The Kissing Booth 2

Year 17, Day 64 - 3/5/25 - Movie #4,964

BEFORE: Well, it turns out there are THREE "Kissing Booth" movies on Netflix, so I'm going to treat this franchise the same way I treated the "Hunger Games", "Twilight" and "Divergent" movies, it makes the most sense for me to watch all three movies in a row, maximizing the actor carry-overs, and thus preventing me from ever having to circle back this way again. But, you know, I said that about the "Purge" movies and then they went and made one more of those, so really, you never know. Three movies is an AWFUL lot of film devoted to just one teenage girl who lives by a bunch of secret rules but can never make up her mind about anything.  

Any actor in all three movies automatically makes it to my year-end breakdown, three's been the traditional minimum to get a shout-out. And the main actors are actually getting FOUR films each this year out of me hitting this franchise, because I need an intro and an outro, and Joey King's been in an animated movie already that was watched in January. 

Joel Courtney carries over from "The Kissing Booth", and so do 23 other actors. 

THE PLOT: High school senior Elle juggles a long-distance relationship with her dreamy boyfriend Noah, college applications and a new friendship with a handsome classmate that could change everything. 

AFTER: First we get a recap of everything that went down in those last few weeks of summer, before Noah left for Harvard (still can't believe he got in, look, he's not exactly a genius, he's a jock, movies have told us that someone CAN'T be both...). Elle hung out with her friends, read some books, volunteered down at the food pantry. Just kidding, she crossed a bunch of items off her sexual "to-do" list, mainly having sex with Noah in different places. On the beach, on a motorcycle, in his childhood room, in the pool, next to the pool, you get the idea.  But we ALREADY saw him get on the plane for Massachusetts, so really the film had to back up a little bit to properly set the scene.  

Once he's gone to college, Elle can finally focus on herself and what's really important - getting the high score back on "Dance Dance Mania" because they lost it somehow to the new kid who just moved from Italy and doesn't sound the slightest bit Italian.  There's really no way for an actor to sound Italian without reinforcing sterotypes, so I guess the solution was to not try at all?  Just talk regular?  OK, but now he doesn't sound like an immigrant AT ALL. They swung that pendulum too far in the other direction.  

The school year starts off with some kind of cross-gender intra-mural volleyball-slash-tug of war-three legged race competition, which is stuff teens do at camp, not in the first week of school.  Bad writers, I caught you cheating, you really wanted to make a camp movie, didn't you?  But you couldn't so you tried to work in the camp athletic games into an academic environment. But I see what you tried to do here...

If the first film had just one simple love triangle, this one's got SO many triangles that it's not even funny, you may not be able to keep track of them all.  You know that ball that drops in Times Square on New Year's Eve?  Yeah, look closely at it, it's a giant roundish object that's really made up of a massive number of lit-up triangles.  Yeah, it's kind of like that, this movie's flavor is "Oops! All Love Tringles.  Elle herself is involved in at least two of them, maybe three, and then there's Marco, that new Italian kid, he gets thrown into the mix as well (like, as the spare boyfriend though).  The original triangle was Elle, Noah and Lee, but now Lee's dating Rachel, so there's a new triangle of Elle, Lee and Rachel (which really pisses off Rachel, eventually) and Noah's off at college and might be dating Chloe, so there's another triangle over there, and WAIT, I guess that's it, just the two triangles after all.  But still, that's TWICE as many as the first film, it's a 100% increase.  

There's more lying going around, too - Elle never tells Lee that she's applying to other schools besides U.C. Berkeley, because she doesn't want him to freak out.  Lee never tells Elle that Rachel thinks she hangs out with them too much, and Rachel can't get any time with her own boyfriend, which is a problem. And of course Noah might be lying about not having another girlfriend at Harvard, when Elle finally visits him she finds a suspicious earring under the bed, and it's not even the kind Noah would wear...

Elle has a talk with her father about paying for college, which is a new wrinkle because it's the first time we get to hear her father talk, I think they weren't paying the actor enough to have him say any dialogue, anyway it's a film about the teens and not the parents, so who cares what he has to say?  Oh, right, college, which he can't really afford, not without financial aid and Elle getting a six-figure job somehow, which she couldn't possibly land unless she'd already BEEN to college. So Elle is forced to team up with Marco to try to win the Dance Dance Mania super championship, which I'm not sure is a real thing any more, I thought they did away with live video-game competitions years ago.                       

The tournament is held just before Thanksgiving, and so that of course is when all the relationships are tested, all the lies are revealed and all the triangles are celebrated over a large two-family meal.  The great American holiday was probably a lot less awkward when the teens in those families started sleeping with each other.  Now it looks like some kind of "Desperate Housewives" reunion, everyone flipping the table, or at least their plate, before storming off.  Never fear, the magic kissing booth, now with blindfolds, is here to save the day and put everything right again.  

Obviously I wasn't the only one to point out how problematic the whole kissing booth concept is, it's a violation of consent protocols, and it only seemed to celebrate straight relationships in the first film. Well, somebody got the memo afterwards, because the kids at Catholic County Day School opened up the field, and this time Ollie was allowed to express his love for Miles, the class president.  Gee, I thought he'd go for Cameron, who only went by the nickname "Yearbook" in the first film because he took photos for the yearbook and whenever he saw something picture-worthy, he shouted "Yearbook!"  Anyway Ollie get to kiss Miles and sorry, lesbians, you'll have to wait another year. 

Everyone is just WAY too excited by the action at the Kissing Booth - I mean, this is just kissing we're talking about, and kissing is not generally a spectator sport, but here everyone is about as excited as if they've found a new phone game or their candidate of choice got elected, multiplied by "There's free ice cream!"  Further proof that the writer (I think she's Dutch or Danish or something) is somehow way too interested in American customs that died out (or should have) decades ago. I mean, you could learn that you're top on the organ donor list and you're getting that new kidney you need to survive, and you wouldn't be this excited.  You could be at a monster truck rally during a solar eclipse, and people would NOT be this excited. Maybe teen girls at the height of Beatlemania were this excited, but is that really the league where you want to put a high-school kissing booth?  Is that what we're doing? 

I was working at a double-screening last night, the theater was showing the Tuesday night film appreciation class, which was a new indie film with Bill Murray and Naomi Watts, and, OK, people seemed to like it, though the premise seemed a little sad. In the bigger theater was a film called "Rebel with a Clause", which was about a woman traveling across the country to talk to people about the importance of proper grammar.  Sure, we need this film, because there are a lot of people confused about when to use the word "myself" instead of "I" or "me", and then there's that whole thing with the Oxford comma.  But are people going to be screaming with excitement, nearly exploding with fervor, over a film about how to use the English language?  No, they are not. There might be a few grammar freaks out there, but even they will probably show up, act normally and say, "Hey, that was a cool film about grammar, which I liked and appreciated." and simply no one is going to be screaming with excitement, that's just the way it goes. Same goes for a kissing booth, you might say, "Oh, that guy is kissing that girl now, that's new." and then go about your day as planned.  Absolutely no one, not even in high school, would enjoy watching the action at a kissing booth THIS much. 

