BEFORE: This one's not streaming anywhere, which usually is a bad sign - if a film was great and in demand and everyone loved it, you'd imagine it would be streaming everywhere, or at least somewhere. But hey, I understand how possessive every movie company has become, if a studio owns a movie they want it to be only on THEIR streaming service - so then, umm, what gives with this one?
Still, I added this one to the chain for a simple reason, for the linking. The way the romance chain came together this year, I had two smaller chains, one that started with "Alright Now" and went through "Queen Bees" (obviously an abundance of Sally Field, Heather Graham and Amanda Seyfried was in play) and the other one started with tomorrow's film and progressed for 26 films, similarly easy to put together, only with very few actors appearing more than twice in a row. Now, to link those two chains together, you need a film like this one, that connects to a LOT of other films - it was really a simple matter of using the Oracle of Bacon with a few actors from each film until only one link popped up, and that link sounded like a romance film. I won't reveal tomorrow's film just yet, but I could have connected to other romances via Mandy Moore, Jane Seymour, Joe Chrest and at least three other people - but the goal was to connect one end of the first half-chain with one end of the other half-chain, and this movie does that quite nicely.
Christopher Lloyd carries over from "Queen Bees". Now, the downside is that using this film as a connection tonight renders it useless for other connections in the future, so I'm actually stranding a few films on the romance list that will now not connect to anything at all, but I can't worry about that now, it's a problem I can maybe fix before next year, because the answer is always to just add more films to the list.
here's the line-up for Thursday, 2/13, Day 13 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar":
Best Cinematography Winners and Nominees:
4:15 am "Cries and Whispers" (1972)
6:15 am "White Shadows in the South Seas" (1928)
8:00 am "The Naked City" (1948)
10:00 am "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945)
12:00 pm "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" (1939)
2:00 pm "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944)
4:00 pm "National Velvet" (1944)
6:15 pm "Black Narcissus" (1947)
Oscar Worthy Prostitutes:
8:00 pm "The Sin of Madelon Claudet" (1931)
9:30 pm "BUtterfield 8" (1960)
11:30 pm "Klute" (1971)
1:30 am "Primrose Path" (1940)
3:30 am "Anna Christie" (1930)
I was at 55 seen out of 138, and I've seen another 4 out of today's 13: "Cries and Whispers", "Meet Me in St. Louis", "BUtterfield 8" and "Klute". SO now 59 seen out of 151 takes me down just a bit to 39%.
THE PLOT: A newlywed marriage counselor's views on wedded bliss get thrown for a loop when she finds out her parents are getting divorced.
AFTER: Over twenty years ago, I was a producer on an animated feature named "Hair High", which was set in a high-school and featured a budding romance between two teenagers, the nerdy newcomer and the stuck-up cheerleader. Come to think of it, there was a love triangle since initially the cheerleader was dating the football team's quarterback, Rod. There was another romance in the framing device, as the man who ran the ice cream shop narrated the story in flashback to two young customers who were also on their way to their prom. By some odd coincidence, TWO of the actors who voiced characters in that film went on to direct movies appearing in my current romance chain. Michael Showalter, the director of "Spoiler Alert", voiced Wally, one of the teens in the ice cream shop that the story was being told to, and Dermot Mulroney, the director of today's film, voiced Rod, the quarterback who enjoyed beating up Spud, the nerdy newcomer. Sure, it sounds like one of those countless high-school romance films that all follow the same formula, but the twist was that Spud and Cheri (voiced by Sarah Silverman) died in a car accident, and came back as zombies the next year to reign as undead prom king and queen.
That really doesn't affect my rating at all, but I will say that even with the HUGE continuity mistake that appears in "Hair High" (sorry, I tried to fix it, but the director wouldn't let me...) that film still makes a heck of a lot more sense than "Love, Wedding, Marriage" does. This film's plot points seem constantly at odds with each other, the film manages to contradict itself, over and over again. And every single point that anyone raises about ANYTHING is belabored over, repeated five or six times - jeez, we GET IT, already, you don't need repeat every little thing. I would wager that the dialogue here was largely improvised, because it feels like the actors are constantly reminding themselves what happened just before this scene, so they can devise the appropriate responses to follow up.
I noticed about a zillion contradictions, but I'll mention just a few - Ava is a marriage counselor, and she mentions that it would be completely unethical to counsel her own parents who are having marital disagreements, and she says this AFTER a counseling session. Why wouldn't she say this before the session, and therefore not go through with it? Ah, but then we, the audience wouldn't know exactly what their problems are, however the situation now, with her pointing out the wrongness after the fact, makes no sense. Right after this, Ava catches her sister, Shelby, who she hired as an office assistant, which is probably also unethical, doing drugs in the office, in the middle of a workday. Shelby confirms this is why she took the job, to gain access to drugs, and, well, that's it, no reprisal from her sister/employer, no suggestion to NOT do drugs in the office during a workday, we just kind of...move on. Ridiculous.
Ava then can't help herself, she keeps interfering in her parents' lives to try to bring them back together, even though that may not be what's best for them. Even after she realizes that they can't be her clients, that would be unprofessional, she still persists - so I guess she's interfering freelance, as their daughter, not as a professional therapist. BUT SHE IS ONE and she should therefore know better, even if they're contemplating separation or divorce, and she doesn't like that idea, she needs to give them time to work out their issues together, and enough space so that if divorce turns out to be the right next step for them, so be it. Nope, she keeps meddling in their lives, trying to either force them back together or convince them to change their minds, but really, this is for HER benefit, not theirs, because she just doesn't want to deal with the idea that her parents no longer work together as a couple.
