Sex Drive

Year 16, Day 48 - 2/17/24 - Movie #4,649

BEFORE: I'm not even at the halfway point of the romance chain yet, but already there's a very obvious need to break things up a bit.  Too much of the same thing isn't good, and that goes for all of my annual theme months, romance and documentary and horror.  At least with documentaries if I watch too many movies about athletes, I just need to hang in there, because movies about rock stars are probably coming up in just a few days - and with horror, not all films are about demons or ghosts, if I just hang on then I can switch to aliens or serial killers, and that helps keep things interesting.  With the romance films I have to drop in a teen sex film or maybe a film about love gone wrong, like "Swimfan", or else I'll go completely mad.  Maybe this was the year I should have watched all of the "American Pie" films just to shake things up.  But I didn't need them this time, I had a working chain all figured out, so maybe next year, we'll see. 

David Koechner carries over from "Whatever It Takes". 

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 8, devoted to:

Best Supporting Actor Nominees:

6:30 am "Four Daughters" (1938)

8:15 am "Sayonara" (1957)

11:00 am "Crossfire" (1947)

12:30 pm "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950)

2:30 pm "The Barefoot Contessa" (1954)

5:00 pm "The Big Country" (1962)

Best Supporting Actor Winners:

8:00 pm "How Green Was My Valley" (1941)

10:15 pm "The More the Merrier" (1943)

12:15 am "The Fortune Cookie" (1966)

2:30 am "Being There" (1979)

4:45 am "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962)

Again, I've seen just TWO out of these 11, "The Fortune Cookie" and "Being There" - I'm out of contention unless I can catch up by having seen almost EVERY Best Picture winner. Falling to 36 seen out of 102, or 35.2%.  

THE PLOT: A high-school senior drives cross-country with his best friends to hook up with a babe he met online. 

AFTER: Well, right off I can peg this one as a combination of three notable rom-com tropes - there's the nerdy teen trying to lose his virginity, there's the theme of two people who can't quite get on the same page until JUST before the end of the film, and the common motif of a boy pursuing the hot girl who's a terrible person while failing to recognize the more down-to-earth girl he's placed in the friend zone as a more viable love partner (all of these are depicted in "Loser", "Boys and Girls" and "Whatever It Takes", among others).  Why, it's almost like there's some kind of formula or something in Hollywood films about love and sex...

So, yeah, right off the bat it's not hard to figure out where all this is going to end up, with Ian and Felicia together, but we're going to go through the motions, nevertheless.  Ian's also been in an online chat with Ms. Tasty, who promises to go "all the way" with him if he just drives from Chicago to come see her in Knoxville.  Now of course nobody smart would do this, only a desperate teen who can't get laid and believes the lies told by someone in an anonymous chat room - there are several ways they could have gone with this, like maybe Ms. Tasty is a dude, maybe he's being catfished, or he's being led into a cult of cannibals, we don't really know for sure, but the one thing you can count on is that there's NOT a genuine hot chick in Knoxville who will turn out to be the love of his life. (Actually, if the movie went in that direction, it would be kind of original, although also very boring.)

It's a comedy, so really, expect nothing to go right - it's just a short 9-hour drive from Chicago to Knoxville, although why they choose to stick to country roads and not drive through Indianapolis is beyond me.  With his friends Lance and Felicia along for the ride in the GTO stolen from his brother, this 9-hour trip takes a solid three or four days, though.  Lance comforts a despondent cashier in a service station mini-mart, and that leads to a sexual encounter, and that leads to him being chased naked through a cornfield by her jealous redneck ex-boyfriend.  The car breaks down near a shifty-looking hitchhiker, who then just assumes they've stopped to pick him up (awkward) and then they have to pee in the radiator to get the car going again, then the hitchhiker pees all over the car when they don't want to give him a ride (even more awkward).  

They're saved by an Amish guy who somehow knows advanced car repair, and they witness a bunch of younger Amish on rumspringa, which I'm sure doesn't work in real life the way it works in the movies, here it's like a mass drunken orgy and rock concert, which is basically everything counter to the Amish lifestyle, so of course Lance has to try and sleep with one of the Amish girls.  Amish are probably one of the last ethnic or religious groups that a movie can get away with poking fun at, like they'll never see the movie so there's little chance they'll complain about it.  Basically things are so P.C. now movies can really only make fun of the Amish and blind people.  

(This movie is NOT that old, it was released just 15 years ago, but I don't think a film today could make the same jokes about gay people, we have come a long way since then, and you just can't have a macho guy walking around calling people "faggots" any more, it's not cool.  Even with the reveal at the end about this character, it's still no bueno, it wouldn't fly in 2024.)

There are still more bumps in the road, more flies in the ointment, but really, most of them just feel like time-killers.  Felicia tosses her shoes into a tree full of discarded shoes, only then she has to walk barefoot when the car breaks down, this is really dumb, doesn't she realize that people only throw their shoes in a tree when the shoes are worn out, and they've already bought another pair?  The trio race against a mysterious green car, twice, but really, it's just another diversion that goes nowhere.  They stop at a carnival (another carryover from yesterdays' film) but nothing constructive happens there, but at least they got some corn dogs. There's another stop for DENTAL SURGERY, really? Then they hit a possum, and Ian feels bad about it, but mercy-killing the possum goes on for too long, and it stopped being funny before it even started.  But this leads to them being put in jail for the night, which helps extend the road-trip to three days and the length of the movie to 110 minutes. 

Eventually everyone meets up in Knoxville, our three travelers, Ian's older brother, Ms. Tasty, carjackers, that jealous redneck boyfriend, and for some reason, those two horndog teens from the same Chicago suburb, like what ARE the odds?  And the real motivation of the hot online chick is revealed - but by then Ian's already figured out that his future will be brighter by strengthening the connection with his female best friend, sure, there's some risk involved when you fall in love with a friend, because you might ultimately lose the friendship if the relationship fails, but at least he's got a better chance with Felicia than with some random troller he met on the internet, right?  

Also starring Josh Zuckerman (last seen in "CBGB"), Amanda Crew (last seen in "Table 19"), Clark Duke (last heard in "The Croods: A New Age"), James Marsden (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Seth Green (last heard in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Alice Greczyn (last seen in "The Dukes of Hazzard"), Katrina Bowden (last seen in "Senior Moment"), Andrea Anders (last seen in "Instant Family"), Charlie McDermott (ditto), Mark L. Young (last seen in "Movie 43"), Cole Petersen, Dave Sheridan (last seen in "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"), Michael Cudlitz (last seen in "Driven"), Allison Weissman (last seen in "Fun Size"), Kim Ostrenko, Brett Rice (last seen in "Fled"), Caley Hayes, Shay Roman, Bella Salinas, John Ross Bowie (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Keith Hudson (last seen in "Baby Driver"), Marianne Muellerleile (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Jessica Just, Brian Posehn (last seen in "Eulogy"), Scott Klace (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Allen Zwolle (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Cleo King (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Josh Duarte, Marcia Koch, Ken Clement, Susie Abromeit (last seen in "King Richard"), Victoria Mallow, Sasha Ramos, Sam E. Goldberg, Dwayne Alexander Smith, Jeremy McGuire, Fall Out Boy (Pete Wentz (last seen in "Escape Plan 2: Hades"), Joe Trohman, Patrick Stump, Andrew Hurley)

RATING: 4 out of 10 Abstinence Xtreme dancers

Whatever It Takes

Year 16, Day 47 - 2/16/24 - Movie #4,648

BEFORE: If you look back one year in my blog, to Valentine's Week 2023 (oh, what an innocent time it was...) you may recall that i found TWO romance films that were all modern-day remakes of the classic "Cyrano de Bergerac" story - and then followed that up with the Peter Dinklage film "Cyrano" later in the Movie Year.  Well, now I've found another re-telling of that tale, that means this one kind of slipped through the cracks, or I just wasn't aware of it last year, or I might have worked it in.  

