Two movies to avoid.
This weekend, in a fit of lightheartedness, I rented Must Love Dogs, starring the always-stunning Diane Lane and the frequently charming John Cusack. Argh. It was truly awful, and bland enough so that it wasn't bad enough to be like watching a train wreck, but rather like reading a train schedule. No chemistry between Cusack and Lane, the dogs were props at best, and even the ever-wonderful Stockard Channing couldn't pull this one out of the pound.
At the big show (that means the movie theater, yeah), C and I watched The Family Stone (how horrid is that title, for starters?), starring a mostly grand cast shoehorned into a trivial, formulaic script. A mostly grand cast that includes Sarah Jessica Parker, Rachel McAdams, Craig T. Nelson, Claire Danes, the adorable, sorry I can't help it, Luke Wilson, and Diane Keaton was okay, but she was no Annie Hall. So, I left Dermot Mulroney out of the mostly grand cast recitation. Why is that, you ask? Well, he can't act. I've never seen his range of expression go from even a capital A to a lower-case a, much less A to B (apologies, Kate Hepburn). Why, why is he the lead in any film? Sure, he has a kind of sexy scar on his lip, but people, that is NOT ENOUGH.
So, the story uses one of the cheapest angles of all--the dying-grumpy-but-lovable-matriarch--to get the audience sniffling. Wait--that wasn't the cheapest angle of all--it was the montage of meaningful shots of each family member interspersed with a cut from Meet Me in St. Louis where the ever-gut-wrenching Judy Garland sings Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. C'mon. THAT is cheap. And of course Dermot immediately falls in love with someone he barely knows, and other characters come together at the end because god forbid all romantic loose ends not be tied up in the most boring and predictable formula as usual, and we wonder why, spoon-fed on this tripe (Must Love Dogs, you are not off the hook on this one, so listen up), none of us can sustain romances for more than six months to a year, look at the divorce rate, and that's not even counting those of us who aren't allowed to marry because I guess we would make marriage too unstable--rant!
And why is it in movies lately that it is the women who have to suffer clumsy humiliating falls, anyway? Beautiful Claire Danes must literally fall on her face, Sarah Jessica falls and drops the meal she has spent hours preparing, crashes a car, because of course she would, she is a control-freak woman who must experience her comeuppance (is that how you spell that?) and be humiliated in other ways, and all of the men are of course patient and long-suffering. Same with Dogs, which includes Diane Lane making a complete fool of herself, jumping in a canal and swimming like a desperate pathetic single divorced woman after John Cusack, who patiently hauls her up into his boat, which he built himself, because he is grounded and wise.
Blecch. I'd better stop before I start to sound like a curmudgeon.
-Lori
ps: I almost forgot--Dermot shows up in Must Love Dogs as well...except he wears glasses! Could this be a fascinating turn in his career?
At the big show (that means the movie theater, yeah), C and I watched The Family Stone (how horrid is that title, for starters?), starring a mostly grand cast shoehorned into a trivial, formulaic script. A mostly grand cast that includes Sarah Jessica Parker, Rachel McAdams, Craig T. Nelson, Claire Danes, the adorable, sorry I can't help it, Luke Wilson, and Diane Keaton was okay, but she was no Annie Hall. So, I left Dermot Mulroney out of the mostly grand cast recitation. Why is that, you ask? Well, he can't act. I've never seen his range of expression go from even a capital A to a lower-case a, much less A to B (apologies, Kate Hepburn). Why, why is he the lead in any film? Sure, he has a kind of sexy scar on his lip, but people, that is NOT ENOUGH.
So, the story uses one of the cheapest angles of all--the dying-grumpy-but-lovable-matriarch--to get the audience sniffling. Wait--that wasn't the cheapest angle of all--it was the montage of meaningful shots of each family member interspersed with a cut from Meet Me in St. Louis where the ever-gut-wrenching Judy Garland sings Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. C'mon. THAT is cheap. And of course Dermot immediately falls in love with someone he barely knows, and other characters come together at the end because god forbid all romantic loose ends not be tied up in the most boring and predictable formula as usual, and we wonder why, spoon-fed on this tripe (Must Love Dogs, you are not off the hook on this one, so listen up), none of us can sustain romances for more than six months to a year, look at the divorce rate, and that's not even counting those of us who aren't allowed to marry because I guess we would make marriage too unstable--rant!
And why is it in movies lately that it is the women who have to suffer clumsy humiliating falls, anyway? Beautiful Claire Danes must literally fall on her face, Sarah Jessica falls and drops the meal she has spent hours preparing, crashes a car, because of course she would, she is a control-freak woman who must experience her comeuppance (is that how you spell that?) and be humiliated in other ways, and all of the men are of course patient and long-suffering. Same with Dogs, which includes Diane Lane making a complete fool of herself, jumping in a canal and swimming like a desperate pathetic single divorced woman after John Cusack, who patiently hauls her up into his boat, which he built himself, because he is grounded and wise.
Blecch. I'd better stop before I start to sound like a curmudgeon.
-Lori
ps: I almost forgot--Dermot shows up in Must Love Dogs as well...except he wears glasses! Could this be a fascinating turn in his career?
posted by Eric. Lori. at 11:10 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home