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Contrary to popular opinion, I do have a softer side. I can enjoy the finer things in life. I can watch a movie where no one dies. I'll listen to jazz. Baby animals, bring 'em on. I can even masturbate to softcore pornography.
And I'll watch romantic comedies. Hey, comedy is right there in the title, and I love to laugh. Problem is, most romantic comedies are shit. Sure, a lot of action movies are shit too, but they have the decency not to cast Katherine Heigl. So if I go to a rom-com, I want to know that it's meeting me halfway. That said, let's bomb some rom-com.
Okay, Crazy Stupid Love. God, that's a twee title. It sounds like an Arcade Fire album. But go with it. It works. Marisa Tomei as a moderately sex-crazed recovering alcoholic. That's some funny shit right there. It's no Zach Galifianakis being socially awkward, but I can work with it. There's a formula there, there's a time-worn story, but I get the feeling that everyone's committing to it and bringing it. There are even a few twists and turns I didn't see coming. And if some of the plotlines don't work (note: enough with the precocious kids. I have watched four romantic comedies in my life and they're in all of them. Precocious kid never dies, though. There's an idea for a twist. Note 2: If a girl tells you to stop talking to her and responds to your text messages by saying you make her uncomfortable and meets your public declaration of love with telling you she's in love with someone else… she is probably not your soulmate. In fact, she may be the victim of a stalker. The stalker is probably you.) it throws into relief the rest of the movie, which is working. I award it three out of four Barda/Scotts.
Now there's Friends With Benefits. To start on the perviest note, for those who have not yet lost interest waiting for this entry to turn into a Cara/Kahlan fic, Mila Kunis doesn’t show anything. Now, there's been some talk about how the two lead actresses of Black Swan, an Oscar-nominated movie, then followed it up with romantic comedies with the same premise. One was named Friends With Benefits, the other had "Friendship has its benefits" in the tagline. Don't hold that against them, the working titles were 'Fuckbuddies' and 'Cockfriends.' And there is some discussion to be had of the dearth of well-written female roles in Hollywood when the best you can do is pretending to have sex with Ashton Kutcher.
But here's something—-how is it that two movies about fuckbuddies come out and no one gets naked? I mean, I haven't seen No Strings Attached, but I'm assuming Natalie Portman doesn't show any skin, otherwise every forum I go to would still be in celebration. I'm not trying to be crude, I know there are a lot of cases of gratuitous nudity and I support Megan Fox not wanting Michael Bay to shoot her ass in 3D and if your movie is about, say, a drug deal in Brooklyn, I can understand working around that. But if you're casting for a movie with the premise of "two people have lots of sex, so much so that it formed the basis of a romantic comedy," perhaps the question of nudity should come up in the audition process.
I'm not saying I need a gynecological exam, but was Paz de la Huerta busy? You can look her up on Mr. Skin and it will just link you to her IMDB page, that's how much nudity she does. She would slip a nip on the way to the audition and kiss another woman on the way out. Not hyperbole. Raunchy sex comedy, Paz de la Huerta, there's your male audience. I'm not telling you your business, but FWB is clearly going for the seventies sex comedy homage, the way Easy A (from the same director) referenced teen comedies of the 80s, but I think the clip they show of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice has more nudity than the rest of the movie. It's the future. If we can't have jetpacks, we should at least be able to see naked people in a movie about people having sex, unless the movie is about people having sex through their clothes. And I won't think the world is ready for a romantic comedy about Never Nudes. There's just so much prejudice still out there.
Fuck you, my dad's a bikini waxer!
Oh, right, the movie. Well, as I said, it's kinda being Easy A but for romantic comedies, and the difference is I think that Easy A liked teen comedies. The characters talked about John Hughes movies with affection, and when they ended up acting out the conventions of the genre, it was like they were succeeding in defiance of the cynical real world they were stuck in. Kinda like how Inglorious Bastards had the subtext of cinema killing Hitler, only not really stupid because that didn't happen. (Quick, Quentin Tarantino, make a movie where cinema wins the War in Iraq! We're getting our asses kicked!)
Whereas with FWB, it starts off mocking romantic comedies, literally, then beat for beat follows the "boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" structure of one. Like how Kickass starts off making fun of superheroes, then ends up being about superheroes fighting a supervillain. Only Kickass never had the hero sit down and watch Spider-Man and talk about how stupid Spidey fighting Green Goblin was. And that's what FWB does, so when it sets itself up as a real-talkin' deconstruction of a romantic comedy and then turns into a romantic comedy straight outta Screenwriting 101, it's like "Sorry, we couldn't think of a better or more honest way to end this movie. Enjoy the Katherine Heigl version." But even the drippiest Katherine Heigl movie knows that this shit has been done before and they'll try to come up with a twist. They don't just do what came before and say "This is cliché" and then keep doing it. I feel I'm owed an apology by the screenwriters, is what I'm saying.