Also, you may remember last year, during Valentine's Week I had found FOUR films starring a very forgettable twenty-something non-star named Wolfgang Novogratz, and now I'm wondering whatever happened to that guy.  I haven't seen him in a film since, so did he get the career advice to change his name, rejected that advice, and suffered career suicide as a result?  Or did he stop getting roles when he no longer could pass for an 18-year old high school student?  The world may never know.  But James Franco - he knew that he needed to change his name to something snappy, that was good advice - his career is still going strong, isn't it?  

Shane West carries over from "A Walk to Remember". 

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 7, devoted to:

Best Film Editing Story Nominees:

5:45 am "Test Pilot" (1938)

7:45 am "Crazylegs" (1953)

9:15 am "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1941)

11:15 am "The Window" (1949)

12:30 pm "Objective, Burma" (1945)

3:00 pm "Odd Man Out" (1947)

5:00 pm "How the West Was Won" (1962)

Best Film Editing Winners:

8:00 pm "Bullitt" (1968)

10:15 pm "The Pride of the Yankees" (1942)

12:30 am "Raging Bull" (1980)

2:45 am "The Naked City" (1948)

4:30 am "Eskimo" (1933)

Again, I've seen just TWO out of these 12, "Bullitt" and "Raging Bull" - so any hope I had of ending up over 50% is probably just a pipe dream now. Falling to 34 seen out of 91 overall, or 37.3%.  

THE PLOT: A modern-day remake of the Cyrano DeBergerac tale. 

AFTER: Oh, God, PLEASE let this be the last film I ever have to watch that follows the "Cyrano" formula, because this film from 2000 didn't even do it well.  In order to get Ryan to help Chris win over the heart of his best friend Maggie, they had to come up with some way for him to "speak for" jock Ryan, so Chris had to have a phone with multiple lines, that phone had to malfunction in order to create a sort of three-way calling, and honestly, the scene was already complicated ENOUGH when Ryan was calling both Maggie and Chris at the same time.  What's that feature when you can put one person on hold while you talk to the other one?  Call waiting?  Does anybody still use that?  By all means, let's just change the way that phones work so that this scene in our movie is easier to write - you can't DO that!  

Then Ryan just happens to be some kind of recording engineering genius, and he's able to filter the call through his sound board, and he knows EXACTLY which dials to turn and how much, to change the frequency and make his voice sound more like James Franco's.  Gimme a god damned break!  What high-school kid is also a sound engineer and understands what EVERY single button on the panel does to his voice?  It doesn't make one bit of sense, and all this to avoid the typical "Cyrano" scene where one person is speaking to his heart's desire from afar, and the real poet is concealed nearby and feeding him lines.  Again, this film came out in 2000, before texting was a thing, and I think in one of the other "Cyrano" updates, maybe "The Half of It", people just impersonated each other in texts, that really was much easier.  

Please, Hollywood, no more remakes of "Cyrano", it's really really played out.

This was also clearly written before there was such a thing as "being P.C." because this is in many ways a rude sex comedy masquerading as a high-school love story.  You could NOT make a film like this today, people would boycott it for being insensitive to women, gays, jocks and geeks.  Again, stereotypes are real time-savers for screenwriters, they can just say "that guy plays the accordion" or "that guy programs computers" and then all the things related to music geeks and computer geeks can just be piled on top of that.  The geeky guys get together here and strike out with the women, as you might expect, but remember, that's also how the Columbine shootings happened.  Nine kids in Colorado got together and were upset that they didn't have any friends, so they took it out on their classmates - but there were NINE of them, why couldn't they just be friends with each other and be happy with that? 

Ryan's the music geek and he drives to school each day with his best friend and neighbor, Maggie.  They share everything and their bedroom balconies are practically adjoining to each other, but they don't consider each other to be ideal romantic partners for some unknown reason.  Ah, ah, don't mentally skip ahead to the end of the film here, I know it's tempting, we're going to get there, as obvious as it is, so if you THINK you know what the ending is going to be, well, yeah, you're probably right. But first they have to date other people, let's say for comparative purposes - also remember, they're such close friends that it would almost be like a brother and sister dating.  OK, let's let them date other people so they can then realize that the love of their life was standing right next to them from the start.  You gotta walk before you can run, I guess.

Ryan and Chris meet because on the same day, they both paid the school janitor $20 to let them into the girls' locker room so they could watch the girls showering after a swimming class.  Ryan just wants to see Ashley naked, I mean, come on, what's the harm, everybody's naked at least twice a day, right?  Ugh, why is this always the "go to" in teen sex comedies, to be able to watch girls showering?    I'll bet the number of times anyone actually did this in high school during the 1980's and 1990's is much lower than the number of times characters in teen sex comedies did this during the same two decades.  It's creepy, right?  And very un-P.C., because it just treats women as random sex objects and it's a total invasion of their privacy.  But back then they didn't have the internet, now you can just do a Google search and you can watch all the women showering that you want, or doing just about anything you can imagine, for free.  I guess if you want to see SPECIFIC women showering then you have to pay for OnlyFans, but to random naked women or ones from teen sex comedies, it's free.

Ryan wants to date Ashley, the hottest "mean girl" in school, who would never give him the time of day, BUT her cousin is Chris, who wants to get with Maggie because she's apparently the one girl in school that he hasn't slept with.  He's just in it for the challenge, but Chris and Ryan hatch a plan - Chris will recommend to his cousin Ashley that she consider dating Ryan, while Ryan will sell Maggie on the concept of dating Chris.  What could POSSIBLY go wrong?  Well, a lot, because the film is called "Whatever it Takes", and apparently it takes pimping out your cousin or your best friend to someone else in order to have sex with the girl you want to have sex with. Yeah, that's so not cool and very un-P.C. - but again, it was a different time and a different millennium. (YES, 2000 was NOT the first year of the third millennium, it was the last year of the second millennium, I stand by this.  Look it up if you don't believe me.)

Hold on, because it gets worse.  Chris' advice to Ryan on how to win the heart of Ashley includes insulting her, telling her that her hair looks terrible, or her clothes look ugly, and also generally being mean to her, like pushing her into the swimming pool at a party.  Because, well, at least she'll notice him now, and girls like dating a-holes for some reason, so logically if he acts like an a-hole to her, she'll be desperate for his attention.  This should be terrible advice, but it also WORKS on her, so I guess she's more insecure and filled with self-loathing than anyone else realizes.  Meanwhile Ryan convinces Maggie to go on a double date, so all four go to the local carnival and Chris tries to win over Maggie by playing those rigged skill games on the fairway, while Ryan goes on the rides with Ashley and she vomits all over him.  Good times?