I just think there needs to be a happy medium, that's all.  On the excitement level of 1 to 10, the crowd shouldn't be a 2, because then the audience won't care, but neither should they be at like 18.  

Well, that's two movies down in the franchise, and so far this story is NOT following with the formula of the girl ending up with the male friend who helps her try to win over her dream guy.  But there's still one movie, so if Elle doesn't end up with Lee in tomorrow's film, then I'm never ever watching another "Kissing Booth" movie.

Directed by Vince Marcello (director of "The Kissing Booth")

Also starring Joey King, Jacob Elordi, Molly Ringwald, Meganne Young, Stephen Jennings, Chloe Williams, Morné Visser, Bianca Bosch, Zandile Madiiwa, Carson White, Judd Krok, Frances Sholto-Douglas, Evan Hengst, Sanda Shandu, Hilton Pelser, Trent Rowe, Michelle Allen, Joshua Eady, Nathan Lynn, Byron Langley, D. David Morin, Waldemar Schultz, Robin Smith (all 23 carrying over from "The Kissing Booth")

Taylor Zakhar Perez, Maisie Richardson-Sellers (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens"), Camilla Wolfson, Aidan Scott, Joseph Gaza, Caleb Swanepoel, Dylan Edy, Julian Place, Glen Biderman-Pam, Jason K. Ralph, Robyn Scott, Kevin Otto (last seen in "Chappie"), Maria Pretorius, Sean Barenblatt, Shana Mans, Toni Jean Erasmus (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Jeanne Neilson, Grant Ross, Motsi Tekateka, Kai Luke Brummer, Nadia Kretschmer, Lya du Toit, Bianca Amato, Matthew Dylan Roberts (last seen in "Chronicle")

RATING: 5 out of 10 fun things to do in Boston (but that's it, there are only 10 before you just end up drinking in a bar.)

The Kissing Booth

Year 17, Day 63 - 3/4/25 - Movie #4,963

BEFORE: I know, I know, I said "No more high school romances" but I said that after I'd set up this year's chain, and I had plans to get this franchise crossed off from my Netflix list. If I don't watch them now, they're just going to linger there forever, and I want my pop-up list to stay fresh, and not be filled with films way past their expiration dates. So I'm just going to have to endure three more films about high-school kids falling in love.  OK, four this week, but that's it.  I'm way too old to understand or even watch these films. 

Joel Courtney carries over from "Players".  I think when I set up this chain I confused him with Jai Courtney, who was in "Suicide Squad" and "Divergent", but this is a different guy. 

THE PLOT: A high school student is forced to confront her secret crush at a kissing booth. 

AFTER: I'm shocked that this got made at all, in this age of woke-ism and stuff. Wouldn't you think that the "Me too" movement would have killed a plot based around a kissing booth?  Forget the fact that it's a practice of selling kisses at an event to raise money, which is a bit too close to prostitution for a high school fund-raiser to even get involved with, but it removes that barrier of consent, it's more like compliance if you're the one working the booth.  You HAVE to kiss this person, on the lips, even if you don't want to. This is surprisingly icky when viewed through the modern lens. OK, so we're teaching high-school kids important lessons, like that person has five dollars, so pucker up, buttercup, the PTA or the drama club needs cash.  

It's all window-dressing here, unfortunately, for just a simple old-fashioned love triangle. You can cover it with kids playing "Dance Dance Mania" at the Santa Monica Pier or being on the soccer team, but this isn't "She's the Man" or "A Brilliant Young Mind", this is just about a junior girl being attracted to a senior boy, who is the older brother of her best friend.  Oh, if only the two friends weren't born on the same day, to two women who were ALSO best friends, and raised almost as if they were siblings!  That's just going to make things awkward and complicated, and if only the two friends didn't have a secret RULE about dating each other's family.  Which is really backwards, because it's clear that these rules were reverse-engineered by the screenwriters to forbid EXACTLY the situations that they wanted to bring into the story.  

Everything then was put in place BEFORE the romance between Elle and Noah, to make it all the more forbidden and naughty-like once it comes to pass. The big football-player Noah beats up anybody who threatens his little brother Lee, and also forbids any other boy in school from asking out Elle, because she's like his little sister in a way.  (Ooh, that's also going to make things more forbidden and naughty when they get together...). So Lee's mom is the surrogate mom for Elle, because her mother died in a very "Beaches"-like fashion, and the two families have been hanging out together ever since.  Well, if anybody understands complicated, problematic teen relationships, it would be Molly Ringwald, wouldn't it? 

Since Elle's always over Lee's house, swimming in their pool, there are a lot of opportunities to see big brother Noah walking around wearing very little, and she's in her swimsuit, so yeah, stuff is bound to happen.  And then when Elle and Lee hit on the idea for the kissing booth to raise money at the school carnival, and for some unknown reason the school with the strict dress code allows it, well, everything's going to come to realization, isn't it?  Elle had to manifest her fantasy relationship with Noah into the real world via the kissing booth. But honestly, with Elle constantly getting drunk and nearly taking off her clothes at every party, something was bound to happen sooner or later, even though Noah wouldn't let anybody even look at her.  Good thing, if it weren't for him she probably would have been sexually assaulted at a party due to her inability to keep her clothes on and her habit of blacking out. 

Noah gets accepted to Harvard, not quite sure how that happened. Maybe they finally decided to get a football team and they needed to enroll some jocks to explain the game to them. But that's going to put a time limit on Noah and Elle's relationship, as he's got to leave for Boston at the end of the summer. (Funny, we saw prom and then it was summer, but we never saw Noah's graduation. It's a strange omission, but he was absent so much in those last few weeks of school, maybe he missed it.). When he finally gets on the plane, Elle is unsure about the future, but she knows that she'll always remember her time with Noah.

Now, the formula dictates that Elle should end up with Lee, Noah's brother and her best friend.  But we don't get there in the first film, however I took so long to watch this that they did make two sequels, which are also on Netflix. I want to predict that Elle will eventually end up with the younger brother who is also her best friend, but perhaps there are a few more twists and turns in the story before we get there.  Then again, this first film got slammed for being clichéd in addition to sexist, so who knows, maybe that was the original plan but it got changed up, there's really only one way to find out. 

And to think it all started with a kissing booth. An outdated, sexist, misogynist, straights-only kissing booth. It sure seems like an idea that had its time and place, only that was long ago and we should all be past this sort of thing by now. It feels like maybe the writers grew up in the 1950s, or reading stories about the 1950s, and they didn't realize that times have changed? 

