BEFORE: Getting a late start today because I had to take a bus across town and hit this pork store in Queens, where I've been getting my cold cuts since I discovered pork stores during the pandemic. It's a chance to buy German cold cuts, which I enjoyed at my grandmother's house as a kid, and I've rediscovered head cheese and bierwurst and ham/bologna and tongue, which are all awesome, but a bit off-putting to some people. I can't get enough, though, and while this particular pork store is Polish and I don't know the Polish names for these cold cuts, I manage to get what I want - however the place is closing down for good in two days, after about 85 years in that location, leaving me to find a new supplier. But this was the best one within walking distance, I know a good one we can drive to in Queens and another good one on Long Island, but the other one I can walk to just doesn't have as great of a selection. Now I can walk through the neighborhood and see all the places I used to shop, like restaurants where I had dates with an ex-lover.
It's time to change gears and switch over to romances, not necessarily all romantic comedies, because there are some dramas in here too, I need a mix of comedy and tragedy to kind of keep myself on an even keel. Try watching 30 love-based comedies in a row, I can promise you will go just a bit crazy - too much of anything is bad for you, I think. OK, so this year the target number is 41 films before I switch topics, and I need to leave enough time to get to something Irish-based for St. Patrick's Day. No problem, if I can keep my wits about me.
Claire Forlani carries over from "Precious Cargo" and here are the links that will get me to the end of February, and remember we've got an extra Leap Day this month: Jason Biggs, Paul Rudd, Twink Caplan, David Spade, Jorge Garcia, Cloris Leachman, Michael St. Michaels, Jemaine Clement, Regina Hall, La La Anthony, Nia Long, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Coyote, Shane West, David Koechner, Julie Hagerty, Zoe Chao, Tig Notaro, Nora Dunn, Miley Cyrus, Greg Kinnear, Seth Meyers, Kristin Chenoweth and Jennifer Lopez.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Down to You" (Movie #4,038)
THE PLOT: A friendship is put to the ultimate test when two best friends wind up in bed together.
AFTER: This film is from the year 2000, and like pork stores, I just think they don't make romantic comedies like this any more, today's films are more like "Blockers" and "No Hard Feelings", and so this kind of qualifies as a quaint antique, like "She's All That" or "Down to You", and man, that was two years ago when I last did a Freddie Prinze Jr. chain? I guess this one kind of fell through the cracks back then, you have to imagine I would have worked this one into the February 2022 chain if I'd had a copy at that time. And Jason Biggs is in three films this February, seeing both him and Alyson Hannigan in the same movie reminds me that I've never seen the "American Pie" films, and I may have to deal with that someday. No time this year, but maybe in the future.
Seeing Bruce Willis yesterday also reminds me about "Moonlighting", the crime-romance-comedy series from way back that kept the "Will they or won't they" suspense going for what, three seasons? Five seasons total, but once the two lead characters slept with each other, the show was never really the same, why bother after the question got answered? So that same structure is in place in "Boys and Girls", the male and female lead circle each other for the whole film, they confide in each other as they date other people throughout college, and then only near the end of the film do they really consider each other as potential partners. "When Harry Met Sally", same pattern, but that took place over a longer period of time, I think. Remember, men and women can't possibly be friends, because the sex always gets in the way, UNLESS they're both seeing other people, which means they CAN be friends, especially if they need to comfort each other after breakups.
Umm, yeah, SPOILER ALERT, same end result, the two become such great friends over the years that they eventually realize that they can't live without each other, but first they lead themselves to believe that getting together would be "settling" for second best, but then a realization that there's nobody out there better for them, and if you're going to have to form a permanent bond with someone, you might as well pick somebody you're already friends with, someone who knows you better than anyone else.
You can't make a film like this these days because it was a different time back then, if you titled a film "Boys and Girls" today, there's a segment of the population that would have a fit, like why is your film only focused on straight people? Why is it all about boys dating girls, and why are there no gay people in your film? Note that there is one woman in this film who tries to kiss another woman, but she's not gay or bisexual, she just got caught up in the moment, and then once she spoke to her therapist she realized that she was only acting that way because she was afraid of losing her friend as a friend, she wasn't really attracted to women, because Jeez, that would be terrible and also the scriptwriter wouldn't know how to handle that. Anyway if you had a gay character back then the whole film would have been ABOUT that, you couldn't just have a minor character act that way without it being the focus, and also causing a whole fuss.
We know that we want Ryan and Jennifer to end up together, from the first time we see them on a plane together, meeting when they're about 12 years old, and already they seem much older than they are, Jennifer can talk about her period and she wants to know if Ryan masturbates, like jeez, didn't they JUST MEET? And they're already so comfortable with each other, but it's just not the right time for them yet, then they meet again while attending rival high schools that play each other in the big sport-ball game, she's the homecoming queen for her school and he's the gopher mascot for the other team. They're comfortable with each other again, Jennifer reveals that she doesn't believe in true love or monogamy - well, to be fair there are a LOT of people to date in this world. She wants to go out for coffee, but he's still not ready.
