BEFORE: I'm still waiting for my September shifts to kick in - I understand that it's still considered by many to be a holiday week, but I haven't worked at the theater in over a week, and I'm not due in there until Saturday. Once September really gets rolling, there will be more events, and I just picked up another one today from a co-worker who double-booked herself at the end of the month. So I've got seven shifts coming up this month, they just haven't started happening yet, so I'm at home playing with my new DVD recorder and trying to figure out what movies from my "Movies to Add" list need to be recorded on the DVR or put on DVD. If I pick the wrong ones, it could mean I can't connect Halloween and Christmas, you never know. Also while I have down-time I should probably make an attempt to connect Halloween and Christmas in 15 or 16 steps, because then I'll know that I have this year all planned out. It could happen.
Joey Slotnick carries over from "Plane". I don't think he'll make the year-end countdown unless he pops up in one more film, but with this movie Matt Damon and Miley Cyrus confirm their year-end spots, and Colman Domingo should reach the threshold tomorrow. It's so hard to predict this now since I've only been programming about two months at a time.
THE PLOT: Jamie regrets her breakup with her girlfriend, while Marian needs to relax. In search of a fresh start, they embark on an unexpected road trip to Tallahassee. Things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals.
AFTER: This is a break-up movie, sure, the kind you're used to, the romantic kind, but also a different kind, too. It's the first film directed by ONE of the Coen brothers, Ethan to be specific, and they've worked as a directing tag-team for decades, but they've broken up in a way and expect to be working solo on movies, at least for a time. Sure, we get it, familiarity breeds contempt (probably) and they had a LONG run together, but the word is that Oasis is getting back together after years of fighting and name-calling and NOT being in a band together, so if the Gallagher brothers can reconcile and perform together, hey, all things are possible with time. Spend some time apart, Coen brothers, make whatever movies you each want to make, and then when you realize you work better together than apart, I'll be waiting for something new on the level of "Fargo" or "The Big Lebowski" or "Raising Arizona", which is my way of saying that tonight's movie just kind of pales by comparison.
(Look, I'm not saying that EVERYTHING that the Coen brothers did together was narrative gold, I've seen them all so I think I'm in a position to judge, and there were a few stinkers like "The Hudsucker Proxy" and "Intolerable Cruelty" and "Hail, Caesar!", but when they were great, these guys were really really great.)
This is the first film in a proposed lesbian-themed trilogy, co-written by Ethan Coen and his wife, Tricia Cooke, who identifies as lesbian herself, and they share two children together, and (this is coming from Wiki, not me) they have something of an open marriage. It's not for me to judge, but I'm interested in learning more about how that all works - it's really none of my business, but it sounds WAY more interesting than the events seen in "Drive-Away Dolls". My first wife came out of the closet, and I just didn't see a path like this available to me, so by default that meant the end of the marriage, since I couldn't think outside the rigid rules of monogamy, I guess. To me it sounds like a recipe for relationship disaster, but maybe they cracked some code and deal with everything openly and honestly and I guess since they don't expect each other to be faithful then it's impossible to be unfaithful, they just kind of re-defined the rules, but hey, other famous people do that to, look at rock stars who aren't faithful to their spouses when they're touring, you know it happens. Then again, a similar arrangement didn't work out so well for Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer...
But let me deal with the events of the film and figure out the new relationship paradigms later. Two lesbians, Jamie and Marian, who are not romantic partners (not at first, anyway, but give it a minute) head from Philadelphia down to Florida in a drive-away, which is a car that somebody needs to be somewhere else, and instead of paying for the rental, you get paid for driving it there. Due to some confusion at the rental place, they're given a car that someone else had already booked by phone to go to Tallahassee, and he said he was sending his people over. The guy at the counter, Curlie, just assumed these women were those people, because they mentioned Tallahassee. Could happen, right?
So what they don't know is that there's something in the trunk, actually a couple somethings, and I guess that's the chance you take when you don't rent from the big corporate car companies, although, hey, who wouldn't want to GET PAID for the drive instead? Like, is this a real service that companies offer? Or did this type of business go the way of the dinosaur? This film is set back in 1999, and it feels maybe a little like some of the lesbian road trips films made back then, like "Go Fish" or "The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love", but then again, it's also no "Thelma & Louise". Maybe this topic would have been ground-breaking back then, but it feels very less so now. Just me? Maybe there's a bit of "The Transporter" mixed in, with bad people using other people to deliver things for them by car, but the similarity might just be more evident for me because I watched that film last week.
