BEFORE: Well, "The Masked Singer" is back for it's big 13th season, we're already two weeks in and I'm 1 for 2, having correctly identified the famous person dressed as the Honeypot in the first episode, but failing to properly identify the celebrity dressed as "Fuzzy Peas" revealed in this week's show. No spoilers here, watch the damn show yourself if you want to be up on things. But today, one of the judges from that show, Ken Jeong, carries over from "Then Came You" to also appear in today's film. Now my wife and I have TWO shows airing that we watch together, "Masked Singer" and "Tournament of Champions" on Food Network, and we're waiting for "Top Chef" to come back, and/or for "Master Chef" to start up again, in addition to "Spring Baking Championship", who needs that damn groundhog to tell you spring is coming up when you have a baking competition that will do the exact same thing without giving you rabies?
Here's the line-up for Saturday, 2/22, Day 22 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar". I would say this month went by very quickly, only that doesn't seem true at all, somehow. It's dragging, right?
Best Picture Winners and Nominees:
5:30 am "The Hollywood Revue" (1929)
7:45 am "A Tale of Two Cities" (1935)
10:00 am "Naughty Marietta" (1935)
12:00 pm "The Maltese Falcon" (1941)
2:00 pm "Ivanhoe" (1952)
4:00 pm "Stagecoach" (1939)
5:45 pm "Chariots of Fire" (1981)
Oscar Worthy Soldiers:
8:00 pm "Sergeant York" (1941)
10:30 pm "An Officer and a Gentleman" (1982)
12:45 am "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946)
3:45 am "The Story of G.I. Joe" (1945)
5:45 am "Battleground" (1949)
I was at 100 seen out of 243, and I've seen just another 5 out of Saturday's 12: "The Maltese Falcon", "Chariots of Fire", and then the first 3 soldier movies. SO now 105 seen out of 255 takes me to 41.1%. I've probably leveled off now, and my percentage isn't likely to change much with just 9 days left.
THE PLOT: A high school senior instigates a social pecking order revolution after finding out that she has been labeled the DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) by her prettier, more popular counterparts.
AFTER: Lord help me, it's another high-school based romance tonight, and I think tomorrow as well. I'm in hell, WHY do I keep programming these? Haven't I already seen the best of the whole genre by watching "She's All That", "Some Kind of Wonderful", "Boys and Girls", and, umm, all those others? There's probably nothing new here, nobody ever does anything NEW with these high-school films, they just reduce everyone to stereotypes like the jocks and the mean girls and the stoners and the nerds and, well have at it, guys, you're teens and you're all horny and desperate so let's see some hooking up! It's prom or homecoming or time for the Enchantment Under the Sea dance or something, or it's football season, shouldn't you all be making out under the bleachers or something?
Well, not me, I was a conscientious objector in the battle between the sexes until my last year of college, and again, it was not by choice, it was just the way it worked out. I kissed a girl in first grade and left secret notes for a girl in third grade, and well, I know this is going to come as a shock, but those relationships didn't last. So I spend the next 12 years just thinking about what I would do if a girl would talk to me, and really, time well spent, because when one finally did then I knew what to say. Just kidding, I made a ton of mistakes, because we all do, and we laughed about it and cried about it and then we got married. Happily ever after lasted five years, then she fell in love with a woman and, well, as you can guess it ended badly. But I'm here to tell you, that according to movies, you can meet someone and fall in love at any age, whether you're in high school or a senior living facility, where they're all just as randy as they were in high school, apparently. It's never too late, in fact I'm thinking about starting up a matching service for dead people, so even if you died alone, you can be matched up with someone and be buried next to them for all eternity, and boy, won't there be some gossip going on then? Like, were they secretly together when they were alive and nobody knew about it? Hey, you may be dead but you can still have a reputation as a player, retroactively.
But let's get back to high school, the time that only made you WISH you were dead when you saw other people dating and fooling around and then you just never were. But I'm sure you tried, and that's the important thing, isn't it? I know I'd love a replay, a chance to go back to high school with all the confidence and experience I have now, I'd probably break a few hearts. That's right, girls, I've got a letter on my jacket, and I earned it for math team AND orchestra. Who wants to date me? Wait, wait, there's more, because I've got a speaking role in the school play AND I just got my SAT scores back - 750 in maths, that's like just ONE question wrong. Yeah, I think I'm starting to understand why I didn't date anyone until college.
Bianca Piper has a different problem, when her obnoxious classmate/neighbor lets slip that she's what's called a DUFF, that's the uglier, fatter friend of hotter girls, someone that the boys talk to because she's approachable, however what they all want to know is whether Jess and Casey are seeing anyone. She's so used to this that she never really noticed that they boys don't ask if SHE'S dating anyone, or if SHE would like to go hang out after school or go make out under the bleachers. She's just been living her life as normal, trying to fit in, as you do, but now her whole world is turned upside-down because, well, why can't she be the one getting asked to the dance? Why can't she ask someone to the dance herself? Yes, yes, these are good questions that she doesn't have any answers to, because I guess the "D" in DUFF really should stand for Dumb?