Directed by Vince Marcello

Also starring Joey King (last heard in "Despicable Me 4"), Jacob Elordi (last seen in "Saltburn"), Meganne Young (last seen in "The Giver"), Stephen Jennings, Chloe Williams, Carson White, Molly Ringwald (last seen in "Teaching Mrs. Tingle"), Morné Visser (last seen in "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"), Jessica Sutton (last seen in "Escape Room"), Zandile Madliwa, Bianca Bosch, Michelle Allen (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Joshua Eady, Byron Langley, Judd Krok, Frances Sholto-Douglas, Evan Hengst, Sanda Shandu, Hilton Pelser, Trent Rowe, Nathan Lynn, D. David Morin, Waldemar Schultz, Megan du Plessis, Lincoln Pearson, Jack Fokkens, Michael Miccoli, Juliet Blacher, Jesse Rowan-Goldberg, Chase Dallas, Lindsey Abrahams, Robin Smith (last seen in "Invictus"), Khanya Kerwath, Alex Henry (last seen in "Irresistible"), Dan Elijah Rudin

RATING: 5 out of 10 Halloween costumes

Players

Year 17, Day 62 - 3/3/25 - Movie #4,962

BEFORE: OK, thanks to some coffee when I got home last night, I made it through 2 hours of Tournament of Champions, then I speed-watched the 4-hour Oscars show in just 2 hours, because I fast-forwarded over all the speeches, the unnecessary tribute to James Bond songs, and the lifetime achievement awards. I only slowed down for the nominees in each category, then as soon as I heard the winner, fast-forwarded to the next one. I watched the "In Memoriam" segment, because I'm not a monster, also I watched the clips from each Best Picture nominee, because I had only seen ONE of them and heard another one. HINT: It was very screamy and also won Best Picture. I'll get to some of these films, probably most of these films, it's all just coming at a very inconvenient time, as I'm wrapping up the romance chain.  Look, tomorrow I'll add whatever Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films that I can to my list if they aren't already ON it. But only the ones already available streaming somewhere, because if they're not, well, what's the point?  The ones that aren't, I'll catch up with them along down the road somewhere. I've still got nominated films from 2023, 2022, and so on back to 2018 that I haven't been able to work in. Progress is slow, sorry - and "Roma" is a very difficult film to link to.

Damon Wayans Jr. carries over again from "Long Weekend". 

THE PLOT: A sports writer unused to relationships falls for a fling, leading her to reconsider playing the field in favor of commitment.  

AFTER: It's another film focused on a group of friends who are nearly all horrible people. This group of four friends (which grows to five or six by the end of the film) just wants to get laid out on the NYC nightclub scene, and they're not above pulling a few tricks to make that happen.  They work as each other's wingmen (or wing-women) to have loud break-ups that also make them sound rich and fabulous, and look, I'm not saying it works, but it apparently works, and then if there's even a chance of getting into a relationship, they never gave out their real name in the first place, so after sex they just disappear and move on to the next con game. Well, they probably get a lot more work done this way, it is pretty efficient to not be tied down and texting to your spouse all day because you don't have one. 

Mackenzie (Mack) is a reporter on the NYC sports beat - which means she doesn't cover the major league teams, she focuses on sports like chess boxing (yes, it's a thing) and axe-throwing and other little sports that nobody watches on TV, like soccer.  This takes her all over the city, and I recognized places like Yankee Stadium and the running path in Brooklyn along the East River.  The building that housed the newspaper (or web-site, or whatever) that they all worked for looked REALLY familiar, like maybe I've walked by it in my neighborhood, or nearby in Brooklyn. We do get a lot of famous graffiti around where I live, there are even guided tours of it.  And that bowling alley was The Gutter, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, they have animation screenings there sometimes. 

You know this film got a grant from "Made in NY", right?  The goal was to show that there's something fun to do every. single. night. in New York.  Whether that's a concert at the Guggenheim or a Yankees game or a shuffleboard tournament, you will literally never run out of things to do. Sure, I get it, nobody went outside for like three years and the economy suffered, they are so desperate to get people back out there again, but money is still tight, and nobody can afford the prices all of these places are charging for cocktails.  Really, it's a choice between drinks at night or eggs in the morning right now, because only the super rich can afford both.  

I paid attention more to the filming locations, I guess, because the film narrative itself is so damn BASIC.  Mack has a fling with her neighbor at the start of the film, but only because she knows he's moving out in a few days.  OK, so then why go to so much trouble to PRETEND to be interesting in fishing and camping, if you're never going to go fishing with him?  Plus it's stupid because even if a guy's like really into fishing, he's not going to have sex with a woman just because she's also into fishing - he'll have sex with her because she's a woman, and she's cute and nearby. So it's a lot of effort for a small return, I think. But Mack has a problem, because she suddenly, inexplicably, out of nowhere, uncharacteristically, wants to be in a long-term relationship with one of her flings. A very attractive, rich, fling who's also a writer and has a Pulitzer nomination. Well, sure, they may have a few things in common, BUT he doesn't want to date her seriously, probably because she can't stop making that FACE.  Anxious face - once you notice she keeps doing it, you can't NOT notice it, and I guess he noticed it.

Mack rallies her friends to help her track her prey, Nick, across the city.  They put him under surveillance, they figure out his routine, when and where he goes running, how many women he's dating casually, how many times he's dated each one, etc.  There's only one problem, nobody in this group of friends seems to know what to do next, because they've been running these seduction games for years now and they don't know any other way to go about it.  Wait, you mean she wants to go on a real DATE and have an adult conversation about grown-up stuff?  Wow, her friends really can't help her here at all, because they're adult children who only want flings.  Still, she gets some good help from her friend Adam, and it makes sense, because later we find out that Mack and Adam used to date, but it didn't go well and they just became friends and work-mates.  BUT they say the same expressions, have the same dance moves and finish each other's sentences.  

OK, wait, wait, because now it's all starting to look really familiar, it's the same formula as "The DUFF" and "What If" and "That Awkward Moment", so this really is a running theme this year - we can really just save a lot of time here and identify VERY EARLY that Mack should be dating Adam, and that's probably what she's going to be doing by the end of the film. "Desperados" is another one that fits this same patter, the lead female character there ALSO enlisted the help of a friendly African-American man that she dated before, in order to gain the affection of the rich, attractive Caucasian man, only to enjoy spending time with her friend MORE once she realized the guy she was crushing on wasn't all he was cracked up to be.  

It's no surprise that she's destined to end up with her best friend, because we've seen this before - the person who helps you land the relationship with the person of your dreams is really THE ONE, after you realize that you don't really want what you tried so hard to get. Suddenly you realize that person isn't all that you imagined them to be and it's not settling, but you realize you have a deeper connection with the friend who helped you get there. And also, you've got more of a connection there and you like many of the same things and eat some of the same foods and you have catch-phrases and little dances you do together. 

So, single ladies out there, the answer is simple, just form a friendship with a man and confide in him for years, maybe even a decade, or enlist his help to win the man of your dreams, because then at the last minute, you'll realize the man you're pursuing isn't so dreamy, and you'll be better off in a relationship with the male friend who's been giving you dating advice all along.  Or so I've heard, several times, that this is the way it needs to work out.

