BEFORE: Zoë Chao carries over from "Somebody I Used to Know", and I'm 21 films into the romance chain, so you know what that means? We've reached the halfway point - that's right, the old February groundhog saw his shadow, so that means three more weeks of romance-based entertainment. I'm clearing as MUCH of them off of my list as I possibly can, we're going almost all the way up to St. Patrick's Day, I think I can stop like on March 13 and still get to something Irish in time.
Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 13:
Best Documentary Nominees:
6:15 am "The Sea Around Us" (1952)
7:30 am "The Secret Land" (1949)
9:00 am "Freedom on my Mind" (1993)
11:00 am "Four Days in November" (1964)
1:15 pm "Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt" (1989)
3:00 pm "For All Mankind" (1989)
4:30 pm "When We Were Kings" (1996)
6:15 pm "Winged Migration" (2003)
Best Original Score Winners:
8:00 pm "The Man Who Skied Down Everest" (1975)
9:45 pm "Harlan County USA" (1976)
11:45 pm "Anne Frank Remembered" (1995)
2:00 am "Woodstock" (1970)
Damn, I didn't realize they were going to focus on documentaries, I've only seen 3 out of these 12 today, "When We Were Kings", "Winged Migration" and "Woodstock". So I haven't seen so many documentaries about politics and Holocaust stuff, I tend to lean more toward docs about comedic actors and rock stars. So now I'm at 56 seen out of 148, or 37.8%, still falling.
THE PLOT: Two long-distance best friends change each other's lives when she decides to pursue a lifelong dream and he volunteers to keep an eye on her teenage son.
AFTER: There's really just one rule here at the Movie Year: Don't be a stupid movie. Tonight's film has a stupid premise, it progresses forward in a stupid way, and then it executes all this in a stupid way, so it's three times the stupid. I shall explain.
The original idea, and I'll grant that it may BE an original idea, is only original because it's so stupid that no other film has chosen to tell this story, because it just. wouldn't. happen. Two people who are "best friends" and have been for 20 years since they hooked up once and then put each other in the friend zone. But then late in the film they still have to get together, because this is still aiming to be a rom-com, and you can't have that without the rom. So it's got to follow that nonsensible pattern where the relationship's not possible, then it continues to be not possible, then it becomes downright very impossible, the chances of romance are practically nil or non-existent about 3/4 of the way through, and then something changes and suddenly it's all "Oh, we love each other now, and the relationship is very possible." Nothing works this way, nothing in the world does. It's like making a movie about a dog trying to be President, and he's not eligible, he's not eligible, he continues to be a dog so he's not eligible, and then all of a sudden near the end, something unlikely happens and dogs can suddenly serve as President - but that wouldn't work, because we were led to believe during 95% of the film that a dog couldn't become President.
You either put somebody in the friend-zone and they stay there, and you both remain friends, sure, that could happen - OR you lose touch after life takes you in two different directions and then years later you look that person up and OK, maybe you could try to date again, I would allow that after several decades of non-contact have elapsed, two people could start over. But these two people have been ACTIVE best friends every day for 20 years, there's just no way to turn that into a romantic relationship, too much time has been spent in the friend zone, it's like living in New York City for 30 years, you just can't pick up all your stuff and move to another city, like Boise, Idaho, because you've put down roots and you've grown accustomed to NYC and you'll go absolutely bonkers in Boise. Twenty years as friends, you're just not going to convert that to a romantic relationship at that point, because the two people probably know EVERYTHING about each other, all their hopes and aspirations but also their faults and failures, nope, better to start fresh with a new person.
But Debbie and Peter's lives are about to change, because SHE decides to follow her dream and take a 2nd level accounting course or something, which would qualify her for better accounting jobs, not just one at a middle school (umm, I just don't think middle schools need accountants, as a rule?), and for some reason she HAS TO go to New York to take this course for two weeks. I'm going to stop the screenwriter right there, because why can't she take the class online, or study the material by Zoom? Doesn't the University of Phoenix offer this course, and if so, then why does she have to go all the way to New York? See, it's stupid and it doesn't work. Then when her usual babysitter has her first successful audition and gets her first ever movie role, after YEARS of trying, Peter (who's some kind of independent rich corporate person) volunteers to fly to L.A. and stay with Debbie's son while she's staying at HIS apartment in Brooklyn and taking this course. Again, more stupid, nobody would do this, not even for their best friend. And no mother would leave her son in the charge of someone with ZERO child care experience, it just wouldn't happen, not even if that person were her best friend. I'm calling "shenanigans" on ALL of this stupid plotline.