She does have a crush on one boy, Toby, who can play the guitar and always has a crowd around him at parties - but she's struck speechless whenever they bump into each other, so you can see the problem, she's put him on some kind of pedestal, marked him as the unattainable, impossible dream and really, she's putting WAY too much pressure on herself, causing her to panic instead of just approaching the situation in straightforward manner and having a normal conversation as if Toby is just a regular person, which he is. SO, since obnoxious classmate/neighbor/jock Wesley is unable to play football until he can pass chemistry, she enters into a deal, she'll tutor Wesley and help get his grades up if he'll tutor her on dating and help get her confidence up.
If you've seen any rom-coms before, this should be all the information you need to predict the rest of the film. Say it with me now, because hanging out with Wesley for several weeks before the big homecoming dance, and sharing details with her life with Wesley as they tutor each other (and yes, there WILL be a big make-over scene where she tries on many outfits at the mall) then she and Wesley will slowly get friendlier and more comfortable with each other, and eventually Bianca may come to see him as a more suitable love interest for herself than the perceived impossible-to-obtain Toby is. Friendship is, after all, an important step on the road to romance, and once Bianca learns to look at herself in a different way, and also realize what a total lame-o Toby really is, she'll realize that she's actually been building the foundation of a solid relationship with Wesley through all the time they spent together, discussing relationships and such.
It would work if it all wasn't so damn predictable, right? Like it feels like we've seen every element of this in other high-school rom-coms before, maybe not put together in this exact way, but at heart, isn't this just like all the others? Is this one maybe the ultimate expression of all things that ARE teen romance? Like the divorced mother who is also a motivational speaker? The Mean Girl who is also the social media star, with a person constantly filming her no matter what she's doing? The principal who tries to ban cell phones in the school, only to (presumably) learn later that he can't do that, because the parents need to know that their kids can reach them in the event of a peanut-allergy based emergency? Duh.
Oh, there's so much more here that we've all seen before - the weird kids who talk to themselves, the lunch lady who knows a bit too much about all the students' lives, and everywhere with the social media! The whole first part of this film is presented in a style that looks like social media posts, only it seems that someone forgot to fill in the text in the captions. What? Just blank spaces? Same problem with the texts on the phones, I couldn't read any of them, they all looked blank. Was this an error in post-production that somebody didn't fix? Or was it just 2015 and adults who make movies didn't quite understand text messages and Snapchat videos yet?
Anyway, my point is that we're in the darkest days of the romance chain, cringy high-school movies chock full of stereotypes and teens being very cruel to each other while also somehow having unlimited access to alcohol at parties and slut-shaming each other on the socials. Let's just hope I only have maybe one or two more of these movies to endure this week, and in my life overall.
NITPICK POINT: If Caitlyn is supposed to be filming social media star Madison all the time, then how can she possibly be in other places, like she's also at the mall when Bianca is acting goofy during her extreme makeover fashion show, and then later Caitlyn is also out IN THE WOODS when Bianca first kisses Wesley. Like, was Caitlyn just randomly walking through the woods and stumbled on Bianca's secret thinking rock? That seems very unlikely.
NITPICK POINT #2: Bianca needs to talk to Wesley right away about Toby, so she just barges into the boys locker room and gets a look at a lot of boys in their underwear or just out of the shower. And there are no repercussions for this? No boys complain that they were made uncomfortable by being naked in front of a girl unexpectedly? If a boy can't gain access to the girls locker room, then the reverse should also not be allowed, it's only fair.
NITPICK POINT #3: Did they really try for a "Spartacus" moment here, when Bianca writes her article for the school paper about being a DUFF, and we see a bunch of people in their moment of realization, all saying "I'm a DUFF!". No, that's not in line with what it means to be a DUFF, and that's also not how "Spartacus" works.
Also starring Mae Whitman (last seen in "CHIPS"), Robbie Amell (last seen in "When We First Met"), Bella Thorne (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Bianca Santos, Skyler Samuels (last seen in "Meg 2: The Trench"), Romany Malco (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Nick Eversman (last seen in "The Runaways"), Chris Wylde (also last seen in "When We First Met"), Allison Janney (last seen in "To Leslie"), Rebecca Weil, Seth Meriwether (last seen in "Blonde"), Erick Chavarria (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Brian Dewar McNamara, Benjamin Taylor Davis, RJ Shearer (last seen in "Yes, God, Yes"), Eric R. Moore, J.J. Green (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), Paras Patel, Murielle Telio (last seen in "The Nice Guys"), Mahaley Manning (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Alexandra Ficken (last seen in "Strays"), Jill Jane Clements (last seen in "Blockers"), Fiona Hardingham (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Tony Cavalero (last seen in "The Dirt"), David Gridley, Beau Rich, Demetrius Bridges (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Lai-Ling Bernstein, Krissy Notes, Richard Kohberger, Benjamin Papac (last seen in "Goosebumps"), Marisela Zumbado (last seen in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"), Kyle Wilkerson, Kurt Krause (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Jonathan Baron, Dorothy Reynolds, Cason Richter, Dani Sherrick (last seen in "Aftermath"), Emily Norcia, Danielle Lyn (last seen in "Allegiant"), Veanna Black, Turner Wheat, Madison Fitts, Kody Keplinger, Brittany Savoie, Curry Stone, Stephen Tsimpides.
RATING: 5 out of 10 zombie movie posters
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