There's another repeated plot point here, where Mack shows a story she's written to Nick, the guy with the Pulitzer, because she values his opinion, and he tears it apart and tells her better ways to write it, because he hates it.  Well, this is a lot like the main plot point in "You Hurt My Feelings", isn't it?  Only that couple was married, and here, not so much, but the idea is the same.  I see both sides, because there really should be a way for someone to give an author constructive criticism on their writing without hurting their feelings, but apparently the people in these two movies didn't get that memo.  But Adam kept telling Mack that her writing was great, and that Nick didn't know what he was doing, plus he cut out everything that made her story personal to her, and that's kind of important. So clearly Adam is proper boyfriend material and Nick isn't, I predicted this very early on in "Players" because now I know the formula. 

It's probably a very clear indicator that I should get off this topic very soon - the fact that I'm seeing repeated plotlines.  

Directed by Trish Sie (director of "Pitch Perfect 3")

Also starring Gina Rodriguez (last seen in "Kajillionaire"), Tom Ellis (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Augustus Prew (last seen in "Ibiza"), Joel Courtney (last seen in "Super 8"), Liza Koshy (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Ego Nwodim, Marin Hinkle (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Brock O'Hurn, Sarah Dacey-Charles, Sterling Jonatan Williams, Jerry Kernion (last heard in "The Princess and the Frog"), Claudia Maree Mailer, Nicholas Shields, Ashley Paige Albert, Dan Cordle, Tony Foggia,

RATING: 5 out of 10 obituaries for celebrities, written in advance

Long Weekend

Year 17, Day 61 - 3/2/25 - Movie #4,961

BEFORE: I have to work today at the NY Children's Film Festival, and then when I get home first priority is going to be dinner and then second will be watching Tournament of Champions on Food Network, so chances are I will NOT get to see the Oscars live tonight. Maybe I'll have time to fast-forward through them before bedtime, but most likely not.  So I don't know how I'll be able to avoid spoilers, probably not - it's doubtful I can make it to Monday night without hearing about the big winners.  BUT I haven't seen the majority of the nominated films, only "Dune: Part Two" and "Inside Out 2", really.  Something tells me I'm going to regret not dropping "The Wild Robot" into my Catherine O'Hara chain in January, but we'll see. 

Damon Wayans Jr. carries over from "Love, Guaranteed". Now here's the line-up for Monday, 3/3, Day 31 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" - final day!

Best Visual / Special Effects Winners and Nominees:

6:00 am "A Stolen Life" (1946)

8:00 am "Tom Thumb" (1958)

9:45 am "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" (1964)

11:30 am "The Spirit of St. Louis" (1957)

2:00 pm "The Time Machine" (1960)

3:45 pm "Mighty Joe Young" (1949)

5:30 pm "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)

Oscar Worthy Heiresses: 

8:00 pm "Pride of the Yankees" (1942)

10:15 pm "Norma Rae" (1979)

12:15 am "Blossoms in the Dust" (1941)

2:15 am "Sister Kenny" (1946)

4:15 am "The Story of Louis Pasteur" (1936)

I was at 148 seen out of 344, and I've seen another 3 out of Monday's 12: "The Spirit of St. Louis", "The Time Machine" and "2001: A Space Odyssey".  I have a copy of "Norma Rae" but it never seems like the right time to watch it - like I've tried to land it on Labor Day, and it never works out.  Maybe I should have included it in this month's Sally Field chain, but it didn't feel like a very romance-based film.  SO now 151 seen out of 356 takes me to a final score of 42.4% - almost a half a percentage point ahead of last year's score. 

THE PLOT: A struggling writer meets an enigmatic woman who enters his life at the right time..

AFTER: There is a twist here, something that helps this film stand out from all the other "two people meet each other" movies.  Sure, this seems really simple at first, Bart, a male writer is down on his luck, he's forced to move into his friend's garage, he has to take a job writing item descriptions for a medical supply catalog. Then he meets this cute girl who wakes him up after he falls asleep after drinking alcohol in a movie theater screening "Being There". She seems really into him, and she invites him out for more drinks, and this turns into spending days together, and that turns into spending nights together, everything seems great except for the fact that the woman is so weird - she has no cell phone, she has no job and she walks around with big amounts of money and pays for everything with cash. Like, who does that? 

I can't even really talk about the twist, because it's a spoiler, even me saying that there is a twist is a bit too much, because now you'll know going in to expect one.  It might be on the level of the one from "Fight Club" or the one from "The Sixth Sense", only it's neither of those.  It could have been either one of those, like the woman could have been imaginary or she could have been a ghost. But she's not either of those, at least I don't think she is - no, it's something else. When she finally reveals where she came from, why she doesn't have a job and why she doesn't have a phone or a credit card, sure, the answer is quite unbelievable. Bart can't believe it, he doesn't want to believe it, but SHE believes it, however she could be lying or she could be crazy. All answers are possible. 

That's all I can really say, but hey, props for trying something different here, I sure wasn't expecting it, or I might have scheduled this one for another time if I had only known, which I didn't. It's a paradox, I know - but you only know what you know when you know it. Things are always very hard to predict, even with movies that follow formulas - so it's even worse when a movie goes way off the reservation and pulls something you never saw coming. But this one is quite clever, and the more I think about it, the cleverer it gets. I'm not going to say any more, I'm going to cut this short because I've got to get to Tournament of Champions tonight and then speed-watch the Oscars. I wish I had a long weekend so I could catch up on everything!

Directed by Steve Basilone 

Also starring Finn Wittrock (last seen in "The Normal Heart"), Zoë Chao (last seen in "Your Place or Mine"), Casey Wilson (last seen in "Always Be My Maybe"), Wendi McLendon-Covey (last heard in "Elemental"), Jim Rash (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Carter Morgan, Steve Basilone, Jennifer Irwin (last seen in "Superstar"), Jess Jacobs, Ellison Randell, Dylan Wittrock, Deanna Barillari, Andrew Secunda (last seen in "Our Idiot Brother"), Haley Rawson (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Cyrina Fiallo. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 photo booth photos

Love, Guaranteed

Year 17, Day 60 - 3/1/25 - Movie #4,960

BEFORE: Heather Graham carries over from "Desperados", and it's another film today that's been hanging around on the Netflix queue for way too long. Almost five years on Netflix?  Not exactly a great sign, it seems like some kind of movie graveyard at some point, but what the hell, let's get it off the list.  

Now that it's March, here are the links that will get me through the month: Damon Wayans Jr., Joel Courtney, Jacob Elordi, Dagmara Dominczyk, Matthew Modine and Liam Neeson.  Actually that's only going to get me to St. Patrick's Day, but that's as far as I've programmed - I should probably work on that this weekend, pick the next holiday (Easter) and figure out how I'm going to get there. OK, I think Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday are next week, so Easter is when? 4/20? Oh, that should be fun. 

