BEFORE: OK, the repairs to the house are done, meanwhile repairs on my parents' house in Massachusetts have finally begun (there was damage done to the kitchen and one bedroom by an ice dam on the roof back in January) and now we've got a holiday weekend coming up, so I can maybe stay off my feet for another two days and let my ankle get better. But first I have to make it through college orientation week, that was Monday's shift, plus today and tomorrow. It's kind of "all hands on deck" because there are so many events at the theater during orientation - we've got to get these kids orientated! No, wait, oriented. All students must become Asian, and I think half of them already are. I'm not making any sense, that comes from being sleep-deprived, which I am. But since the NY Liberty is away playing some WNBA tournament, I can just focus on orientation week and then I've got more shifts coming in mid-September.
Andy Garcia carries over again from "City Island". This film could have counted as a romance or as a back-to-school film, since it doesn't link to any other romances on my list, I'm fine with calling it the latter and scheduling it in early September. I think I should have at least one more school-based film next week, that's something I suppose.
THE PLOT: Two parents fall in love over the course of a single day while playing hooky from their children's college tour.
AFTER: I work part-time for a college now, so something like this hits a bit different, just this week I had three shifts related to orientation for new students, and if I wasn't already worried about the younger generation, well I sure am now. You can put stanchions outside to make a line and you can even put up a sign on them that says "Line up here" but for some of the youngs, that's just not going to be enough. What's worse, we had two lines, one for resident students and one for commuting students, and what concerns me is that some students did not know which line to stand in. Well, are you living in a dorm or not? Because you only get the free tote bag if you commute to school, for some reason. I guess so you can carry your books to school on the train?
I'm secretly trying to get a job in the animation department, I don't have a teaching license or much experience instructing others, but there are administrative positions that have high turnover and therefore there are (theoretically) openings right around this time of year. After five years I'm technically still a temp, but if I were STAFF I could get benefits, so you know, that might be worth getting up early for. And I could still work at the theater on nights and weekends, so you know, best of both worlds if I were double-dipping and working for two different departments, the college is big enough that maybe nobody would even notice, except for the H.R. & payroll department.
Here's what I've seen happen during orientation - and yes, I know that orientation and visiting prospective colleges with your parents are two different things, but I only know about one of them. Way back when, I visited NYU on my own, without my parents, but my sister was attending there, and I got sold on it too. But here's how orientation works at the college where I manage the theater - on the first day, students and parents show up, however they are separated from each other and sent to different lectures in different theaters. The parents go to the bigger theater and get a lecture about what to expect their kids to learn, and I presume also how to apply for a second mortgage so they can afford to pay next year's tuition. The students attend a lecture in the smaller theater and a chair of one of the art departments gives them a lecture about what it means to be an artist. Somehow this involved him riding on a giant ostrich statue and also throwing stuffed animals into the crowd. You know, it's best not to ask too many questions about this, but I can say for sure that the condition known as "artist brain" is at work.
On the second day, the students get more detailed instructions about what it means to attend this college, logistics on how to get their student IDs, where the different buildings are, and I presume some comments about how bad it is to be late for things - and of course, a lot of students show up late for THAT lecture, so I can't even with these kids. There is a Q&A session afterwards in case people who showed up late missed something. Now, if parents show up with their children on Day 2, we are instructed to not let the parents in, we tell them to go get coffee or food at the diner, but they can't come to the lecture, because there are 400 students in attendance, and if they each brought a parent, that would be 800 people and we don't have that many seats. So sorry, but come on, you've got to cut that cord sometime, and NOW is that time. Your kid is at college now, and you need to leave them alone and let them develop while you pay for their classes. Bye-bye.