They meet again at college, UC Berkeley, I think, where he's a freshman studying engineering and she's a junior studying Latin, what career can you possibly have with that degree? He lives in the dorm with a roommate, Hunter, who can't decide on an identity or even his first name, and she lives off-campus with her musician boyfriend, who breaks up with her shortly into the new semester. So she moves in with her friend Amy, who dates a guy named Ryan, and that turns out to be the SAME Ryan she met on the plane as a kid. Well, to be fair there are a LOT of people named Ryan in this world.
For the next two years, they can never QUITE get on the same page, as Ryan dates Heather, who approached him at a party, and Jennifer also goes through a number of boyfriends, and also her friend Amy tries to kiss her, but the movie simply has no time to get into that, as I mentioned. Hunter spends his time trying to be a ballet dancer to meet girls, and when that doesn't work he comes up with lying about his backstory to pick up women in bars, before eventually realizing that it's easier to just be himself, whoever that is. Ryan becomes the first person Jennifer calls to rescue her from bad dates by pretending to be her brother and running into the restaurant because there's a family medical emergency. But they never take their relationship to the next level, until one night they do, only Ryan forgot to break up with Heather first. Whoopsie. Then by sleeping with Jennifer he realizes what's been missing all this time, only Jennifer doesn't really feel the same way, or at least she pretends not to. Damn, why does this all have to be so complicated? It's exhausting, right?
Look, at least this film thought to ASK some of the difficult questions about relationships - like, how much of it is random chance and how much of it is fate, that two people keep finding themselves in each other's orbits? Certainly any college setting has a limited pool of people to date, plus there are only so many colleges in California, etc - but if either of these people had decided to move further away for college, we just wouldn't have had a movie. I really didn't date outside of my own dorm at NYU, and that was the problem, I was just being lazy - but once I went to eat at the cafeteria a few blocks away, and ran into someone from my comedy writing class, who lived in a completely different dorm, well then things started to fall into place. So yeah, I get it, you bump into someone, share a meal, talk for a bit and then that little encounter changes your path and you're booked into a relationship for the next seven years or whatever.
Other questions, does love really exist or is it just our imagination? I mean, is it a basic human emotion, or merely a social construct that helps us pass the time? I'm not saying there's a valid ANSWER here, but hey, at least somebody's asking the questions. And your answers at any given time just might depend on whether you're currently in a relationship or if you just got dumped. And who hasn't been dumped, or been the dumper? They both kind of suck here, but that's really kind of the point.
And then graduation is looming, so that kind of forces the issue, I get that, too. In a few months Jennifer's senior year will be over and she's either got to make a decision to stick around, or take that job in Italy and that will be that. But she's on her way to the airport when the shuttle van passes that hill that overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge, where she and Ryan had that talk together. She heads back to her apartment, only to find that Hunter's now sleeping with Amy, oh, and Ryan's catching a plane back to L.A. Oh, if only she had stayed in that shuttle van that was going to the airport! Can she make it to his airplane in time, and trade in her ticket to Italy for a ticket to L.A.? Umm, sure, only it's pretty unlikely that the same airline would have flights to both places, and that she'd have to spend anything under two hours in line switching her tickets. NITPICK POINT, just saying.
NITPICK POINT #2 is that if they're going to college in Berkeley, they wouldn't be THAT close ot the Golden Gate Bridge - like, that wouldn't be a place that Ryan would go to think, because it wouldn't be that convenient. They could more likely see the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, maybe.
Also starring Freddie Prinze Jr. (last seen in "Clerks III"), Jason Biggs (last seen in "My Best Friend's Girl"), Amanda Detmer (last seen in "You, Me, and Dupree"), Heather Donahue (last seen in "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2"), Alyson Hannigan (last seen in "My Stepmother Is an Alien"), Monica Arnold, Matt Schulze (last seen in "Mr. Brooks"), Brendon Ryan Barrett, Raquel Beaudene, David Smigelski, Blake Shields, Gay Thomas Wilson, Tsianina Joelson, Tim Griffin (last seen in "Central Intelligence"), Brian Poth (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Lisa Eichhorn (last seen in "About Time"), Lee Garlington (last seen in "Lovely & Amazing"), Susan Kellermann (last seen in "Where the Buffalo Roam"), Kylie Bax (last seen in "Get Over It"), Kristy Hinze (last seen in "Perfect Stranger"), Ines Rivero (last seen in "The Devil Wears Prada"), Renate Verbaan, John X, Kristofer Mickelson, Matt Carmody, Richard Hillman (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), Timi Prulhiere (last seen in "Dear God"), Eric Rutherford, Steve Comisar (last seen in "Streets of Fire"), Sean Maysonet, with a cameo from Carrie Ann Inaba.
RATING: 5 out of 10 burnt cookies
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