Now here's the line-up for Sunday, 3/2, Day 30 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" AND the big day of the Oscar presentation itself:  

Best Picture Winners and Nominees:

6:15 am "The Divorcee" (1930)

8:00 am "Little Women" (1933)

10:00 am "The Letter" (1940)

11:45 am "Citizen Kane" (1941)

2:00 pm "Gone with the Wind" (1939)

6:00 pm "An American in Paris" (1951)

Oscar Worthy Heiresses: 

8:00 pm "My Man Godfrey" (1936)

10:00 pm "It Happened One Night" (1934)

12:00 am "The Heiress" (1949)

2:00 am "The Philadelphia Story" (1940)

4:15 am "Dark Victory" (1949)

I was at 142 seen out of 333, and I've seen another 6 out of Sunday's 11 - "Citizen Kane", "Gone with the Wind", "An American in Paris", "It Happened One Night", "The Philadelphia Story" and "Dark Victory". SO now 148 seen out of 344 takes me to 43%. I'm above last year's percentage if my score stands through tomorrow - just one point higher, but I'll take it. 

THE PLOT: To save her small law firm, lawyer Susan takes a high-paying case from Nick, a charming new client who wants to sue a dating website that guarantees love.  But as the case heats up, so do Susan and Nick's feelings for each other. 

AFTER: As we begin to make our descent out of romance month, please make sure your seats and try tables are in a raised and locked position, and that all loose items are stowed. But we still might be circling the runway for a while, so please be patient, because we're not quite cleared for landing just yet. There are still a few more films that can be cleared off the Netflix queue, and we will try to get out of this topic in time to make our connecting flights back to some action movies.  Like 8 more movies should do it, maybe 9 tops.  The romance list is already in shambles, I've managed to strand a couple films like so much lost luggage, and the pieces haven't come together enough to prove that I can do this again next year - but there's still time, I maybe just need to add a few more films to the mix. I'll keep at it and review the wreckage in November or December. 

Here's a combination romance and trial film, well we already tried mixing a trial film with a Jamie Foxx comedy ("The Burial"), a trial film with a Batman villain movie and a trial film with a depressing German relationship movie ("Anatomy of a Fall") so why not?  Believe it or not, this film was inspired by a lawsuit brought against Coors beer years ago, when someone challenged the claim they made in their advertising that their beer was made with "pure Rocky Mountain spring water".  Yeah, if you've ever tasted Coors, you can confirm that it was probably hard to taste the pure spring water over the skunky beer. Really, it was just a guy with a hose filling up the vats every day, I'll bet.  But in today's film that same concept was applied to a dating site called "Love Guaranteed", who stated in their claims that their clients WILL find love through their site. Guaranteed, that is.  

One guy read the fine print, you know those terms & conditions that everyone skips over, or they claim to have read them just so they can get to the site's contents, only nobody ever does?  Well, one guy DID and in the fine print it says that the guarantee only applies if you date 1,000 people you met on the site, and this guy's been doing breakfast, lunch and dinner dates for three years to get his number up to 1,000 - and it sure LOOKS like he's inflating the numbers just so he can have legal grounds to sue the company.  Is anybody THAT hard up, that they would stick with the process for 1,000 dates when they haven't met the right person yet?  Naturally, you might question whether their heart's really still in it, if they're still focused on the process, or if they're so jaded that now they're out to prove the company wrong.  Jeez, after 700 or 800 dates wouldn't you be inclined to quit the service and then just let the universe, or your friends, pick somebody for you?  

Of course, of course, the internet has screwed everything up - because back in the day you could meet somebody in the newspaper classifieds, or remember video-dating?  Speed dating was a thing for like a few months, but really, it's the web-sites and apps that have changed everything.  There's an app for people looking for serious relationships, another one for casual relationships, probably one just for quick hook-ups when you don't even want to know the other person's name, then there's one for dating farmers, one for attorneys, one for Russian models who need green cards, hey, just pick your pleasure. There's probably one for furries, too, but I'm honestly afraid to check.  

It could be that this guy just doesn't trust the whole system, maybe no woman could possibly measure up to the imaginary set of standards that he has.  Then the question sort of becomes, "Who hurt this guy? Who messed him up so bad that he hasn't recovered and can't date anyone without tearing them down and losing faith in the whole process at the same time?"  Nevertheless, this female lawyer takes his case, and OK, sure, if we apply the same formula that we saw in "The DUFF" and "Desperados" (and "That Awkward Moment" and "Letters to Juliet" and "Hope Springs" and "Murphy's Romance" and "What If?" and probably dozens more in previous years) we should know it's the person who HELPS you through that difficult time that might actually be "the one".  So, really, if you want to skip to the end here, no harm done, because about midway through the film Nick and his lawyer Susan start hanging out and from there, of course, it's just a quick jump to having feelings for each other.  

The twist here is that they HAVE to pump the brakes, because if the dating site company realizes that they're starting to fall in love, then they could file a motion to dismiss the case, claiming that Nick DID find love through his interaction with the dating site, because the process caused him to file a lawsuit, and for that he needed a lawyer, so really, quid pro bono, lorem ipsum, the dating site gets credit for the meet-cure with the nice lady lawyer that he's formed a connection with. Also carpe diem and deus ex machina. 

Susan also learns that Nick is not filing the suit to get rich, he works as a physical therapist and he wants the money to open up a wing just for kids with disabilities, or something.  Damn, he's a nice guy, a professional, charitable, and honest - Susan sure could do a lot worse.  BUT she needs the money, too, as her law practice is behind on its bills and she has no other clients, also her car is falling apart and a Tiffany cassette has been stuck in the tape-deck since the 1980's.  Umm, so, I don't know, maybe turn the music OFF?  Just a thought. 

Look, I know in my heart this film is just one step above one of those Hallmark channel or Lifetime movies where two people just meet cute, work out their issues and get married, and it takes place in Anytown, USA and also it's Thanksgiving or Christmas, but I'm going to be nice and give this one the benefit of the doubt, because at least there weren't three people running around Seattle at 3 am trying to solve a murder and fix a wedding dress after drinking too much Nyquil. OK?

However, I also feel like in a month's time I will completely forget about this film, because it's not very exciting or extraordinary or even sexy in any way. Come on, there's a murder on almost every episode of "Law & Order", that's what draws in the eyeballs. By contrast, a wacky female CEO and Susan's even wackier staff, plus Nick's heartless ex-girlfriend just aren't enough to make this story stand out. Nothing really wrong with it, it's just not interesting in any way. Even when Susan's sister gives birth, it barely moves the needle.  Susan and Nick are left to baby-sit her nephew, but again, nothing really goes wrong enough to make a difference, the kid throws a tantrum for 30 seconds and Nick bribes him with ice cream. Bo-ring.

I'll give out an extra point, though, for agreeing with me that the famous saying isn't "You've got another thing coming," but rather "You've got another THINK coming."  Sure, there was a Judas Priest song that favored the word "THING", but the entire phrase should be "If you think I'm going to let you walk out of here, you've got another THINK coming." I know the internet disagrees with me, but I don't care, I know that I'm right. Usage of "another think coming" predates "another thing coming" which suggests that the second is a bastardization or a misheard phrase based on the correct one. 