Now, of course "At Middleton" is about the other scenario, parents visiting possible colleges with their children, and we have a father-son combo that gets into a bit of a parking argument with a mother-daughter combo. Gee, I wonder if they'll bond over the course of the film and go through different emotional journeys while they're here for ONE DAY. What follows is so much stuff, a story that's so far-reaching and vast it's going to feel like they were at this college for a WEEK before we're through. And sure, the film is only 100 minutes long, but trust me, it feels much MUCH longer, even though not very much even happens. The parents get separated from their kids because reasons (I think they both get important phone calls) and rather than join up with the tour group again (which would be very simple, it would just take ONE TEXT to ask where exactly the group is) the parents decide to tour the campus on their own, this way they can form their own opinions of the place and not just go by the information suggested by the tour guide. Get out there, meet some real students, ask pertinent questions, and maybe explore their attraction to each other. Wait, WHAT? As the kid said in "The Princess Bride", is this a kissing story? That's not really why you came to Middleton, is it? Oh, well, we're here now so we might as well....
The parents "borrow" (steal) a pair of bicycles to get around. They go to the music department and play a piano duet (great, "Chopsticks", how quaint and racist) and then they audit an acting class, really schooling the college kids on how a married couple might argue with each other - and they're not even married! Well, not to each other, anyway. Meanwhile her daughter Audrey manages to score a lunch meeting with the linguistics professor of her dreams, so she can beg him to mentor her as a freshman, even though he usually only mentors upperclassmen. She finds out, unfortunately, that he's going on sabbatical for the next four years to study Native American languages in, umm, America. So her request is simply out of the question, however she was counting on this when she chose the school, even though no high schooler ever decided they wanted to major in linguistics, I'm fairly sure. Also meanwhile, George's son Conrad visits the college radio station and learns that maybe there is a major that he's interested in, or at least a college activity. The DJ is played by a certain actor known for being in a college movie, you might envision he's been working at this college radio station since he got kicked out of Faber College's Delta House.
The parents meet a film student and George ends up borrowing her computer to check in on the health of one of his heart patients, and meanwhile the film student's pre-med boyfriend also learns a lot about cardiology. The foursome decide to smoke pot together, which honestly at this point just feels like a lot of filler - we're done with narrative progression and we're not ready to get this couple together or break them apart or finalize anything, so let's all just smoke from this bong so we can be written out of the film for the next ten minutes. I mean, they've been to acting class, they've played music, now they're getting high and they still haven't figured out if they have feelings for each other yet? What the hell is taking so long in this whirlwind romance? Eventually they DO decide that they are compatible, and that there's something there, however they both also know that at the end of the day they're both probably going to have to go back home to their spouses, and that will have to be the end of that. Right?
Only one of their children decides to attend Middleton, maybe not the one you think or maybe it's not the one who seemed most likely to at the beginning, but this is, at last, some kind of resolution even if the romance between the parents didn't have one. Well, maybe it's an appropriate thing that I earmarked this as a school movie and ultimately not a romance movie. It's a bit like trying to figure out if a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. It's not sweet, so from a culinary standpoint we tend to treat it like a vegetable, however if you want to use science and follow the botanical definition, technically a tomato is a fruit. But you're never going to put it in a fruit salad with oranges and pineapple, you're going to eat it with lettuce and carrots and maybe a little onion. This is a romance and a school movie, but in the end more of a school movie.
Directed by Adam Rodgers
Also starring Vera Farmiga (last seen in "Ezra"), Taissa Farmiga (last seen in "The Bling Ring"), Spencer Lofranco (last seen in "Gotti"), Nicholas Braun (last seen in "Cat Person"), Tom Skerritt (last seen in "A Hologram for the King"), Peter Riegert (last seen in "Film Geek"), Mirjana Jokovic (last seen in "Maid in Manhattan"), Stephen Borrello, Daniella Garcia (last seen in "Geostorm"), Saxton Johnson, Sean Cook, Loretta Underwood, Kenny Parks Jr., Briana Henry (last seen in "Bright"), Joey Greer, Victoria James, Tony Doupe (last seen in "Lucky Them"), Kent Kimball, Nike Imoru, Alex Donnolo, Nich Witham, D.R. Anderson, Paul Chirico
RATING: 5 out of 10 crossword puzzle clues
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