But they've managed to lay the groundwork for prom, and could there really be anything more important than that?  Apparently everyone has the same idea and goes to the same hotel on prom night, and the high school has managed to book the entire fourth floor so that all the high school students can have sex in the hallway.  Wait, what?  Ashley drags Ryan into a room, but by this point he's realized his mistake and decides that (say it with me, now) Maggie was the better choice for him, and love was so close to him that he couldn't see it.  But now he has to stop Maggie from having sex with Chris.  Don't worry, mate, she's one step ahead of you, she's already tying up Chris and making him wear a blindfold so other people can draw rude things on him and slut-shame him.  Meanwhile Ryan takes the key to the hotel room where Ashley is waiting for him and throws it on the floor, so random strangers can just go in and have sex with her.  See, everybody wins this way, and these solutions aren't problematic at all!

What's even worse than ripping off "Porky's" with the shower stuff is ripping off "It's a Wonderful Life", because when the prom comes around Floyd, the prankster, has decided that before the big announcement of who was elected Prom King and Queen, he's going to pull the switch that retracts the dance floor so that everyone will fall into the pool below.  Yeah, a couple of things here, besides the fact that someone stole this plot point from a film from 1946.  First off, I don't think many modern-day high schools have giant retractable floors that cover the pool and turn the gym into a dance hall.  Perhaps the screenwriter went to one of the TWO high schools in the country that had this feature, as problematic as it sounds, and so he assumed that EVERY high school has a retractable floor that covers the swimming pool, and they just don't. Also, we SAW the pool earlier in the film, and it's just a regular pool in a pool building, no retractable floor - does this high school have a SECOND pool under the dance floor that they haven't used in the last 50 years?  

Once again, I'm reminded that high-school films are written and directed by adults, who simply do not remember how high school works.  OR they DO remember what THEIR high-school experience was like, and they assume that everyone had a similar experience, which they did not. For example, most high school nurses (Ryan's mom in this case) don't have giant models of penises that they show to the class when they're instructing them how to put a condom on to practice safe sex.  If some high-school nurse in America showed the entire student body a 5-foot penis during a demonstration in the auditorium, there would be picket lines outside the school and that nurse would lose her job for showing teens exactly what a penis looks like.  Right? 

The whole thing with Virgil Doolittle, who was the legendary prankster who attended the school years ago - it also makes no sense, but I can't even be bothered to get into exactly why.  Instead of focusing on plot points that had any basis in reality, this film chose instead to just have vomit gags and baseballs hitting people in the crotch.  It's anything but classy. 

Also starring James Franco (last seen in "City by the Sea"), Jodi Lyn O'Keefe (last seen in "She's All That"), Marla Sokoloff, Julia Sweeney (last seen in "Gremlins 2: The New Batch"), Aaron Paul (last seen in "Come and Find Me"), Colin Hanks (last seen in "How It Ends"), Kip Pardue (last seen in "The Rules of Attraction"), Manu Intiraymi (last seen in "Orange County"), David Koechner (last seen in "Hit and Run"), Richard Schiff (last seen in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"), Kevin Ruf (last seen in "Eulogy"), Scott Vickaryous, Eric Kushnick, Nicole Tarantini, Christine Lakin (last seen in "You Again"), Shyla Marlin, Vanessa Evigan, Romy Rosemont (last seen in "Lovely & Amazing"), Rachel Kaber, Joe Gleb, Ty Granderson Jones (last seen in "Con Air"), Mason Lucero (last seen in "The Sweetest Thing"), Mami Nakamura, with a cameo from Nick Cannon (last seen in "The Misfits") and archive footage of Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 toothless carnies

A Walk to Remember

Year 16, Day 46 - 2/15/24 - Movie #4,647

BEFORE: You can see from the credits below that this film connects to a few romance movies that I watched last year or the year before - like "Get Over It", "Down to You" and "The Object of My Affection".  So, it was omitted, and essentially stranded by me watching THOSE movies and not being able to work this one it.  But maybe it wasn't available, it's on Netflix now but I'm not sure exactly how long it's been there - or maybe it just wasn't on my radar yet.  Anyway, Shane West was in four high-school based romance films before graduating to more grown-up roles, and I've seen two of them already, and this week I'll knock out the other two - but probably in the process of watching films this year I'll be unintentionally stranding others, like "How to Deal" and "Because I Said So" and "Cousins" - it can't be helped.  The best I can do is get my list of romance films trimmed down to 70 films or so, and then re-evaluate the connections for the next possible romance chain. 

Peter Coyote carries over from "Moonlight and Valentino".  Valentine's Day may have come and gone, but I'm only about 1/3 of the way through this year's planned romance chain, so there's still a long way to go, almost a month's worth.  

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 7, devoted to:

Best Original Story Nominees:

6:00 am "The Public Enemy" (1931)

7:30 am "Bachelor Mother" (1939)

9:00 am "My Favorite Wife" (1940)

10:30 am "The Search" (1948)

12:30 pm "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1946)

2:30 pm "The Narrow Margin" (1952)

4:00 pm "A Guy Named Joe" (1943)

6:15 pm "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1942)

Best Original Story Winners:

8:00 pm "A Star Is Born" (1937)

10:00 pm "One Way Passage" (1932)

11:15 pm "Love Me or Leave Me" (1955)

1:30 am "The Stratton Story" (1949)

3:30 am "49th Parallel" (1941)

Wow, I've seen TWO out of these 13, just "The Public Enemy" and "My Favorite Wife" - they must be scraping the bottom of the barrel today, screening the worst of the best, I guess.  I have seen "Heaven Can Wait", but not "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" - and I have seen THREE versions of "A Star Is Born", but not the 1937 one. So I'm falling way behind today - 32 seen out of 79 overall, or 40.5%.  

THE PLOT: Two North Carolina teens are thrown together after Landon gets into trouble and is sentenced to perform community service. 

AFTER: I just learned the word "situationship" a couple of days ago, it's a portmanteau word, which I love, for a relationship that got formed from people being in a particuar situation together, whether that's working at the same job or living in the same building - so, basically all relationships are situationships to some degree, and all romance-based movie plots start with somebody thinking of a situation, a reason why these two people would meet.  Already this February, "Boys and Girls" and "Loser" depicted similar situationships where people met in high school or college, and tried to make the best of things. 

This film is based on a book by Nicolas Sparks, who's a bit like the Stephen King of romance novels, in that he's written a ton of them, and if a movie got made of one, and it comes my way, I should probably watch it.  I've seen "Message in a Bottle", "The Notebook", "Nights in Rodanthe", and now this one, and I've got one more of his on this year's chain, and "Dear John" I'll have to save for another time.  So far 11 movies have been made from his books, and that's nothing to sneeze at - so I'll have to put the remainder on the "someday/maybe" list.  

A number of themes carry over from "Moonlight and Valentino", but I can't really say what they are without spoilers.  I've probably already said too much - but Sparks based his book on the story of his younger sister, who died of breast cancer in 2000, and that probably tells you all that you need to know.  For some reason, the song "Cannonball" by The Breeders also is heard in both yesterday's film and today's. Go figure, but that's only weird because the films were released seven years apart, and it was already TEN years old by time it was used in "A Walk to Remember". 