And again, she is (allegedly) a professional marriage counselor, yet she does not realize that spending so much time trying to force her parents back together is having a negative impact on her own marriage. So is she just blinded by the situation, or very non-self-aware, or is she just not very good at relationship counseling? Moving her father into her own house just weeks after getting married, and she doesn't realize that this could affect her own marriage? Pretty dumb.
She tries sending her parents to another counselor who is not herself, and this doesn't really work either, because the guy's a total nut-job who thinks they should exercise before their therapy session, but these are OLD people, they shouldn't exert themselves, they could break something very easily. Again, since this scene feels very improvised, it calls into question whether the director or any of the actors have any idea what goes on in a marriage counseling session. I'm pretty sure it's not THIS. Another contradiction, after their therapist suggests that his patients have NO contact with each other outside of their sessions, as sort of a trial separation, perhaps, Ava takes them to a combination bowling and rock climbing immersive marriage encounter, which is probably not even a thing, and also a direct violation of their therapists order against spending time together.
Meanwhile, Ava and Shelby keep planning for their parents' upcoming anniversary party, despite the fact that their mother is planning a trip to China and Thailand, and also keeps saying she wants a divorce, so WHY on Earth don't they cancel the party once they find out their mother probably will be out of town? Because they believe in their hearts that their parents will get back together in time, or is it because the screenwriter knows what's coming up, so nobody bothered to have a scene where the daughters realize they're probably not getting their deposit back?
Ava's new husband, Charlie, is all poised to come out on top here, as the wronged party - he just got married a few weeks ago and now he barely sees his new wife because he's always working at the vineyard (he crafts a special vintage just for him and his wife, which is a very sweet thing to do) and his wife is always running around trying to get her parents back together - probably to the complete detriment of her counseling practice, since she's never in the office. But Charlie's not blameless, either, because he "forgot" to tell Ava that technically he was married once, before, briefly, to a Vegas stripper or something and he was drunk at the time. Why didn't he tell her? Well, probably because he knew she would overreact to it - and BOY does she - but that doesn't make it OK, it's still a lie of omission. Plus, she's not just mad about the thing, she's more mad that he didn't tell her about the thing.
More horrible things happen when Shelby takes her mother speed dating - surprise, every man is horrible in a different way - and meanwhile Ava is at home with her father who's having trouble sleeping, so he takes three sleeping pills instead of the recommended two, and Ava takes the opportunity to call 911 as if he's overdosed (which he hasn't) and have him treated at the hospital (which is unnecessary) and to cover her tracks, she flushes the sleeping pills that he didn't take down the toilet (which is absurd, plus they're her husband's pills and probably very expensive). Yes, she LIES to everyone AND the paramedics in another attempt to get her parents back together - and how much was the hospital bill and the ambulance services? Even if that plan worked, which it SHOULD NOT, no good should come from a fake 9/11 call and the distribution and destruction of another person's medication.
To top it all off, the best advice about accepting and forgiving your spouse comes from Gerber, the slacker best friend (and best man) of Charlie, who married the woman from Poland on a whim, and now he's enjoying regular sex but most likely Kasia just married him for a green card, and now he'll have to sponsor her whole family from Poland as they move over. Well, he's clueless now but he'll find out somewhere down the road that he's totally being used.
So yeah, this is a pretty terrible film. The only use this film I have for it AT ALL is as a connector, it takes me to tomorrow's film, which starts the next phase in the romance chain, numerically let's call it the second third of the chain. This film is ALMOST as bad as "Say It Isn't So", just in a different way. Once again, there's no way to go from here but UP.
Directed by: Dermot Mulroney
Also starring Mandy Moore (last seen in "Because I Said So"), Kellan Lutz (last seen in "Extraction"), James Brolin (last seen in "Being Rose"), Jane Seymour (last seen in "Just Getting Started'), Jessica Szohr (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Michael Weston (last seen in "Gamer"), Marta Zmuda Trzebiatowska, Richard Alan Reid (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Alexis Denisof (last heard in "Tarzan & Jane"), Alyson Hannigan (last seen in "Boys and Girls"), Colleen Camp (last seen in "Father Stu"), Andrew Keegan (last seen in "O"), Gabrielle Shuff, Bob Edes, Joe Chrest (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Kim Vu, Kenneth Brown Jr., Brandi Gerard (last seen in "Battle Los Angeles"), Michael Arata, Marwa Bernstein, John McConnell (last seen in "The Mechanic"), Elizabeth Primm, Autumn Federici, Sarah Lieving (last seen in "Lakeview Terrace"), Carol Sutton (last seen in "Poms"), Ron Flagge (last seen in "Where the Crawdads Sing"), Victor Eli Hugo, Michael Showers (last seen in "Columbiana"), Douglas M. Griffin (last seen in "Snitch"), Dean J. West (last seen in "The Hunt"), Geri Teasley and the voice of Julia Roberts (last seen in "Wolfgang")
RATING: 3 out of 10 annual viewings of "Gone With the Wind" over Thanksgiving weekend
No comments:
Post a Comment