Directed by: Mark Steven Johnson (director of "When in Rome")

Also starring Rachael Leigh Cook (last seen in "She's All That"), Damon Wayans Jr. (last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Caitlin Howden, Brendan Taylor, Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez (last seen in "Peter Pan & Wendy"), Sean Amsing (last seen in "Always Be My Maybe"), Lisa Durupt (last seen in "Shall We Dance?"), Alvin Sanders (last seen in "The Layover"), Jed Rees (last seen in "Fear"), Kandyse McClure (last seen in "Seventh Son"), Natalie von Rotsburg, Dee Jay Jackson (last seen in "She's the Man"), Colin Foo (last seen in "Say It Isn't So"), Quynh Mi, Nick Fontaine, Claire Hesselgrave, Morgana Wyllie, Judith Maxie (last seen in "Catwoman"), Milo Shandel (last seen in "The Adam Project"), Flossie McKnight (last seen in "The Unforgivable"), Kiomo Pyke, Jason Burkart (last seen in "Welcome to Marwen"), Arthur Corber (last seen in "Wrongfully Accused"), Amitai Marmorstein (last seen in "Killing Gunther"), Lauren McGibbon, Sasha Hayden, La Nein Harrison, Claire Filipow (last seen in "Dragged Across Concrete"), Rebecca Olson (last seen in "American Dreamer"), Jerry Yang, Kallie Hu, Christian Sloan (last seen in "Black Christmas"), Stephanie Son

RATING: 6 out of 10 side effects of love, as listed in the credits (they include uneasy stomachs, restless sleep, weight gain, cutting carbs, sudden mood changes and holidays at the in-laws)

Desperados

Year 17, Day 59 - 2/28/25 - Movie #4,959

BEFORE: Anna Camp carries over from "The Lovebirds" and this is the last movie for February, so here are my format stats: 

15 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Alright Now, Safe Haven, Dear John, Letters to Juliet, Spoiler Alert, Kiss Me Goodbye, Ticket to Paradise, Men Women & Children, Angel Eyes, Maudie, A Brilliant Young Mind, Then Came You, The DUFF, What If, You Hurt My Feelings

4 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Hope Springs (2003), Say It Isn't So, How to Deal, Bachelorette

3 watched on Netflix: Queen Bees, The Lovebirds, Desperados

1 watched on Amazon Prime: That Awkward Moment

2 watched on Peacock: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, Gigli

2 watched on Tubi: Places in the Heart, Murphy's Romance

1 watched on a random site: Love, Wedding, Marriage

28 TOTAL

Some of those other streaming services really need to up their game, I mean, what happened to Hulu, Paramount+ and Disney+?  Maybe I just didn't add any relevant films they have to my list, or maybe they just didn't add any relevant films to THEIR list. 

Now here's the line-up for Saturday, 3/1, Day 29 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar".  

Best Picture Winners and Nominees:

7:30 am "Five Star FInal" (1931)

9:00 am "Crossfire" (1947)

10:45 am "The Music Man" (1962)

1:30 pm "Doctor Zhivago" (1965)

5:00 pm "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957)

Oscar Worthy Dads: 

8:00 pm "The Lost Weekend" (1945)

10:00 pm "I'll Cry Tomorrow" (1955)

12:15 am "Leaving Las Vegas" (1995)

2:15 am "Key Largo" (1948)

4:15 am "Johnny Eager" (1941)

I was at 137 seen out of 323, and I've seen another 5 out of Saturday's 10 - "The Music Man", Doctor Zhivago", "The Bridge on the River Kwai", "The Lost Weekend" and "Leaving Las Vegas", that probably counts as a push - SO now 142 seen out of 333 takes me to 42.6%.

THE PLOT: A panicked young woman, with her reluctant friends in tow, rushes to Mexico to try and delete a ranting e-mail she sent to her new boyfriend. 

AFTER: Here in the waning days of February, in the final third (let's say) of this year's romance chain, clearly there's a formula at work here, kind of like "Mad Libs", where you fill in the blanks with a number, a major city, a noun, an action and a controlled substance.  For example:

THREE friends need to race across NEW YORK to find a SEWING MACHINE to REPAIR a gown, while on COCAINE AND XANAX ("Bachelorette")   or

TWO ex-lovers need to race around NEW ORLEANS to find EVIDENCE to CLEAR THEIR NAMES, while on ADRENALINE AND PANIC ("The Lovebirds"). or 

THREE friends need to race around CABO to find a CEL PHONE to DELETE AN E-MAIL, while on MARGARITAS AND STUPID PILLS ("Desperados").  

See, it's all the same damn movie, each with just a few tweaks, but tell me there isn't a formula at play this week.  Well, the good news is that these three films have something else in common, they've been on my list too damn long - so at LEAST I'm clearing out the dead wood - "Desperados" has been on Netflix since 2020 and I can't believe it's somehow still there, I'll wager I'm the only person who watched this film on that platform this year. Everyone else either watched it back when it was new, or decided against it and never circled back. "The Lovebirds" has also been on Netflix since 2020, but I thought they cycled movies off the platform after 2 years, I guess they make exceptions for the films they own outright. 

The other upside is that I'll never, ever have to watch "Desperados" again, it's that bad. Cringey, very cringey, since the main character is intentionally a very self-entitled young woman, she doesn't seem to care about anyone other than herself, and she feels that the world OWES her things like a job and a successful relationship that she can brag about on Instagram. Yeah, I'll wager there are a lot of young women (and men) out there like that, but that doesn't mean we should make movies about them, because we're going to end up hate-watching those movies.  Well, except for the people who ARE also like that, because I guess they'll watch Wesley just think that everything good should come her way with little or no effort, and they agree with that, and fail to see themselves reflected on the screen. Ugh, you can't win with this Gen Z or Alpha or whatever they are now.  (Yes, I'm Generation X so I get to make fun of both Gen Z AND the Boomers...)

Wesley starts by screwing up a job interview, and then messing up a blind date with a nice young African-American man named Sean.  They'd mentioned having an "automatic out", like either one could tap out from their date if they weren't feeling it, and Sean taps out after spending five minutes with her. Well, he's not wrong, and he might be the smartest character in the whole movie, because he knows right away that Wesley is WAY too full of herself, overly entitled, and she mentioned marriage and kids in the first few minutes of the date.  After that date I was definitely Team Sean - but he was not Team Wesley.  Wesley determines that the problem was that she was too HER, so all she needs to do with the next guy is be someone else. It makes perfect logical sense, except for the fact that it's also ridiculous.  