But anyway, this is the story of Landon Carter, a teen who gets in trouble for hazing a classmate, using peer pressure to make him jump off of a tall tower at a quarry so he could be part of the "cool kids" group.  Yeah, cool kids don't make you do dangerous stunts, it's not worth it, duh.  The kid belly flops and gets hurt, also maybe he forgot to mention to the cool kids that he can't swim.  Most of the other cool kids escape before the cops arrive, but Landon tries to stay, then realizes his mistake and drives off, but the police force him to crash into a barrier.  He's injured and forced to do community service, janitorial work at the school AND he has to tutor other students in math AND he has to participate in the school play.  

It seems like a lot, I would have suggested just making him sweep up because being in the school play seems like fun.  But this all leads to the situationship, because Jamie, the minister's daughter (who his cool kids group constantly made fun of, because she only owns one sweater) also tutors students after school and she's also in the school play.  Landon is made the male lead in the play (which was written by another student, so you know it just HAS to be awful...) and of course, this puts him in a romantic role with Jamie, and since they're going to be spending a lot of time rehearsing together, you can see where all of this is obviously heading.  Sorry, I'm two weeks into the romance chain and already very cynical about these set-ups. 

Jamie has a list of things she wants to achieve in life, and some of them are very abstract, like "be in two places at once" and "witness a miracle".  For some reason she doesn't have concrete things on the list, like "ride a roller coaster" or "see a Broadway play".  But Landon helps her cross some items off her list, only some licenses are taken in the interpretation of the items.  Jamie offers to help Landon learn his lines for the play, however on the condition that he NOT fall in love with her.  Easier said than done, I suppose, because as we've seen countless times, that's what happens when two people are both there for each other and spend so much time together.  Then Landon starts making a list of his own, and it's more concrete things like "get into medical school" and "build a bigger telescope for Jamie".  This helps her fulfill her dream of seeing a particular comet, but exactly how many other items she's going to be able to get to, we're just not sure.  So I suppose the comet is kind of a metaphor here, it's visible, but not for long. 

This process of mine is all about making decisions, like I could either follow the Ted Danson or the Whoopi Goldberg path after "Made in America" - and after this one I can either follow the Mandy Moore or the Shane West path, and I'm choosing Shane West, because I know that's going to get me to the end of February and then to St. Patrick's Day.  I've got like 27 films to go and I think 6 of them have Jennifer Lopez in them. But that's my process. 

Also starring Shane West (last seen in "Get Over it"), Mandy Moore (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Daryl Hannah (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Lauren German (last seen in "Down to You"), Clayne Crawford (last seen in "Swimfan"), Paz de la Huerta (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Al Thompson (last seen in "Shaft" (2000)), Jonathan Parks Jordan, Matt Lutz, David Andrews (last seen in "Fair Game"), David Lee Smith (last seen in "Mank"), Xavier Hernandez (last seen in "Happy Campers"), Marisa Miller, Paula Jones, Erik Smith (last seen in "Cold Mountain"), Robert C. Treveiler (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2")

RATING: 5 out of 10 quotes that are really Bible passages (is this a Christian film? Part of how our country got so much religion mixed up in our politics? I should probably take points off for that.)

Moonlight and Valentino

Year 16, Day 45 - 2/14/24 - Movie #4,646

BEFORE: Well, we had the confluence of February, the romance month, with SuperBowl weekend (and also Black History month), and today is Valentine's Day, but it's ALSO somehow Ash Wednesday, the first day of lent.  I don't see how anyone is supposed to enjoy their holiday box of fancy chocolates on a day made for fasting and giving up enjoyable things.  How, exactly is that supposed to WORK?  But maybe we can find some kind of metaphor for today's confluence, something about love and forgiveness coming together.  Like, if your life partner is asking for your forgiveness for some reason, well, today might be the day to consider granting it.  Or not, whatever, it's up to you.  But these two holidays rarely come together, I think.  I'm not a calendar expert, I have to look up when Easter is every year well in advance, especially if I have a movie that can tie in with it, but then I also have to look up Mother's Day and Father's Day every year, too - I greatly prefer the holidays that don't move around and have the decency to occur on the same day, year after year. 

Whoopi Goldberg carries over from "Made in America".  And I swear, when I blocked out the month I wasn't even paying attention to the titles, I just realized this film would land on February 14, read the quick synopsis and said, "Yeah, OK, that works."  Then just about a week ago I realized the connection between "Valentine" and "Valentino" and thought, "Geez, why didn't I notice that before, I mean, it makes perfect sense only I just didn't SEE it that way."  Yup. 

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 6, devoted to:

Best Adapted Screenplay Nominees: (and romance films)

6:00 am "Pygmalion" (1938)

7:45 am "Random Harvest" (1942)

10:00 am "Kitty Foyle" (1940)

12:00 pm "A Foreign Affair" (1948)

2:00 pm "Brief Encounter" (1945)

3:45 pm "Rebecca" (1940)

6:00 pm "Wuthering Heights" (1939)

Best Original Screenplay Winners: (and romance films)

8:00 pm "The Philadelphia Story" (1940)

10:00 pm "Doctor Zhivago" (1965)

1:30 am "From Here to Eternity" (1953)

3:45 am "Little Women" (1933)

I'm going to say I've seen 4 out of these 11, "Rebecca", "The Philadelphia Story", "Doctor Zhivago" and "From Here to Eternity".  I have seen "Wuthering Heights", but the 1992 version, not this one - and I have seen "Little Women", but the 1994 and 2019 versions, not this one. So I'm falling to 30 seen out of 67 overall, or 44.7%.  

THE PLOT: A young widow still grieving over the death of her husband finds herself being comforted by a local housepainter. 

AFTER: OK, so there's no real connection to Ash Wednesday here, because this film is mostly about a woman's reaction to losing her husband, and going through all the stages of grief, which famously has five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  Then she sees fit to add a sixth stage, which is called "Having a fling with the guy painting your house."  Well, OK, sure, we all are looking for signs that we're doing OK, and that might qualify. 

This is based on a true story, it was written by Ellen Simon, daughter of playwright Neil Simon, who lost her husband the same way, he was struck by a car while jogging, only that happened in New York City proper, not out in the suburbs.  She had a similar support system and was visited by her sister, best friend and stepmother (Marsha Mason) who stayed with her for her first two weeks as a widow, and made sure she was emotionally OK, or as OK as possible. The names were changed, of course, to protect the screenwriter, but the story is similar to the actual events, just the stepmother was changed from an actress to a Wall Street executive. 

These are four women at different stages in their lives, Rebecca is the widow and her younger sister, Lucy, is just starting to date and has many awkward questions about sex, so naturally Rebecca sets her up with one of her poetry students, so she won't have to answer any of them.  Let her find out for herself!  Rebecca's best friend, Sylvie, has been married for many years but keeps thinking that her husband doesn't want sex, or is thinking of leaving her, she's always envisioning a doom and gloom scenario and thinking the marriage is about to end - but it's possible that she's just projecting her own unhappiness on to the relationship, and the more troubling thing is that she can't recognize that.  And then there's Alberta, Rebecca's step-mother, who's been there for Rebecca and Lucy since their mother died of cancer 14 years ago. Alberta and their father are no longer together, they got divorced a few years ago, but Alberta still comes back after Ben's death to, well, help in her own very forceful, rigid way.  