So once the main characters have switched places, it gets stupider, because Debbie has left Peter a bunch of rules to follow, and he proceeds to throw the rulebook (and the casseroles) right into the trash. Well, that's just not something a friend would do, not even a male one. Sure, Debbie may be a smothering helicopter mother who won't let her son do anything dangerous like play sports or ride in a convertible (I seem to recall I had a mother like that...) but she has these rules in place for a reason, even if her reason is self-serving, because she doesn't want to worry about her son - but THAT'S EXACTLY WHY Peter should follow these rules and respect her parental authority, so that she can relax knowing that her son is properly supervised for these two weeks. First rule of babysitting is that you're not there to get the kid to like you, you're there to maintain the parental structure that the now-absent parent set in place. Not following the rules is teaching the kid that it's OK to be defiant and break rules, and then they will continue to DO THAT once their parent comes home. So, naturally Peter takes Jack for a ride in a convertible, then gets him on the hockey team so he can make friends - but come on, the people who will only be his friends if he can play hockey, aren't really his true friends then. AND of course Jack goes right into playing hockey with NO practice or instructions on how to play, like what the HELL was Peter thinking - so yeah, of course he's going to get injured, it's hockey!
Meanwhile, Debbie is living in Peter's apartment and she meets a few of his NYC exes, and she's starting to get in trouble herself, she meets a famous publisher at a random bar and she just HAPPENS to have read every book this publisher has published - this is pretty darn stupid, too, and beyond any rational working of coincidence. Then also she learns that Peter once tried to be a novelist and still has his manuscript lying around in his apartment, and she now just HAPPENS to know a publisher, so she works on getting his book published, which is NOT why she's there, and she even works on this while she's supposed to be studying for that accounting course, which is stupidly beyond stupid. I mean, isn't that the reason for the whole trip in the first place?
My point is that when left to their own devices, these so-called "best friends" lie to each other, these may be lies of omission but those are still lies. And then when the lies are revealed, the friends meet at the airport and are very angry with each other, as they should be, but then next logical step would be for them to just go their separate ways and never speak again, because they have betrayed each other, after all. The fact that this doesn't happen means that the story that was stupid in the first place is now getting even stupider, and sure, this is all designed to bring them closer together somehow, only that's not what should logically happen between two people who have lied to each other and betrayed each other. That's not love, that's not friendship, that's all something else. They SHOULD NOT be allowed to fall in love with each other at this point, but of course that's why someone set this story in motion in the first place.
And then on top of this there are huge execution problems, like there's probably five times as much dialogue here as would be needed to properly explain things, every single little point that anyone makes in this film is completely belabored to the point where I just didn't care about that THING any more. Like at the end when they hold hands, they say, "Oh, look, we're holding hands! Never been much of a hand-holder before, but look, we're holding hands and it feels good! I guess we're both hand-holders now!" Simply NOBODY talks like this, they didn't have to say anything at all, they could have just held hands and given each other a look and that would have been so much more effective, and quieter. Everything else like this was similarly stupidly stupid, across the board.
All right, let's move on and start the back half of the romance chain, if the movies are going to be like THIS then I can't wait to get them all over with.
Also starring Reese Witherspoon (last heard in "Sing 2"), Ashton Kutcher (last seen in "Vengeance"), Jesse Williams (last seen in "Secret Headquarters"), Wesley Kimmel, Tig Notaro (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Steve Zahn (last heard in "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again"), Rachel Bloom (last seen in "The School for Good and Evil"), Griffin Matthews, Vella Lovell (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles"), Shiri Appleby (last seen in "Swimfan"), Tanner Swagger, Mystic inscho, Michael Hitchcock (last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Rene Gube (last seen in "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World"), Ted Griffin (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Gloria Calderon Kellett (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Tom Yi (last seen in "The Purge"), Britney Young, Katie Hyde (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Christopher V. Nelson, Duncan Calladine, Kelsey Flynn.
RATING: 3 out of 10 ever-present coffee cups
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