BEFORE: Kristin Chenoweth carries over from "Bros" and all types of romance films are being considered this year, including tales of obsessive love gone wrong - hey, I included "Swimfan" last year, or was that the year before? If that one counts then this one does, too.
Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 20:
Best Sound Nominees:
7:00 am "Gold Diggers of 1933" (1933)
9:00 am "Naughty Marietta" (1935)
11:00 am "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939)
1:00 pm "This Land Is Mine" (1943)
1:45 pm "The Last Metro" (1980)
3:00 pm "The Brave One" (1956)
5:00 pm "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963)
Best Sound Winners:
8:00 pm "Grand Prix" (1966)
11:15 pm "The Hurricane" (1937)
1:15 am "Strike Up the Band" (1940)
3:30 am "The Great Caruso" (1951)
Damn, only 1 seen out of 11 today. But a good one, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" is one of my favorite films of all time, and maybe the first film where I learned about what cameos were, as I watched the film to see The Three Stooges and also learned who Buster Keaton was.
This brings me to 79 seen out of 228, down to 34.6%. We've still got three categories left, though, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Picture, where I hope to do better.
THE PLOT: A woman, separated from her unfaithful husband, falls for a younger man who has moved in next door, but their torrid affair soon takes a dangerous turn.
AFTER: Kicking off an almost-week of Jennifer Lopez movies, I was going to watch six but I think I'm going to cut it down to 5, because I've just heard such terrible things about "Gigli", so I'm in no rush to watch it - someday, maybe. But I've added "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", which is an Oscar-winning film, and that trumps a Razzie-winning film, right? OK, so I need to drop something to make space. We should have a tie for first, then, once the romance chain is over - at the moment Toni Collette still leads with five appearances in 2024.
When I saw this film come out, it sure sounded like a film she's made before - "Enough", where she was on the run, hiding from an abusive husband and then I think she fought back by learning martial arts or something and, quite literally, fighting back. So at first I thought maybe Ms. Lopez had been in so many films that she was starting to repeat herself, or remake films that she was in before. No, this one's a bit different, it's not her ex-husband who's out to harm her, it's the attractive high-school student next door who transfers into her English class after sleeping with her. SO many things wrong with that, the first of which is that the guy is like 28 or something but never finished high school, so sure, put him in a class with the 16-year-olds, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? He forges the transfer paperwork and also sends an e-mail from her address to the principal, requesting that he be added to her literature class.
First of course, he shows up and charms her after moving into his grandfather's house to help out while Gramps gets a kidney transplant. He helps fix her automatic garage door, then he, well, he takes care of some other equipment around the house that needs attention, if you know what I mean. And here it looked like Claire Peterson might get back together with her ex-husband after some friendly co-parenting, however since his next business trip is to San Francisco, that reminded her that he cheated with a woman from there, so she suspects that maybe he's still seeing that woman, what a turn-off. It's too bad, her soon-to-be-ex, Garrett is very apologetic, he swears the affair is over, but how can she be sure? This is probably enough to justify Claire sleeping with Noah, but remember she does this BEFORE he's a student in her class, so technically she didn't sleep with a student.
She realizes her mistake, though, and she tries to end things, but it's too late, Noah has become obsessed with her, to the point where he threatens her family if she doesn't continue to date him or at least sleep with him, and really, that's the mark of a true romantic, isn't it? "I will kill your family unless you keep acting like you love me." Nope, no red flags there at all, just go on about your business. When the brakes go out on Garrett's sportscar, nobody really puts two and two together, except Claire knows Noah did it, and possibly that's how his parents died, too. Again, nothing to see here, please move along.
Meanwhile, Noah befriends Claire's son, takes him under his wing and convinces him to take up boxing (N.P.: what high school has a BOXING team? Wrestling, sure, but boxing?) and then starts to turn him against his own father. Noah takes out the kid who's bullying Claire's son and fractures his skull, which gets him expelled. Ah, the things we do for love. Noah may be down, but he's not out, he takes his shot by kidnapping the vice-principal and then Claire's husband and son. Well, he didn't have much of an endgame plan, sure, but you've maybe got to admire his tenacity, right? Sure, he had pictures and video of himself sleeping with his teacher, but I suppose just getting her fired wouldn't have gone far towards winning her over - no, you've got to think big, like triple kidnapping big, I get it.
This was all pretty predictable, in the same vein as "Fatal Attraction" and "Swimfan", only the obsessed person is male here, for a change. Hey, it's J. Lo, maybe the guy just couldn't control himself. Can you imagine having her as your English teacher? Maybe you'd obsess over her too - I hate to victim-blame here, but she may just have that effect on teenagers, especially 28-year-old ones.
Also starring Jennifer Lopez (last seen in "The Mother"), Ryan Guzman (last seen in "Everybody Wants Some!"), Ian Nelson (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"), John Corbett (last seen in "Street Kings"), Lexi Atkins (last seen in "Ted 2"), Hill Harper (last seen in "Beloved"), Jack Wallace (last seen in "Senior Moment"), Adam Hicks, Francois Chau (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Bailey Chase, Kent Avenido (last seen in "The Gambler"), Travis Schuldt (last seen in "The Giant Mechanical Man"), Brian Mahoney (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Raquel Gardner (last seen in "Species II"), Kari Perdue, Chad Bullard, Forrest Hoffman, Alex Geschwind.
RATING: 4 out of 10 trips to the hardware store
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