There's a lot here that feels kind of important, but there's also a lot here that feels really dumb.  Why does the housepainter work at night?  Just so the movie could have a cool (semi-cool?) title?  Wouldn't it be better to paint during the day so he could, you know, actually see what he was doing?  I mean, yeah, he admits that, but yet he still continues to paint in the dark for no discernible reason.  Did I read this wrong, like was he trying to peep in her windows to see her undressing or something, and he just brought the paint can and brush with him as a cover story?  Look, I get it, he's hot but if he's painting houses at night he just can't be very bright.  

But I guess this is what women do, they come together for emotional support when one of them is going through a tough time.  Guys just get together and drink and maybe go to clubs together, that's the stereotype, right?  Women talk about their feelings, but men just talk about women?  I guess that's what people thought back in the 1990's, but I think we could have maybe moved past some of these gender roles by now, men could support each other, wasn't there that primal "drum circle" movement a few years back where men were getting together and beating drums and primal screaming or something, getting in touch with their emotional inner cavemen?  Was that a thing for a while?  And there's nothing that says women can't get together and drink and talk about men, I'm sure it happens all the time.  But the film wants to make a clear separation between the genders, of course, because stereotypes are just narrative shortcuts, after all. 

Then there's the housepainter, who the women confuse with the OTHER housepainter who apparently only speaks Italian, this is probably the best gag in the film, when they all talk about the hot guy like he can't understand them, only he totally does.  Ha ha, joke over, back to the serious mourning stuff.  Look, I can't imagine how terrible it feels when your spouse dies, they say it's the number one most stressful thing in the world, because you then question your life, your marriage, your future, it was all tied in to that one person for however long, and now you wonder how you can possibly move forward when you just want to shut the door, turn off the lights and curl up in a fetal position.  I guess the goal is to get through those five stages of grief as soon as you can, so you can get to stage 6. 

OK, so today's film is something of a bummer, sorry about that - but I don't write them, I just organize them and watch them.  But I guess you have to take the bad with the good, love comes with some risks and if you get married you might find yourself the last one standing, and that's going to suck, obvi, but hey, at least you get to re-connect with your friends and family when that happens?

I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago to meet Kathleen Turner, she came to the theater where I work to interview Annette Bening on a panel after a screening of "Nyad".  Both actresses were very nice, and Ms. Turner had an injured foot, so the Netflix staff asked me if there was a railing that she could hold on to when she climbed the stairs to the stage.  There wasn't, so I offered to take both actresses up in our theater elevator, which we use to bring people with wheelchairs or walkers in to the theater to avoid the stairs - the elevator also can go up one more level, taking them right to the stage.  So I got to explain to them how that lift works, and that I would be there to open the door so they could exit and sit in the chairs on the stage for the Q&A session.  Then when it was over, I operated the elevator to take them back down to the main floor, and the security guards got them to their car. Pretty cool, right?  

Also starring Elizabeth Perkins (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Gwyneth Paltrow (last heard in "She Said"), Kathleen Turner (last seen in "Another Kind of Wedding"), Shadia Simmons, Erica Lutrell, Matthew Koller, Scott Wickware (last seen in "Trapped in Paradise"), Kelli Fox, Harrison Liu, Wayne Lam, Ken Wong, Carlton Watson, Jack Jessop (last seen in "Loser"), Josef Sommer (last seen in "The Family Man"), Jon Bon Jovi, Trim, Jeremy Sisto (last seen in "Adrienne"), Alan Clifton, Judah Katz (last seen in "Owning Mahowny"), Julian Richings (last seen in "The Witch"), Peter Coyote (last seen in "Spielberg")

RATING: 5 out of 10 impossible poetry assignments

Made in America

Year 16, Day 44 - 2/13/24 - Movie #4,645

BEFORE: I'm home today and it's snowing pretty hard in NYC, so I'm going to have to open up the closet in the basement where we keep the snow shovels, I can't avoid it. I got through the last storm just by using ice melt, two applications of that and the sidewalk and steps were clear within a day, but the snow's piling up for the first time in maybe two years, so I've got to shovel.  At my age an hour of shoveling then leads to maybe two days of recovery time, and that's no fun.  After I write this I'll have to suit up and get to it.  

Nia Long carries over from "You People".  It feels weird after a week of (relatively) rom-coms to go all the way back to 1993 for this comedy (which isn't labeled as a romance on the IMDB, but I got a feeling...) but that's what I have to do to set up tomorrow's film for Valentine's Day.  Once that film landed on 2/14 I saw the connection and I didn't want to mess with the chain after that.  So here goes, let's clear an older film off the list, one that's been on it positively forever.  This was airing on Hulu a couple years ago, as nearly everything has, but it scrolled off of there, and now it's not streaming anywhere for "free", so I either have to pay $3.99 today or watch this one illegally - after paying to rent "An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn" I'm inclined to go the free route.

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 5, devoted to:

Best Original Screenplay Nominees:

7:30 am "La Strada" (1954)

9:30 am "Mr. Hulot's Holiday" (1953)

11:15 am "Woman of the Year" (1942)

1:15 pm "It's Always Fair Weather" (1955)

3:15 pm "North by Northwest" (1959)

5:45 pm "The China Syndrome" (1979)

Best Original Screenplay Winners:

8:00 pm "The Great McGinty" (1940)

9:30 pm "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (1953)

11:30 pm "Gosford Park" (2001)

2:00 am "Network" (1976)

4:15 am "Princess O'Rourke" (1943)

I'm going to say I've seen 6 out of these 11, "Woman of the Year", "North by Northwest", "The China Syndrome", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", "Gosford Park" and "Network", so I can finally start making some progress, moving to 26 out of 56 overall, and up to 46.4%.  

THE PLOT: A young black woman discovers that her father was a sperm donor, and if that weren't bad enough, he's white. 

AFTER: This was a film that came about because Ted Danson was dating Whoopi Goldberg in real life, or maybe they started dating while they were making this film, I'm not sure.  But there was something between them, and that led to Danson getting divorced, and that's a bit of life imitating art because his character in "Made in America" is divorced, and also has a girlfriend, but he's happy to cut her loose when she starts hanging out with a man closer to her age.  I guess she was kind of wearing him out, as he's not as young as he used to be.  Who is? 

Anyway the whole premise here is based on a woman's choice 18 years ago to get pregnant via a sperm bank, and so her daughter learns by studying blood types in biology class that the man she thought was her father couldn't be her father.  They don't really get into the whole A, B, O, positive or negative thing, but I think they didn't have to, somehow she knows the blood type of her dead father, and that's a little odd.  I guess we can infer that the man she thought was her father was incapable of having children, so his wife took the initiative so they could have a child?  It doesn't really matter, all that's important is that the sperm bank messed up in their record-keeping (not once, but TWICE, but what can you do?  It was the start of the information age and mistakes were made...)