It feels here like somebody was ALMOST on to something, if that makes sense. Like there was the start of a great idea but something got lost in translation. Like some key element that would have tied everything together is missing, only I can't really say what that might have been. When I see a mysterious briefcase and someone's being really cagey about what's inside, naturally I think of "Pulp Fiction", and in that film they NEVER revealed what was in the briefcase, we only saw the golden glow of something that we presume was valuable, but it's a clever narrative that never gives anything away, because nothing tangible could live up to what the audience might IMAGINE is in the case. It's really enough to know that it's there and it's of value to someone.
So this movie tips its hand, for some reason, and we do learn what's in the TWO cases inside the trunk, because apparently there was no other way here to move the story forward. But I'm sorry, the answer's so basic, and so stereotypical considering that we're dealing with lesbian issues here. I'm not going to give it away, but come on - OK, I understand that the co-writer's a lesbian, but I didn't need to get hit in the head with that every five minutes. Sure, this movie passes the Bechdel test, because it features two women having conversations about something other than men, but instead all that is replaced by them talking about being lesbians in every conversation, and really, is that all that lesbians do? They've got nothing to them but their sexual identity, I mean I guess one reads Henry James novels, but is that enough? They should contain multitudes, have other interests and hopes and dreams, but no, apparently it's just gay stuff 24/7 - so as a result they're not really well-rounded characters, just stereotypes.
Anyway, Jamie and Marian SHOULD be heading straight down to Tallahassee, but Jamie wants to visit every cheezy roadside attraction and also every lesbian bar along the way. Plus there's that "basement party" that a girl's soccer team is having which they somehow find. A basement party is a lot like a slumber party, except there's no slumbering, just making out. And it's random, like speed dating, which means that at one point Jamie and Marian are scheduled to make out with each other, which is awkward - umm, until it isn't. These two lesbians were a bit like "The Odd Couple", one's more reserved and one's more of a free-spirit, and this is how they maybe start to figure out that they might be able to meet somewhere in the middle. And if I figure it right, all this making out should have turned this one-day car trip into like a three-day affair.
Eventually, the criminals looking for the girls and the car figure out that they've taken the scenic route through America's most kissable high-school soccer teams, and they catch up with Jamie and Marian by bursting into their hotel room at, well, let's just say the most awkward and inopportune time. The girls are tied up and brought to meet the criminal boss, "Chief" in the back-room of a dog-racing track for some reason. Here's where it seems the writers painted themselves into a narrative corner, because how they get out of this situation makes very little sense. But they do, and they still have the contents of the briefcase and they can still use it to blackmail someone in power, so even though Jamie's ex-girlfriend, a police officer, is also on her way to drop of the dog she doesn't want any more, our lesbian heroines can still prevail in this situation, but again it's in the most unlikely way.
I"m sorry I couldn't get to this one in June, Pride month, but hey, at least I got to it within 12 months of original release, hell, it only took me seven months since it was in theaters, and for me that's really good.
Also starring Margaret Qualley (last seen in "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood"), Geraldine Viswanathan (last seen in "Bad Education"), Beanie Feldstein (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), C.J. Wilson (last seen in "Irresistible"), Colman Domingo (last seen in "Rustin"), Pedro Pascal (last seen in "The Bubble"), Bill Camp (last seen in "White Noise"), Matt Damon (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Connie Jackson, Annie Gonzalez, Gordon MacDonald (last seen in "Perfect Stranger"), Sam Vartholomeos, John Menchion, Michael Counihan, Abby Hilden, Haley Holmes, Fatima Fine, Sam Mazzei, Jordan Zatawski, Samsara Leela Yett (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Savanna Ziegler, Michael Worden (last seen in "Zola"), Braxton McCollum, Daniel Kirkman, Layne Lazor, Phil McFall, Angelo Maldonado Jr., Cristina Contreras, Michael Edelstein (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Micaela Minner, Angela Boehm, Josh Flitter (last seen in 'The Greatest Game Ever Played"), with a cameo from Miley Cyrus (last seen in "The Last Song").
RATING: 5 out of 10 trampoline bounces
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