BEFORE: Nora Dunn carries over again from "The Answer Man", and I'm back on track, just 2 films with Miley Cyrus and then 17 more romance films and I'm done with the topic for another year.
Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 16:
Best Actress Nominees:
7:45 am "The Valley of Decision" (1945)
10:00 am "Alice Adams" (1935)
11:45 am "Suspicion" (1941)
1:30 pm "Wait Until Dark" (1967)
3:30 pm "Born Yesterday" (1950)
5:30 pm "Auntie Mame" (1958)
Best Actress Winners:
8:00 pm "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989)
10:00 pm "Funny Girl" (1968)
12:45 am "Mildred Pierce" (1945)
2:45 am "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (1974)
4:45 am "Two Women" (1960)
Another 5 (?) seen out of these 11 ("Suspicion", "Wait Until Dark", "Driving Miss Daisy", "Funny Girl" and "Mildred Pierce") brings me to 66 seen out of 183, or 36%. "Born Yesterday" is on my list, though, it's a film that just fell through the cracks again and again for years, and then once I finally figured out how to get through a whole year with a linked chain, I haven't been able to find a way back to it. I probably should take this opportunity to watch "Two Women" and "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", but again, I've just got too much - wait, you know what, I'm going to record that last film, because it is a romance film, it's a super classic film I should have seen by now and I CAN work it into my chain in early March, right between two other Ellen Burstyn films. We're going to make that one happen, I might have to double up on animated films leading up to St. Patrick's Day, but I can make that happen too.
THE PLOT: As a new school year begins, Lola's heart is broken by her boyfriend, though soon she's surprised by her best friend, musician Kyle, who reveals his feelings for her.
AFTER: Yeah, I really need to watch more films like "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", films wiith adults in them, having adult relationships. If I watch one more film with a high-school kid who wants to date the really unattainable attractive popular person, and doesn't realize that they really should be dating their best friend, I'm going to lose it. Really, I just don't care if Lola dates Kyle after Chad breaks her heart, who even cares? That's it, no more high-school films for me, I've aged out of that program a few decades ago, I don't know why I even bother. Plus, haven't I seen all the high-school films by now? It's getting so tired.
OK, I checked through my list, it looks like I'm in the clear, no more high-school romances in this year's chain. There might be a few left on the list, like "Blockers", "Bottoms" and "The Girl Next Door", but I can worry about them next year, and make a decision then about whether to screen them or ban them, depending on how I feel. Je-SUS, why are high-school kids so dramatic? They break up with a partner or two and it's like the end of the WORLD or something, kids, realize that your life is (ideally) long and you're going to have multiple partners over the next few decades, maybe a few marriages, and that means that you could find yourself alone at ANY stage in your life, either by divorce or death or just plain "we're not right for each other". Sorry to be a Debbie Downer here, just being realistic, though.
At least this film dispenses with the classic love triangle in the first 10 minutes, Lola breaks up with Chad and decides that maybe dating the guy she's kept in the friend zone isn't such a bad idea after all. Hey, in "Sex Drive" and "A Guy Thing" and "Your Place or Mine" and "Whatever It Takes" it took those characters nearly the whole MOVIE to figure out that solution to the puzzle. Lola's ahead of the game if she decides that Kyle is "The One".
There are still hurdles to overcome, of course. Kyle's in a band with Chad, so they have to work out this whole "who should be with Lola" thing and become bros again, or they're never going to win the Battle of the Bands. And Kyle's also got trouble with his father, who doesn't want him playing music at all, and is threatening to ship him off to military school if his grades don't improve. (Well how the hell is he suppose to concentrate on schoolwork if every girl in school won't leave him alone in the courtyard? Just asking...). He also needs time to write those great lyrics, "To let you know how I'm feelin' / I'm high on hope, I'm reelin'". Yeah, the professional rock bands don't really need to worry about these guys.