I was always led to believe that a person had the legal right to track down their genetic parents if they really wanted to, though it might take a court order to get the fertility clinic to open up their records.  Zora here is either unaware of that process, or unwilling to take the time, because she'd rather bring a friend to pretend to make a donation while she finds the record room and somehow accesses their records on their Commodore 64.  This took place before passwords were invented, I suppose, considering how easily she accesses their private files, or maybe their password was "1-2-3-4", I don't know.  There's no time to get into that when we have to do another comedy bit about how bad Whoopi Goldberg's character is at riding a bicycle or following the rules of the road.  

Look, it's simple, a bicycle is legally a VEHICLE, and subject to the same traffic laws as a car.  You can't drive a car on the sidewalk, therefore you can't ride a bike on the sidewalk.  But when they introduced thousands of Citibikes to NYC a few years back, they somehow forgot to find out if people understand how to properly follow traffic laws, it was (and continues to be) a disaster.

Time for a shoveling break - followed by a lunch break - OK, I'm back. 

Anyway, my instincts were spot on, because this ended up having some romance to it, because those two actors had off-screen chemistry, so that often leads to on-screen chemistry, too, ideally.  Sarah and Hal spend more time together after they sort out the fertility clinic mix-up, because they both want to spend time with their daughter - however they end up having the SAME conversation every time they get together, which is basically "I'm her father...", followed by "No, I'm her mother..." as if those two things are mutually exclusive, which they aren't.  Or it's "She HAD a father, his name was Charlie..." as if nobody can quite figure out what happened in the past, even though it's fairly clear. Or is it? 

Meanwhile, a couple of very nice older white ladies shop at Sarah's store, The African Queen, and she locks them in the store at one point, but they keep on shopping anyway.  They end up fascinated by African fashion and art, which is cultural appropriation of the highest order - Sarah gets very mad at them at one point, but this doesn't bother them, they just keep on buying African stuff from the store.  Could happen. 

Also meanwhile, Hal films a few TV commercials for his used-car business, involving an increasingly bizarre and dangerous set of zoo animals, and they all go horribly wrong, he gets attacked by a bear and then there's a runaway elephant who chases Sarah's bicycle because she keeps ringing the bike's bell for some reason, and the elephant is attracted to the sound, again for some reason, even though this probably isn't how elephants work.  And the commercial film crew has apparently never heard of editing, because they don't do any retakes and the ads then feature the animal mishaps, but these turn out to be a big hit with the audience, and the dealership suddenly sells every car on the lot.  Who knew?  

This gives Hal more time to spend with his daughter, and more time to spend with Sarah as she recovers in the hospital from the inevitable bike accident the film has been setting up since the opening credits.  Hal also donates blood at the hospital, and so that functions as a de facto paternity test, which could have (should have) taken place much earlier in the film if these characters could only have gotten their acts together.  But no, they were all too busy trying to figure things out to actually take the time to figure things out.  

In the film a family is formed because the characters spend so much time together - I've heard several films use the INXS song "Never Tear Us Apart" as a romantic song, but I'm not sure it is, with the lines "I was standing, you were there" as explanation for two people getting together.  Oh, great, you fell in love with me because I was THERE.  That's pretty much what happens here, the premise that two people should be together because he already impregnated her artificially seems very shaky, and the complete opposite of fate or destiny or whatever.  He was just THERE (or was he?).  Anyway, it's not too hard to predict the ending, Hal wants more out of life and is finally ready to be someone's partner again and someone else's dad.  In real life, though, the Danson-Goldberg romantic partnership lasted about 18 months, and at one point Danson did a comedy routine in blackface that somehow did not get him permanently cancelled. But that's a story for another day. 

This movie was a box office hit, back in 1993, but it's only got 29 reviews on the IMDB, and since it's not streaming anywhere I'll wager that nobody's even watched it since 2017, when it was on Hulu.  Yeah, seems about right. 

Also starring Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Ted Danson (last seen in "Creepshow"), Will Smith (last seen in "King Richard"), Paul Rodriguez (last seen in "Clifford the Big Red Dog"), Jennifer Tilly (last seen in "The Haunted Mansion"), Peggy Rea (last seen in "Cold Turkey"), Clyde Kusatsu (last seen in "Love Happens"), David Bowe (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Jeff Joseph, Rawley Valverde, Fred Mancuso, Charlene Fernetz, Shawn Levy, Lu Leonard, Phyllis Avery, Frances Bergen (last seen in "American Gigolo"), O'Neal Compton (last seen in "Nixon"), Michael Halton, Mel Stewart, David E. Kazanjian, with archive footage of Shirley Temple

RATING: 4 out of 10 pieces of exotic sushi

You People

Year 16, Day 43 - 2/12/24 - Movie #4,644

BEFORE: It's interracial couples week here at the Movie Year, that's fine, we allow romantic comedies with characters of all races, religions, orientations and gender identities. All part of the great big pansexual multi-culti country that we live in, or if you're on the Republican side of things, all varieties of "wokeness" are allowed here.  I love how nobody who's against wokeness can even define what it is, like how do you hate something if you don't even understand why you hate it?  Come on, it's really just an all-purpose term for anything that the Right-Wingers don't like.  They were hating on the green m&m for being too sexy, and Mr. Potato Head, too, for being non-gender specific or some ridiculousness.  "I don't like it because it makes me feel icky" should not be any kind of political platform, you either have a country where people are free to be who they want to be and express themselves however, or you don't.  And free speech can't be just for the opinions YOU have and the ones YOU like and not for the opposing viewpoints.  Just saying.  Except hate speech, which is against the law and civil rights and common decency, everything else has to be allowed, I think that's in the Constitution. 

La La Anthony carries over from "Think Like a Man Too". 

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 4, devoted to:

Best Art Direction Nominees:

5:30 am "The Merry Widow" (1934)

7:30 am "Inside Daisy Clover" (1965)

10:00 am "George Washington Slept Here" (1942)

12:00 pm "Pride and Prejudice" (1940)

2:00 pm "Brigadoon" (1954)

4:00 pm "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1937)

6:00 pm "Knights of the Round Table" (1953)

Best Art Direction Winners:

8:00 pm "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938)

10:00 pm "The Robe" (1953)

12:30 am "Black Narcissus" (1947)

2:30 am "Tess" (1979)

5:30 am "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940)

I think I can only claim 4 out of these 12, "Inside Daisy Clover", "Knights of the Round Table", "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "The Robe", so 20 out of 45 overall, slipping down to 44.4%.  

THE PLOT: Follows a new couple and their families, who find themselves examining modern love and family dynamics amidst clashing cultures, societal expectations and generational differences. 

AFTER: I'm going to try to save everyone a bunch of time tonight, myself included, and just regard this as a one-joke film.  The two families don't understand each other, that counts as ONE joke.  OK, if I'm being nice then there's the fact that they don't understand each other because they're different races, and then the parents don't understand their kids, which is generational based humor, not racial based humor.  So, OK, two jokes that keep getting told again and again, repeat for almost two hours and roll the credits. 

The concept hearkens back to "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", which was a ground-breaking film from 1967 that had a white girl bringing home a black man (Sidney Poitier) to meet her parents (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) and then they had to come to terms with that. Well, it was a different time, but hey, thanks for putting that out there as a movie plot-line, because somebody had to do it.  So "You People" is like a race-swapped version of that movie, the black girl brings home a white (Jewish) man to meet her black (Muslim) parents.  All right, I guess if you point out the religious differences, there are really THREE jokes in this film, but that's all.  The weird thing is, there was already a race-swapped version of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", with Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher, and it was called "Guess Who?"  I have not seen it, but I know it exists. 