Wesley "succeeds" with sports agent Jared, who helped her up when she fall on the sidewalk, but if she's actively not being herself, is that really success?  Jared doesn't even really know her, but he's falling in love with the woman that she's pretending to be, isn't that worth something?  Well, no, but Wesley's too far in, plus they have sex after a month of dating, and then the next day, no call, no nothing.  It seems like Jared's ghosted her, so after five days she enlists her friends to help write a nasty e-mail to him (remember, it's all SO about Wesley...) and just after she sends it, she gets a call from Jared, he was with a client in Mexico and had an accident, he's been in a coma for five days and apologizes sincerely for not contacting her.  (Sure, it sounds like a bullshit story, but conveniently the camera shows he IS in a hospital bed and he's all bandaged up, so at least we at home know he's not lying.). 

His phone is back at the resort, he's had no calls or e-mail for five days, so Wesley gets the greatest idea, she'll head down to the resort, find his phone and delete the e-mail she sent, and then their relationship can continue.  Her besties Brooke and Kaylie (enablers of the highest order) go with her, they each have their own issues, like Brooke needs to decide whether to divorce her cheating husband and Kaylie is looking for a way to conceive a baby with her husband, and apparently she's so stupid she thinks flying away to Mexico for a week will help with that, but I'm pretty sure she'd have better luck if she stayed in umm, L.A.(?) with her husband, but call me crazy.  Kaylie also wants to find some weird self-help author in Mexico and ask for advice, they really telegraph this so we won't be shocked when it becomes important to the story later. 

Down in Mexico, what a coincidence, her blind date gone wrong, Sean, is staying at the same resort. Now, you don't suppose that while she's running around like a crazy chicken trying to delete that e-mail, that she'll end up spending time at the resort with Sean and maybe even enlist his help, which would mean a team-up that allows them to get to know each other better, and spending time together working on a common goal could lead to some kind of romance with the guy who rejected her on a date for being so crazy?  Well, it wouldn't be the first time, and crazy stuff like that HAS been known to happen in these rom-coms.  Like "The DUFF", for example, when Bianca and male Wesley (no relation) had to help each other with their problems of dating and passing chemistry, and they ended up spending so much time together working on common goals that they developed an understanding and eventually a romance, after Bianca finally realized that Toby wasn't the high-school man of her dreams?  Yeah, something like that.

(I'm sure it's a coincidence, but Robbie Amell plays Jared here, the object of Wesley's pursuit, but he was also in "The DUFF" last week, but playing a guy NAMED Wesley who tried to help Bianca win over Toby?  Why, it's almost like we keep seeing the same actors in rom-coms, again and again, and things change slightly from one film to another, but essentially they're really all  very much the same?  Nah, it couldn't be. Could it?)

Anyway, what happens here is that Wesley ends up spending more and more time with Sean at the resort (when she's not accidentally naked and/or caught up in crazy situations that make people think she's trying to have sex with a junior-high aged boy...) and over time, Sean and Wesley realize they have some things in common, and we learn he's a widower and his blind date with her was his first attempt to get back out there, perhaps he wasn't ready.  And what do you know, when she needs help getting the key to Jared's room, and Sean helps her, working toward a common goal (even one he thinks is nuts) we get the idea that maybe this could lead to some kind of romance, only with Sean, not Jared.  Wow, who could have seen THAT coming?  

Wesley has to tell MORE lies when Sean gets released from the hospital, like she's already there in Cabo, but he doesn't know that, so she tells him she will fly down to escort him home, only, duh, she's already there. And her plan to use his face to unlock the phone while he's passed out on the plane, then delete the e-mail, is actually a pretty good one.  Like, it WOULD have worked, only smart Sean pointed out that the whole relationship is based on lies, and deleting the e-mail is like a lie on top of a lie, or a lie squared or something, so his suggestion is to let Jared read the e-mail, because he needs to know just how crazy Wesley can get, it's not fair otherwise to let him get further in the relationship.  Yeah, still Team Jared.  

The other two friends manage to go on their own journeys while in Mexico, and what do you know, when they're not all busy fixing Wesley's many, many problems they might have time to fix their own, or at least come to terms with their own.  Wesley is a terrible person, an energy vampire who demands that her friends pay more attention to her than she does to them - how am I supposed to like this main character?  She's totally hateable. Her friends leave her at the airport, but honestly, they should have left her in Mexico.  Oh, right, she got banned from the resort so even Cabo doesn't want her.  Well, the good thing about a love triangle is that she's got two options, if one doesn't work out, just try the other one. Another thing that probably makes perfect logical sense, but is really totally ridiculous when it comes to real practical relationships.

There also is, by random chance, a sexual assault by an aquatic mammal in this film - I won't say what kind of aquatic mammal but you can probably guess. That could have been kind of funny, but no, it really wasn't. Other unfunny things are accusations of pedophilia, over-protective mothers, widower husbands, and medically induced comas. 

Directed by LP (not sure if that's a pseudonym for the writer, Ellen Rapoport, or more of an "Alan Smithee" situation, either way, not a good sign when nobody takes credit for directing a film)

Also starring Nasim Pedrad (last heard in "Wish"), Lamorne Morris (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles"), Sarah Burns (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Robbie Amell (last seen in "The DUFF"), Heather Graham (last seen in "Say It Isn't So"), Jessica Chaffin (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 3"), Izzy Diaz, Rodrigo Franco, Scott Rodgers, Toby Grey, Jessica Lowe (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"), George Basil (last seen in "Barbie"), Allan McLeod (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Bryan Safi, Mon de Leon, Niccole Thurman, Mo Gaffney (last seen in "The Out-of-Towners"), Natalia Colina, Mike Mitchell (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), ViviAnn Yee, Guillermo Pena

RATING: 2 out of 10 paddleboards

The Lovebirds

Year 17, Day 58 - 2/27/25 - Movie #4,958

BEFORE: I have a big day today, I've got to get up early and go a couple miles across Queens by bus because there's another German pork store closing down, now I love German cold cuts and during the pandemic I found a ton of places to buy them, but unfortunately now even the ones who made it through seem to be closing. Last year there was one in my neighborhood of Ridgewood that shut down, and now the great one in Glendale that's next to a restaurant called Zum Stammtisch is closing, though the restaurant is staying open, I guess not enough people love head cheese and liverwurst as much as I do, not enough to sustain a specialty store. So now I've got to go there on a Thursday before the place shuts down on Saturday, as I'm afraid by the weekend there won't be anything left in the store, they're for sure not re-stocking if they know they're closing on March 1. Then I've got to come back home and go out again tonight for an animation event pretty much on the other side of Ridgewood, so a lot of traveling across my neighborhood by bus today. 

Kyle Bornheimer carries over from "Bachelorette".  Now here's the line-up for Friday, 2/28, Day 28 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar".  

