BEFORE: OK, thanks to some coffee when I got home last night, I made it through 2 hours of Tournament of Champions, then I speed-watched the 4-hour Oscars show in just 2 hours, because I fast-forwarded over all the speeches, the unnecessary tribute to James Bond songs, and the lifetime achievement awards. I only slowed down for the nominees in each category, then as soon as I heard the winner, fast-forwarded to the next one. I watched the "In Memoriam" segment, because I'm not a monster, also I watched the clips from each Best Picture nominee, because I had only seen ONE of them and heard another one. HINT: It was very screamy and also won Best Picture. I'll get to some of these films, probably most of these films, it's all just coming at a very inconvenient time, as I'm wrapping up the romance chain. Look, tomorrow I'll add whatever Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films that I can to my list if they aren't already ON it. But only the ones already available streaming somewhere, because if they're not, well, what's the point? The ones that aren't, I'll catch up with them along down the road somewhere. I've still got nominated films from 2023, 2022, and so on back to 2018 that I haven't been able to work in. Progress is slow, sorry - and "Roma" is a very difficult film to link to.
Damon Wayans Jr. carries over again from "Long Weekend".
THE PLOT: A sports writer unused to relationships falls for a fling, leading her to reconsider playing the field in favor of commitment.
AFTER: It's another film focused on a group of friends who are nearly all horrible people. This group of four friends (which grows to five or six by the end of the film) just wants to get laid out on the NYC nightclub scene, and they're not above pulling a few tricks to make that happen. They work as each other's wingmen (or wing-women) to have loud break-ups that also make them sound rich and fabulous, and look, I'm not saying it works, but it apparently works, and then if there's even a chance of getting into a relationship, they never gave out their real name in the first place, so after sex they just disappear and move on to the next con game. Well, they probably get a lot more work done this way, it is pretty efficient to not be tied down and texting to your spouse all day because you don't have one.
Mackenzie (Mack) is a reporter on the NYC sports beat - which means she doesn't cover the major league teams, she focuses on sports like chess boxing (yes, it's a thing) and axe-throwing and other little sports that nobody watches on TV, like soccer. This takes her all over the city, and I recognized places like Yankee Stadium and the running path in Brooklyn along the East River. The building that housed the newspaper (or web-site, or whatever) that they all worked for looked REALLY familiar, like maybe I've walked by it in my neighborhood, or nearby in Brooklyn. We do get a lot of famous graffiti around where I live, there are even guided tours of it. And that bowling alley was The Gutter, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, they have animation screenings there sometimes.
You know this film got a grant from "Made in NY", right? The goal was to show that there's something fun to do every. single. night. in New York. Whether that's a concert at the Guggenheim or a Yankees game or a shuffleboard tournament, you will literally never run out of things to do. Sure, I get it, nobody went outside for like three years and the economy suffered, they are so desperate to get people back out there again, but money is still tight, and nobody can afford the prices all of these places are charging for cocktails. Really, it's a choice between drinks at night or eggs in the morning right now, because only the super rich can afford both.
I paid attention more to the filming locations, I guess, because the film narrative itself is so damn BASIC. Mack has a fling with her neighbor at the start of the film, but only because she knows he's moving out in a few days. OK, so then why go to so much trouble to PRETEND to be interesting in fishing and camping, if you're never going to go fishing with him? Plus it's stupid because even if a guy's like really into fishing, he's not going to have sex with a woman just because she's also into fishing - he'll have sex with her because she's a woman, and she's cute and nearby. So it's a lot of effort for a small return, I think. But Mack has a problem, because she suddenly, inexplicably, out of nowhere, uncharacteristically, wants to be in a long-term relationship with one of her flings. A very attractive, rich, fling who's also a writer and has a Pulitzer nomination. Well, sure, they may have a few things in common, BUT he doesn't want to date her seriously, probably because she can't stop making that FACE. Anxious face - once you notice she keeps doing it, you can't NOT notice it, and I guess he noticed it.
Mack rallies her friends to help her track her prey, Nick, across the city. They put him under surveillance, they figure out his routine, when and where he goes running, how many women he's dating casually, how many times he's dated each one, etc. There's only one problem, nobody in this group of friends seems to know what to do next, because they've been running these seduction games for years now and they don't know any other way to go about it. Wait, you mean she wants to go on a real DATE and have an adult conversation about grown-up stuff? Wow, her friends really can't help her here at all, because they're adult children who only want flings. Still, she gets some good help from her friend Adam, and it makes sense, because later we find out that Mack and Adam used to date, but it didn't go well and they just became friends and work-mates. BUT they say the same expressions, have the same dance moves and finish each other's sentences.
OK, wait, wait, because now it's all starting to look really familiar, it's the same formula as "The DUFF" and "What If" and "That Awkward Moment", so this really is a running theme this year - we can really just save a lot of time here and identify VERY EARLY that Mack should be dating Adam, and that's probably what she's going to be doing by the end of the film. "Desperados" is another one that fits this same patter, the lead female character there ALSO enlisted the help of a friendly African-American man that she dated before, in order to gain the affection of the rich, attractive Caucasian man, only to enjoy spending time with her friend MORE once she realized the guy she was crushing on wasn't all he was cracked up to be.
It's no surprise that she's destined to end up with her best friend, because we've seen this before - the person who helps you land the relationship with the person of your dreams is really THE ONE, after you realize that you don't really want what you tried so hard to get. Suddenly you realize that person isn't all that you imagined them to be and it's not settling, but you realize you have a deeper connection with the friend who helped you get there. And also, you've got more of a connection there and you like many of the same things and eat some of the same foods and you have catch-phrases and little dances you do together.
So, single ladies out there, the answer is simple, just form a friendship with a man and confide in him for years, maybe even a decade, or enlist his help to win the man of your dreams, because then at the last minute, you'll realize the man you're pursuing isn't so dreamy, and you'll be better off in a relationship with the male friend who's been giving you dating advice all along. Or so I've heard, several times, that this is the way it needs to work out.
There's another repeated plot point here, where Mack shows a story she's written to Nick, the guy with the Pulitzer, because she values his opinion, and he tears it apart and tells her better ways to write it, because he hates it. Well, this is a lot like the main plot point in "You Hurt My Feelings", isn't it? Only that couple was married, and here, not so much, but the idea is the same. I see both sides, because there really should be a way for someone to give an author constructive criticism on their writing without hurting their feelings, but apparently the people in these two movies didn't get that memo. But Adam kept telling Mack that her writing was great, and that Nick didn't know what he was doing, plus he cut out everything that made her story personal to her, and that's kind of important. So clearly Adam is proper boyfriend material and Nick isn't, I predicted this very early on in "Players" because now I know the formula.
It's probably a very clear indicator that I should get off this topic very soon - the fact that I'm seeing repeated plotlines.
Directed by Trish Sie (director of "Pitch Perfect 3")
Also starring Gina Rodriguez (last seen in "Kajillionaire"), Tom Ellis (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Augustus Prew (last seen in "Ibiza"), Joel Courtney (last seen in "Super 8"), Liza Koshy (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Ego Nwodim, Marin Hinkle (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Brock O'Hurn, Sarah Dacey-Charles, Sterling Jonatan Williams, Jerry Kernion (last heard in "The Princess and the Frog"), Claudia Maree Mailer, Nicholas Shields, Ashley Paige Albert, Dan Cordle, Tony Foggia,
RATING: 5 out of 10 obituaries for celebrities, written in advance
