BEFORE: Anna Camp carries over from "The Lovebirds" and this is the last movie for February, so here are my format stats:
15 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Alright Now, Safe Haven, Dear John, Letters to Juliet, Spoiler Alert, Kiss Me Goodbye, Ticket to Paradise, Men Women & Children, Angel Eyes, Maudie, A Brilliant Young Mind, Then Came You, The DUFF, What If, You Hurt My Feelings
4 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Hope Springs (2003), Say It Isn't So, How to Deal, Bachelorette
3 watched on Netflix: Queen Bees, The Lovebirds, Desperados
1 watched on Amazon Prime: That Awkward Moment
2 watched on Peacock: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, Gigli
2 watched on Tubi: Places in the Heart, Murphy's Romance
1 watched on a random site: Love, Wedding, Marriage
28 TOTAL
Some of those other streaming services really need to up their game, I mean, what happened to Hulu, Paramount+ and Disney+? Maybe I just didn't add any relevant films they have to my list, or maybe they just didn't add any relevant films to THEIR list.
Now here's the line-up for Saturday, 3/1, Day 29 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar".
Best Picture Winners and Nominees:
7:30 am "Five Star FInal" (1931)
9:00 am "Crossfire" (1947)
10:45 am "The Music Man" (1962)
1:30 pm "Doctor Zhivago" (1965)
5:00 pm "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957)
Oscar Worthy Dads:
8:00 pm "The Lost Weekend" (1945)
10:00 pm "I'll Cry Tomorrow" (1955)
12:15 am "Leaving Las Vegas" (1995)
2:15 am "Key Largo" (1948)
4:15 am "Johnny Eager" (1941)
I was at 137 seen out of 323, and I've seen another 5 out of Saturday's 10 - "The Music Man", Doctor Zhivago", "The Bridge on the River Kwai", "The Lost Weekend" and "Leaving Las Vegas", that probably counts as a push - SO now 142 seen out of 333 takes me to 42.6%.
THE PLOT: A panicked young woman, with her reluctant friends in tow, rushes to Mexico to try and delete a ranting e-mail she sent to her new boyfriend.
AFTER: Here in the waning days of February, in the final third (let's say) of this year's romance chain, clearly there's a formula at work here, kind of like "Mad Libs", where you fill in the blanks with a number, a major city, a noun, an action and a controlled substance. For example:
THREE friends need to race across NEW YORK to find a SEWING MACHINE to REPAIR a gown, while on COCAINE AND XANAX ("Bachelorette") or
TWO ex-lovers need to race around NEW ORLEANS to find EVIDENCE to CLEAR THEIR NAMES, while on ADRENALINE AND PANIC ("The Lovebirds"). or
THREE friends need to race around CABO to find a CEL PHONE to DELETE AN E-MAIL, while on MARGARITAS AND STUPID PILLS ("Desperados").
See, it's all the same damn movie, each with just a few tweaks, but tell me there isn't a formula at play this week. Well, the good news is that these three films have something else in common, they've been on my list too damn long - so at LEAST I'm clearing out the dead wood - "Desperados" has been on Netflix since 2020 and I can't believe it's somehow still there, I'll wager I'm the only person who watched this film on that platform this year. Everyone else either watched it back when it was new, or decided against it and never circled back. "The Lovebirds" has also been on Netflix since 2020, but I thought they cycled movies off the platform after 2 years, I guess they make exceptions for the films they own outright.
The other upside is that I'll never, ever have to watch "Desperados" again, it's that bad. Cringey, very cringey, since the main character is intentionally a very self-entitled young woman, she doesn't seem to care about anyone other than herself, and she feels that the world OWES her things like a job and a successful relationship that she can brag about on Instagram. Yeah, I'll wager there are a lot of young women (and men) out there like that, but that doesn't mean we should make movies about them, because we're going to end up hate-watching those movies. Well, except for the people who ARE also like that, because I guess they'll watch Wesley just think that everything good should come her way with little or no effort, and they agree with that, and fail to see themselves reflected on the screen. Ugh, you can't win with this Gen Z or Alpha or whatever they are now. (Yes, I'm Generation X so I get to make fun of both Gen Z AND the Boomers...)
Wesley starts by screwing up a job interview, and then messing up a blind date with a nice young African-American man named Sean. They'd mentioned having an "automatic out", like either one could tap out from their date if they weren't feeling it, and Sean taps out after spending five minutes with her. Well, he's not wrong, and he might be the smartest character in the whole movie, because he knows right away that Wesley is WAY too full of herself, overly entitled, and she mentioned marriage and kids in the first few minutes of the date. After that date I was definitely Team Sean - but he was not Team Wesley. Wesley determines that the problem was that she was too HER, so all she needs to do with the next guy is be someone else. It makes perfect logical sense, except for the fact that it's also ridiculous.
Wesley "succeeds" with sports agent Jared, who helped her up when she fall on the sidewalk, but if she's actively not being herself, is that really success? Jared doesn't even really know her, but he's falling in love with the woman that she's pretending to be, isn't that worth something? Well, no, but Wesley's too far in, plus they have sex after a month of dating, and then the next day, no call, no nothing. It seems like Jared's ghosted her, so after five days she enlists her friends to help write a nasty e-mail to him (remember, it's all SO about Wesley...) and just after she sends it, she gets a call from Jared, he was with a client in Mexico and had an accident, he's been in a coma for five days and apologizes sincerely for not contacting her. (Sure, it sounds like a bullshit story, but conveniently the camera shows he IS in a hospital bed and he's all bandaged up, so at least we at home know he's not lying.).