Lola's family life is a mess, too, because her mother and dad are sleeping together again, and they think they're being covert about it, but they're not. Lola knows about it, and her mother is very hypocritical, since she wants to know everything about Lola's sex life, but she's not telling anybody about her own. Plus, sleeping with your ex is a terrible idea, because eventually you're going to remember why you broke up in the first place, those issues simply have not gone away. Lola's Mom goes away for a weekend with Lola's dad, and Lola's grandmother is in charge of the house, which is just a terrible idea, because she lets Lola have three friends over, then three turns into five and five turns into thirty, and before long it's a rager, and everyone knows if you give grandma a few classes of scotch and coke she'll be down for the count, then everyone can just do drugs and have sex and forget to clean up after the party. Ugh, teenagers are just the worst, I see that now.
More hypocrisy abounds as Lola's Mom and their friends smoke pot when they get together, so how can they tell their kids to NOT do this when they're getting high themselves? But this was back in 2012 and pot wasn't legal yet, so it was a very different time. So really, I'm blaming the parents here for Lola's messed-up situation. You just can't tell your daughter to stay away from drugs and not sleep around if you're doing exactly that yourself. Of course, that's still no reason for Lola to lie about her life to her mother, but teens have been doing that for thousands of years, it's not going to stop now. But communication is a two-way street, after all.
Things get worse for Lola when she thinks Kyle cheated on her with a girl in the bathroom - the film went out of its way to make sure we knew that TWO girls had exactly the same purse, which was the reason for the mix-up. And then there was another much more contrived reason why Emily wouldn't tell Lola why it was HER in the bathroom, because she was embarrassed about who she was having sex with in the stall. Really, Emily, WE DON'T CARE. Emily's only got eyes for her math teacher, honestly it seems like all the girls only took trigonometry to get closer to Mr. Ross, but you know, I can understand this, because there's simply no reason to take trigonometry in the first place. I passed that course in high school but I don't think I ever understood what exactly we were studying. The area under curves or something? Nope, I'm wrong, it was the specific functions of angles, whatever that means. No, we don't need this, nobody needs this.
Look, I don't know what Emily sees in Wen, or why anybody would even be named "Wen" in the first place - but if they're happy together, it's fine by me. Even if their whole relationship is based on some random chat room where they both get naked anonymously, it's fine. He's not as handsome as the math teacher, but then again, who is? Ugh, this is all such stupid nonsense, but really, that describes all high school relationships, doesn't it? Was that the point here, that high-school relationships are all just meaningless, because very few of them are going to make it past the college years, and even fewer will result in marriage or life-long relationships? So don't worry about it, Lola, it's not your fault that your relationships with Chad or Kyle or whoever won't last, they're just not meant to last.
And if you think American high-school life is weird, things get even weirder on the class trip to Paris, where the kids have to eat snails and brains, or stay with French people who are obsessed with Joan of Arc for some reason. Yeah, that's all there is to French culture, after all. But the high-school kids can legally drink wine, so there's that. Anyway, the trip to France totally fixes everything for everybody, even Kyle's dad somehow realizes that having a son who's a rock star is a good thing. How did that happen, again?
NITPICK POINT: Lola says at the beginning of the film that her nickname is "LOL", as in the famous internet acronym, but then over the next 90 minutes of movie, nobody ever calls her that. Umm, nice try?
Also starring Miley Cyrus (last seen in "Dolly Parton: Here I Am"), Demi Moore (last seen in "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent"), Ashley Greene (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Douglas Booth (last seen in "The Dirt"), Adam Sevani, Thomas Jane (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Jay Hernandez (last seen in "Lakeview Terrace"), Marlo Thomas (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Gina Gershon (last seen in "P.S. I Love You"), Fisher Stevens (last seen in "Asteroid City"), George Finn (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Lina Esco, Ashley Hinshaw (last seen in "Chronicle"), Tanz Watson, Austin Nichols (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Jean-Luc Bilodeau (last seen in "Trick 'r Treat"), Brady Tutton, Vivian Le Borgne, Bridget Brown, Sam Derence, Trevor Fahnstrom, Rebecca Finnegan, Lynnette Gaza, Loretta Higgins, Vichaan Kue, Madelyn Lasky, Emma Nolan, Dennis North (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Delphine Ponyvieux, Leisa Pulido (last seen in "Cedar Rapids"), Barbara Robertson, Russell Steinberg, Michelle Burke Thomas,
RATING: 4 out of 10 phones ringing during French class (oh, if ONLY there were a way to stop that!)
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