So my first impulse is to wonder WHY we need "You People", if we already have "Guess Who?"  but lets assume that tonight's film is a bit more straight-up and serious about the social issues of today, and "Guess Who?" is probably a lot of slapstick comedy.  Here Jonah Hill plays Ezra, a white man who follows black culture (I thought they were called "wiggers") and has a genuine love for it, he even hosts a podcast with his black female best friend on the topic.  And when he accidentally gets into a black woman's car, thinking it's his Uber ride, he meets Amira, and they start dating.  Well, first she freaks out because a stranger just got into her car, but once they get over the confusion, they start to like each other. 

Ezra does not do as well with Amira's parents, who are opposed to their daughter dating a white man, even if they don't say that out loud, obviously they'd hoped she would date within their race - meanwhile, Ezra's parents are overly enthusiastic about their son dating a black woman, especially Ezra's mother, who is so interested in the culture and the things she doesn't know much about, like African-American hair, that her comments border on offensive.  She means well, but she doesn't realize that she's using stereotypes or asking too many questions, or just being a white woman overly interested in something that she has no reason to be interested in. She's the one who wants to be "woke", but for some reason, it's not a good look.  

Amira's father tags along on Ezra's bachelor party trip to Vegas (another theme carrying over from "Think Like a Man Too") but he's there to make sure that Ezra doesn't drink, do drugs or cheat on his daughter, so basically he's a big spoilsport and Ezra can't enjoy his own party at all.  OK, sure, weed's legal now, but I'm pretty sure cocaine is still technically not.  Amira's father also can't quite understand that Ezra's best friend is really a woman, he's from that generation that doesn't quite get the non-binary or gender fluid thing.  Me, sure, I see people on the subway that I'm not sure of their gender, but it doesn't matter, I'm not going to date them, so there's no need for me to inquire further.  

The wedding plans continue, and the couple gets all the way to the rehearsal dinner before they decide that the cultural differences between their families are simply too much work to overcome.  This kind of suggests that the wedding can't possibly happen until her father learns to not be so strict in his expecations for Ezra and his mother learns not to treat Amira as if she's some kind of cultural prize that's getting added to the family.  Can the parents learn to work together, or will they just want to out-tragedy each other, comparing the struggles of blacks and Jews throughout history, in a competition to see which culture had to overcome the most? 

Also starring Jonah Hill (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Lauren London (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Eddie Murphy (last seen in "Air"), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (last seen in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"), Sam Jay (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Nia Long (last seen in "Lemon"), Travis Bennett (last seen in "Confess, Fletch"), David Duchovny (last seen in "The Bubble"), Molly Gordon (last seen in "Good Boys"), Deon Cole (last seen in "Friendsgiving"), Andrea Savage (last seen in "The House"), Elliott Gould (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Richard Benjamin (ditto), Rhea Perlman (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Mike Epps (last seen in "Term Life"), Yung Miami, Khadijah Haqq (last seen in "Sky High"), Bryan Greenberg (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), Jordan Firstman, Andrew Schulz (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Matt Walsh (last seen in "Unplugging"), Emily Arlook (last seen in "Valentine's Day"), Hal Linden (last seen in "The Automat"), Winnie Holzman, Doug Hall, Anthony Anderson (last seen in "Scream 4"), Ahmad Dugas, Nelson Franklin (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Rob Huebel (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Murray Gray, Felipe Esparza, Kym Whitley (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Doris Hancox, Romy Reiner, Kenya Barris, Chinyere Dobson.

RATING: 5 out of 10 empty seats on a Southwest flight

Think Like a Man Too

Year 16, Day 42 - 2/11/24 - Movie #4,643

BEFORE: You know what day it is, I don't have to tell you, all eyes are on Las Vegas for the first-ever Super Bowl held in Sin City, and I guess the game's going to be held there from now on, because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?  Oh, is that not how it works?  I guess not, because people are all watching live, that thing is like global or something.  Tonight's film takes place in Las Vegas, and I swear I did not plan that, how could I have done such a thing?  I wasn't thinking a month ago about the Super Bowl or where it was going to be held, I was just trying to put together a romance-themed film chain that cleared the most material from my watchlist.  It's just another random coincidence, there have been hundreds of them on this long journey. 

Kevin Hart, Regina Hall, and 15 others carry over from "Think Like a Man", but for those two actors, this is their third appearance this year, so they've qualified for the year-end countdown. 

I'm almost tempted to save this one for June, because I can see how it could link two or three Father's Day films, and that seems important, but thematically I think this belongs here, I mean, any time I get a chance to watch a film and its sequel back-to-back I should take it, right?  I'll have to figure out something else when June rolls around - anyway, I can't tell yet which Father-themed films will fit into my chain, so I can't possibly know which ones need to be linked together, it's just too soon. Anyway, I want the Las Vegas connection today.

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 3, devoted to:

Best Supporting Actress Nominees:

6:15 am "Primrose Path" (1940)

8:00 am "Love Affair" (1939)

9:30 am "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942)

11:00 am "Jezebel" (1938)

1:00 pm "My Man Godfrey" (1936)

3:00 pm "Pillow Talk" (1959)

5:00 pm "A Passage to India" (1984)

Best Supporting Actress Winners:

8:00 pm "The Razor's Edge" (1946)

10:45 pm "None But the Lonely Heart" (1944)

1:00 am "Key Largo" (1948)

3:00 am "Anthony Adverse" (1936)

I think I've seen 4 out of these 11, "The Magnificent Ambersons", "Pillow Talk", "A Passage to India" and "Key Largo", so 16 out of 33 overall, slipping down to 48.4%.  But come on, they know the Super Bowl is on today, so they're not airing the best movies...

THE PLOT: All the couples are back for a wedding is Las Vegas, but plans for a romantic weeked go awry when their misadventures get them into compromising situations that threaten to derail the big event.  

AFTER: It will still be a few hours before we know any football results - I may not start watching until 8 pm, so I can fast-forward through the gameplay and just watch the opening ceremonies, halftime show and the commercials.  Yeah, I'm funny like that, but I spent maybe 15 years working at a job where I had to record the SuperBowl commercials and edit them together for review and commentary, so that's what I'm still conditioned to focus on.  Since Tom Brady retired and the Patriots stopped making it to the finals almost every year, I really don't care about the game part any more.  Or Taylor Swift, for that matter, so I'm out.  I think if she WERE working for the Pentagon, which she's definitely not, that would at least be ONE interesting thing about her, but otherwise, she's like Wonder Bread, she's just kind of there with no flavor or much nutrition, and she was designed for and marketed to the masses of teen girls, and I'm not one of those. 

We were in Las Vegas in October 2019, and that was just a few months before the world shut down, it was our last vacation before the pandemic, we unknowingly made the most of it.  We stayed at THREE different hotels over the course of a week, which sounds a bit ridiculous, because who does that, but one was on Fremont St. (Golden Nugget), another was mid-strip (Bally's) and the third was on the south part of the strip (Luxor).  And that gave us a couple days to explore the casinos and other things in three different sections.  I think we gambled in 18 or 20 different casinos, we went on that giant ferris wheel, and I ate at five different buffets in 8 days, plus we hit a number of other restaurants, too.  My wife got sick during the last couple of days so I explored on my own a bit while she slept, and then getting her through the airport on the return trip was a bit of a challenge - nobody was wearing masks back then or concerned about spreading viruses, it was a different time.  

