on keeping their relationship quiet, was listed as her "next of kin" on her medical records, and this was important because she drank a roofied drink at the vet clinic after she HAPPENED to bump into one of Paul's roommates while she was job-hunting, and she missed her date with Paul at the Everclear concert completely.  Paul, being the decent guy he is, finds her and takes her to the hospital, where she gets her stomach pumped and recovers at the vet clinic over a long weekend.  NITPICK POINT: Again, there's NO STAFF at the vet clinic for a whole weekend?  Nobody notices the college girl sleeping it off in the exam room?  This seems really unlikely.

The college roommates find out that the professor was listed as Dora's next of kin (which also doesn't make sense, because she's got FAMILY up in the Bronx or Westchester, where she lives when she's not at the professor's apartment, why isn't her FAMILY listed as "next of kin"?   Oh, because she emancipated herself?  Nah, that didn't happen because the paperwork to do that at City Hall was so complicated, as Andy Dick's character pointed out.  So it's kind of weird that this movie often seems to be working against itself, certain things just contradict other things and certain other things keep going back and forth.  The professor is failing Paul because he's a dick, then he's giving him a "B" because his paper was just OK, then he's giving him a passing grade and a peek at the final because he thinks Paul's part of the blackmail scheme, but then he's giving him a failing grade because he's NOT part of the scheme.  Jesus, make up your mind already, is Paul passing the lit class or failing it?  I can't keep it straight because it changed so many times...

So many other lingering questions here, like why didn't Dora just sell her pantyhose to that creepy guy at the bar if she needed more money?  That's a bit disgusting, sure, but money is money and that was the problem, she wasn't making enough on tips.  And can you really sneak into the second act of a Broadway show just by hanging out on the street outside the theater during intermission?  It seems to me they would check that sort of thing, or there would be two people who wouldn't be able to sit down after the smoking break because Paul and Dora were in their seats, right?  The director seems to have taken a LOT of liberties with the way that everything works, from NYU rules to Broadway hacks to how to deal with a teacher having sex with a student.  

And the roommates NEVER get in trouble for wrecking the vet clinic or giving date-rape drugs in drinks to hundreds of girls?  That just seems misguided and the story seems incomplete.  Oh, sure, all the bad characters get their comeuppances in the "Where Are They Now" segment at the end, but nobody ever gets punished specifically for their very bad behavior, so it all seems kind of unfinished.  Well, at least Paul and Dora got together in the end, so that makes everything OK?   We'll never find out what happened to the video-store clerk, the homeless woman or the loud cell phone guy, though.  As for the director, she blamed the studio's insistence on a PG-13 rating, which meant that she couldn't really tell the story she wanted to tell.  Me, I just wanted her to finish one of the dangling plot-lines, really, any of them, just one. 

Also starring Jason Biggs (last seen in "Over Her Dead Body"), Mena Suvari (last seen in "Domino"), Zak Orth (last seen in "The Pallbearer"), Thomas Sadoski (last seen in "The Last Word"), Jimmi Simpson (last seen in "Under the Silver Lake"), Greg Kinnear (last seen in "Godsend"), Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"), Bobby Slayton (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Robert Miano (last seen in "Girls Trip"), Mollie Heckerling, Colleen Camp (last seen in "An Imperfect Murder"), Brian Backer, Meredith Scott Lynn (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), Stuart Cornfeld, Scott Thomson (last seen in "Smokey and the Bandit"), Kedar Brown (last seen in "Enemy"), Rick Demas, Sanjay Talwar, Tracy Dawson, Carolyn Goff (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Nick Bacon (ditto), Martin Roach (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles")

with cameos from Art Alexakis, Alan Cumming (last heard in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Andy Dick (last seen in "Employee of the Month"), Andrea Martin (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Steven Wright (ditto), Taylor Negron (last seen in "Gun Shy"), David Spade (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), 

RATING: 4 out of 10 model airplanes in Paul's dad's basement