His phone is back at the resort, he's had no calls or e-mail for five days, so Wesley gets the greatest idea, she'll head down to the resort, find his phone and delete the e-mail she sent, and then their relationship can continue. Her besties Brooke and Kaylie (enablers of the highest order) go with her, they each have their own issues, like Brooke needs to decide whether to divorce her cheating husband and Kaylie is looking for a way to conceive a baby with her husband, and apparently she's so stupid she thinks flying away to Mexico for a week will help with that, but I'm pretty sure she'd have better luck if she stayed in umm, L.A.(?) with her husband, but call me crazy. Kaylie also wants to find some weird self-help author in Mexico and ask for advice, they really telegraph this so we won't be shocked when it becomes important to the story later.
Down in Mexico, what a coincidence, her blind date gone wrong, Sean, is staying at the same resort. Now, you don't suppose that while she's running around like a crazy chicken trying to delete that e-mail, that she'll end up spending time at the resort with Sean and maybe even enlist his help, which would mean a team-up that allows them to get to know each other better, and spending time together working on a common goal could lead to some kind of romance with the guy who rejected her on a date for being so crazy? Well, it wouldn't be the first time, and crazy stuff like that HAS been known to happen in these rom-coms. Like "The DUFF", for example, when Bianca and male Wesley (no relation) had to help each other with their problems of dating and passing chemistry, and they ended up spending so much time together working on common goals that they developed an understanding and eventually a romance, after Bianca finally realized that Toby wasn't the high-school man of her dreams? Yeah, something like that.
(I'm sure it's a coincidence, but Robbie Amell plays Jared here, the object of Wesley's pursuit, but he was also in "The DUFF" last week, but playing a guy NAMED Wesley who tried to help Bianca win over Toby? Why, it's almost like we keep seeing the same actors in rom-coms, again and again, and things change slightly from one film to another, but essentially they're really all very much the same? Nah, it couldn't be. Could it?)
Anyway, what happens here is that Wesley ends up spending more and more time with Sean at the resort (when she's not accidentally naked and/or caught up in crazy situations that make people think she's trying to have sex with a junior-high aged boy...) and over time, Sean and Wesley realize they have some things in common, and we learn he's a widower and his blind date with her was his first attempt to get back out there, perhaps he wasn't ready. And what do you know, when she needs help getting the key to Jared's room, and Sean helps her, working toward a common goal (even one he thinks is nuts) we get the idea that maybe this could lead to some kind of romance, only with Sean, not Jared. Wow, who could have seen THAT coming?
Wesley has to tell MORE lies when Sean gets released from the hospital, like she's already there in Cabo, but he doesn't know that, so she tells him she will fly down to escort him home, only, duh, she's already there. And her plan to use his face to unlock the phone while he's passed out on the plane, then delete the e-mail, is actually a pretty good one. Like, it WOULD have worked, only smart Sean pointed out that the whole relationship is based on lies, and deleting the e-mail is like a lie on top of a lie, or a lie squared or something, so his suggestion is to let Jared read the e-mail, because he needs to know just how crazy Wesley can get, it's not fair otherwise to let him get further in the relationship. Yeah, still Team Jared.
The other two friends manage to go on their own journeys while in Mexico, and what do you know, when they're not all busy fixing Wesley's many, many problems they might have time to fix their own, or at least come to terms with their own. Wesley is a terrible person, an energy vampire who demands that her friends pay more attention to her than she does to them - how am I supposed to like this main character? She's totally hateable. Her friends leave her at the airport, but honestly, they should have left her in Mexico. Oh, right, she got banned from the resort so even Cabo doesn't want her. Well, the good thing about a love triangle is that she's got two options, if one doesn't work out, just try the other one. Another thing that probably makes perfect logical sense, but is really totally ridiculous when it comes to real practical relationships.
There also is, by random chance, a sexual assault by an aquatic mammal in this film - I won't say what kind of aquatic mammal but you can probably guess. That could have been kind of funny, but no, it really wasn't. Other unfunny things are accusations of pedophilia, over-protective mothers, widower husbands, and medically induced comas.
Directed by LP (not sure if that's a pseudonym for the writer, Ellen Rapoport, or more of an "Alan Smithee" situation, either way, not a good sign when nobody takes credit for directing a film)
Also starring Nasim Pedrad (last heard in "Wish"), Lamorne Morris (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles"), Sarah Burns (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Robbie Amell (last seen in "The DUFF"), Heather Graham (last seen in "Say It Isn't So"), Jessica Chaffin (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 3"), Izzy Diaz, Rodrigo Franco, Scott Rodgers, Toby Grey, Jessica Lowe (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"), George Basil (last seen in "Barbie"), Allan McLeod (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Bryan Safi, Mon de Leon, Niccole Thurman, Mo Gaffney (last seen in "The Out-of-Towners"), Natalia Colina, Mike Mitchell (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), ViviAnn Yee, Guillermo Pena
RATING: 2 out of 10 paddleboards
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