But somewhere along the way, I had a bit of a revelation, after we went to the Venetian (fake Italy), the Paris (fake France), the Luxor (fake Egypt) and New York, New York (yup, fake NYC) and then took in a performance of "Legends in Concert" (featuring fake Elvis, fake Freddie Mercury, fake Pat Benatar and fake Lady Gaga). What, if anything, about Las Vegas, was real and not just a fake version of another city or another culture or a dead celebrity?  Not much, in my opinion, suddenly I saw that the whole town was not about being real, it was just like a mirage in the desert, maybe it's not even really there and we just were imagining it all, along with our dreams of winning a jackpot or getting comped at some fancy hotel.  I'm being facetious here, because we also ate at Hell's Kitchen, saw an exhibit of artifacts from the Titanic, and went to the Mob Museum and the Neon Sign Museum.  Those things were real, I think, and our trip definitely happened, we didn't just imagine it.  

But it's definitely the land of dreams and false promises, which brings me to today's film.  The five couples (plus Cedric, who was divorced, got back together with Gail and is now flying solo again) arrive in Vegas with big plans for the wedding of Michael and Candace, but also the guys are planning a wild bachelor party, as guys do, and the gals are planning a wild bachelorette party, as gals do.  What could POSSIBLY go wrong?  There are a lot of couples getting married in Vegas, so they have like a 30-minute window where they all have to show up at this chapel, and if they're not there on time, they'll forfeit the wedding space, and worse, not get their deposit back.  So yeah, by all means, plan the bachelor and bachelorette party for the NIGHT BEFORE, that's really when you should all do a lot of drinking and get into a bunch of shenanigans.  Jesus, this is really bad planning, I mean, give yourselves 24 hours to recover from a wild night out if you need to show up somewhere dressed to the nines and awake and alert.  Right? 

But that's not the worst offense here, the sequel completely abandons the framework of Steve Harvey's book, which is what got us all here, that's the main reason why four of these five couples even got coupled in the first place, because they all learned which personality type they are, and how to deal with the personality type of their intended partner.  So without Steve Harvey's advice, they're going to tend to backslide into non-understanding of their partners, and that puts them all in jeopardy here. "The Dreamer" gets tempted by a head chef position at a Vegas restaurant, while "The Woman Who Is Her Own Man" gets offered a COO position in New York, and they're each afraid to tell their partner about their new opportunities.  The "90-Day Rule Girl" has to deal with the past of her partner "The Player" when all the people in Vegas remember him as "Zeke the Freak" and they encounter at least two women that he'd been with and didn't call afterwards.  And "The Girl Who Wants the Ring" got the ring, so she and "The Non-Committer" are now trying to become parents, but come on, they'll be fine, they'll work that out.

The big focus here then is on "The Mama's Boy" and "The Single Mom", who are the couple getting married.  Michael's mother, Loretta, has taken over planning the wedding and the Vegas trip, so she keeps butting heads with Candace, whose friends just want to take her out for that wild night, while Loretta would just prefer that they all have high tea and then go see Dionne Warwick in concert.  Wow, sure, sounds like fun, if you're over 60.  Unfortunately Michael has reverted to trying to please his mother instead of his wife, with the reasoning that he's got the rest of his life to spend with Candace, but his mother only gets to see her son get married once.  Umm, whatever happened to "It's the bride's day, first and foremost"?  Eventually this all gets resolved, and it's exactly what I predicted after watching yesterday's film, that Candace would understand her mother-in-law's feelings because she's a mother herself, and she wouldn't want her own son to un-invite her to his wedding.  Nailed it!

But then there are the disasters along the way - Cedric gets held up at the blackjack table, because he found out how much the giant suite at Caesar's Palace REALLY costs, so he's just GOT to win enough money to cover his hotel bill - but really, that's not how Vegas works, is it? You should only gamble with money that you're prepared to lose, and remember that the house almost always wins in the end, unless you can somehow quit when you're up.  Hardly anyone does this, because winning a small amount of money leads you to believe that you WILL WIN a larger sum of money, and, well, that's just not the case, most of the time.  I will say that what then happens at the roulette table is something I haven't seen before in any movie with gambling in it, but no spoilers here. 

Out of desperation, the guys decide to perform in an amateur male exotic dancing competition, the plan is to win first, second and third place and thus cover the massive hotel bill.  This would be a great plan if the contest were legit, but remember this is a fake city where nothing is real in the end, so really, they never had a chance.  But the bachelor party and the bachelorette party end up at the same club (what are the ODDS?) and the guys are drunk and the girls are high, so naturally the whole thing goes south and they all end up in jail.  Which would only be a problem if they had a wedding to go to the next morning, right?  

There are so many diversions here, like the makeover sequence for a character who wasn't even IN the first film (I was willing to bet that Bennett had a black wife, but I guess I missed something) and the whole female hip-hop music video sequence just felt like filler, but eventually the film does get to a wedding scene, it just takes its time getting there.  I have to call a NITPICK POINT on somebody winning a jackpot on a dollar bet on a slot machine, since every slot machine I've ever encountered would have a minimum bet of at least six quarters to make you eligible for any kind of jackpot.  The ones where you can just bet three or four quarters to qualify have all been taken out of circulation, even the penny slots have a minimum bet of 100 pennies, which come on, really makes them dollar slots, not penny slots. 

Also starring Michael Ealy, Jerry Ferrara, Meagan Good, Taraji P. Henson, Gabrielle Union, Terrence Jenkins, Jenifer Lewis, Romany Malco, Gary Owen, La La Anthony, Wendy Williams, Caleel Harris, Angela Elayne Gibbs, Luenell, Will Packer (all carrying over from "Think Like a Man")

Dennis Haysbert (last seen in "The Dark Tower"), Wendi McLendon-Covey (last seen in "Over Her Dead Body"), David Walton (last seen in "Burlesque"), Adam Brody (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Jim Piddock (last seen in "The Cold Light of Day"), Kelsey Grammer (last seen in "Father Christmas Is Back"), Cheryl Hines (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Fonzworth Bentley (last seen in "Idlewild"), George Wallace (last seen in "Just Getting Started"), Ray Proscia, Janina Gavankar (last seen in "The Way Back"), Nicholas Gullak (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Pedro Miguel Arce (last seen in "Special Correspondents"), Terrell Carter, Chasty Ballesteros (last seen in "The Mummy" (2017)), Morann Peri, Jeff Corbett (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holliday"), Corey Holcomb (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), Courtney Enea, Brenda Vivian, Shad Gaspard (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Chaun Williams. 

with cameos from Coco Austin, Drake (last seen in "De Palma"), Floyd Mayweather Jr., Carl Weathers (last heard in "Toy Story 4") and archive footage of Frank Sinatra (last seen in "Elvis"), Dean Martin (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You") and Sammy Davis Jr. (last seen in "What Happened, Miss Simone?")

RATING: 5 out of 10 place settings at the giant dinner table in the Constantine Suite