Best Costume Winners and Nominees:

9:00 am "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm" (1962)

11:30 am "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962)

2:00 pm "Raintree County" (1957)

5:00 pm "Tess" (1979)

Oscar Worthy Dads: 

8:00 pm "Life Is Beautiful" (1997)

10:15 pm "On Golden Pond" (1981)

12:15 am "Fiddler on the Roof" (1971)

3:30 am "The Great Santini" (1979)

5:30 am "Life with Father" (1947)

I was at 131 seen out of 314, and I've seen another 6 out of Friday's 9 - "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"), "Tess", "Life Is Beautiful", "On Golden Pond", "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Life with Father". It's nearly my last chance to increase my stats. SO now 137 seen out of 323 takes me up to 42.4%.

THE PLOT: A couple experiences a defining moment in their relationship when they are unintentionally embroiled in a murder mystery. 

AFTER: Well, I made it to the German pork store, and I was right, they were already out of a bunch of things, like the type of liverwurst I like. Other people of German descent were at the store today for the same reason, to get the bratwurst or other meats they like before the store runs out. I did get a pound of head cheese, some blutwurst and some ham, bologna and muenster cheese, and a sandwich to eat outside because I didn't want to wait to get home, it was a long ride on two different buses, back and forth.  Then I went with my wife to the wholesale club, she just renewed her membership, and after that she dropped me off at the animation event, so I didn't have to go home, then take another bus.  Animated shorts are a weird little animal, often you watch them and realize they don't really have much of a story, because sometimes the animator just wants to evoke an idea or a feeling, rather than tell a coherent story with plot points. There's not much time, it's a short film after all, but then you can be scratching your head after, wondering what the film you just watched was about.  This is kind of why shorts aren't allowed on my blog, occasionally I'll watch one before a feature but then I don't really count the short in the tally, and partly that's because so many of them are, well, non-narrative. It's rare when you see an animated short that MEANS something or has a real point to make, sure some of them get a bad rap for this, but the problem persists. 

Anyway, tonight's LONG feature (which actually isn't that long, it's just 86 min., so the shortest feature I've watched so far this year) is about a couple that's been together four years, and they feel like they fight a lot, but really, what they're doing is bickering. That's anything that might sound like a fight, but the issue at hand isn't all that important or serious, and nobody's really going to break up over bickering, or just mild disagreeing. Take my wife and me, we bicker over things like whether it makes sense to join one of those wholesale clubs, and she'll pay the fee to have a yearly membership because she thinks shopping there saves money. However, I'll argue that buying in bulk does make sense if you have five or more kids, or if you own a restaurant you're trying to stock, but for a couple with no kids, it makes no sense because they make you buy three of everything, which is more expensive when you buy, and also when you end up throwing food away because it goes bad. Like we stopped buying milk by the gallon because we don't drink much, and then half goes sour and we pour it down the drain - the two of us don't even usually get through a quart, so it makes more sense to buy a quart, however when we go to the wholesale club and see a gallon for $3.00, that SEEMS like a good deal, only it isn't if we're just not going to drink all of that. I'd rather buy one bottle of ketchup for $4 at the regular supermarket every two months than buy THREE now for $12, because it kind of feels like more money's staying in my pocket. So I go with her and try to point out which "deals" at the wholesale club make sense to buy. OK, so they were selling five dozen eggs for $30, which honestly seems cheap what with egg-flation going around due to the avian flu, and really, that's two eggs for a dollar, a good deal maybe. But then we have 60 eggs in the house, and how long will it take us to eat all those eggs?  So honestly I'd rather pay $12 for 12 eggs, maybe each individual egg is more expensive that way, but we're paying out less money overall.  Bottom line, I don't think the wholesale club saves money if it forces us to buy more stuff than we need, yet people still walk out of there having spent $300 and believing that they somehow saved money.

Leilani and Jibran in this film also have debates like this, and so they're under the impression that their relationship is problematic, but seen from another angle, hey, they're just like any married couple that argue about how to do things.  They think they have to break up, because they don't see their little disagreements for what they are, a dress rehearsal for being married. But right after they break up, they get caught up in a murder situation, and since a guy who said he was a cop basically car-jacked them and ran a guy over, they believe that as people of color, they will be blamed for this murder and the police will track them down through their car and hold them responsible. So, out of desperation, they go on the run and try to solve the murder themselves, thinking it will be easier to go to the police if they already know the identity of the man who commandeered their car.  I guess there's some logic there, but of course it's twisted and panic-fueled. 

Well, I did say I needed a break from romance movies, because it turns out that watching a whole month of rom-coms will distort your views on relationships.  "The Lovebirds" is essentially an action comedy with a couple in it, so yeah, this really couldn't have come at a better time. "Bachelorette" took a similar tack, detailing the events of one long night as people race across the city to fix their situation, however "Bachelorette" was neither as funny NOR as serious as today's film. Plus it was very stupid and every character was a terrible person. This one had more heart and was better planned out, as the two leads are motivated to solve the crime, like who was that guy who took their car, who was the guy on the bicycle he killed, and perhaps most importantly, WHY?

When our heroes get knocked out by a congressman's wife and they wake up, tied up in a barn, with someone demanding that they give up the pictures that their boss is using as blackmail material, well that's when they (and we) get the first clue about what's really going on. There's also a weird sex cult similar to the one seen in "Eyes Wide Shut" but eventually Leilani and Jibran end up in police custody, only to find out that they were never really considered to be murder suspects at all.  They were worried over nothing, it turns out, because the police have video footage of the murder, after all there are cameras everywhere these days. Makes sense - but the pair still isn't out of danger, for reasons I can't give out here. No spoilers. 

Does it make complete sense that witnessing a murder together and then going all over New Orleans during a wild night, encountering all kinds of weird people in an attempt to clear their names, would be the thing that brings them back together?  Nah, not really but at least it's a bunch of wild action and crazy fun, and I was rooting for them the whole time because they're not horrible people. Also, they just want to compete on "The Amazing Race" together, which is a noble goal. (A reminder that this blog does NOT accept any advertising dollars of any kind, so when I tell you that season 37 of "The Amazing Race" begins on CBS on March 5, you know it's because I really love that show.)

Directed by: Michael Showalter (director of "Spoiler Alert")

Also starring Issa Rae (last seen in "Barbie"), Kumail Nanjiani (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Paul Sparks (last seen in "The Bikeriders"), Anna Camp (last seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large"), Nicholas X. Parsons (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Barry Rothbart (last seen in "Dean"), Catherine Cohen, Andrene Ward-Hammond (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Lisha Wheeler, Moses Storm (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Nelson Cepeda, Casey Hendershot (last seen in "Jackpot!"), Aaron Abrams (last seen in "Jesus Henry Christ"), Joe Chrest (last seen in "Love, Wedding, Marriage"), Blaine Kern III (last seen in "The Dirt"), Briana Liu, Matthew Rimmer (last seen in "Grudge Match"), Jaren Mitchell, Betsy Borrego, Kelly Angell (Murtagh), Rob Eubanks, Mahdi Cocci, Joe Camp III, Gralen Bryant Banks (last seen in "The Burial"), Robert Larriviere (last seen in "Poms"), Shannon Nicole and the voice of Phil Keoghan

RATING: 6 out of 10 attempts to guess a phone password