Like, I hate country music, but I get it's hard work. I wouldn't say "Country music is so stupid. People who like country music are stupid. I bet I could write a country song, because I'm so awesome and country music listeners are such assholes, and it would be the best country song ever! I'll just slum a little and then go back to beatboxing." I wouldn't come up with the best country song ever. I would come up with a shitty country song that I'd be very smug about.
So even if Crazy Stupid Love is less ambitious in just trying to tell a romance comically, it comes off better in its earnestness than a snarky sexy spoof that can't even take its top off. I'm sorry to harp on this, but if they just quit saying 'fuck,' FWB would be PG-13. A PG-13 sex comedy? I'm not asking for someone to get sprayed in the face with jizz, but come on. The Golden Girls were more bawdy. You ever watched that show? Those girls were DTF.
Also, if the best, most charismatic male lead you can find for your romantic comedy is Ashton Kutcher or Justin Timberlake… I hate to say this, but maybe it's time to cast a black guy. All the good white guys are busy, give Donald Glover a shot. Hell, Idris Elba is doing a Ghost Rider sequel, you might as well give him a phone call, he's in it for the lulz. I hate to give up on bland white people, but you can't make fun of John Mayer if you're Justin Timberlake. He brought sexy back. It's like the KKK calling out the Westboro Baptist Church on their tolerance… which I'm now informed has actually happened.
Also, also, I could buy, say, Amy Poehler having such trouble getting a relationship that she decides she just wants a sexlationship. That's an acceptable break from reality. But you're telling me Maxim cover girl Mila Kunis would have trouble landing a guy? And hey, cuts both ways. Ashton Kutcher is in fact so lame that he was in cast to replace Charlie Sheen on Two And A Half Men (he is the replacement Charlie Sheen, people, the non-union Mexican equivalent as it were), but hey, some women have low standards. Why do you think Glee is a hit? He could probably find someone.
Here, the premise is that Mila Kunis has "emotional damage" that makes a relationship difficult-—not the kind of emotional damage that makes you cry or really depressed, but the kind that makes you say "emotional damage" a lot while you're having long, totally un-awkward conversations with hot people. You know. That kind. I hate to sound desperate, but I think I'd go on a date with Mila Kunis, even with that crippling emotional baggage that never affects her life at all.
And I'll watch romantic comedies. Hey, comedy is right there in the title, and I love to laugh. Problem is, most romantic comedies are shit. Sure, a lot of action movies are shit too, but they have the decency not to cast Katherine Heigl. So if I go to a rom-com, I want to know that it's meeting me halfway. That said, let's bomb some rom-com.
Okay, Crazy Stupid Love. God, that's a twee title. It sounds like an Arcade Fire album. But go with it. It works. Marisa Tomei as a moderately sex-crazed recovering alcoholic. That's some funny shit right there. It's no Zach Galifianakis being socially awkward, but I can work with it. There's a formula there, there's a time-worn story, but I get the feeling that everyone's committing to it and bringing it. There are even a few twists and turns I didn't see coming. And if some of the plotlines don't work (note: enough with the precocious kids. I have watched four romantic comedies in my life and they're in all of them. Precocious kid never dies, though. There's an idea for a twist. Note 2: If a girl tells you to stop talking to her and responds to your text messages by saying you make her uncomfortable and meets your public declaration of love with telling you she's in love with someone else… she is probably not your soulmate. In fact, she may be the victim of a stalker. The stalker is probably you.) it throws into relief the rest of the movie, which is working. I award it three out of four Barda/Scotts.
Now there's Friends With Benefits. To start on the perviest note, for those who have not yet lost interest waiting for this entry to turn into a Cara/Kahlan fic, Mila Kunis doesn’t show anything. Now, there's been some talk about how the two lead actresses of Black Swan, an Oscar-nominated movie, then followed it up with romantic comedies with the same premise. One was named Friends With Benefits, the other had "Friendship has its benefits" in the tagline. Don't hold that against them, the working titles were 'Fuckbuddies' and 'Cockfriends.' And there is some discussion to be had of the dearth of well-written female roles in Hollywood when the best you can do is pretending to have sex with Ashton Kutcher.
But here's something—-how is it that two movies about fuckbuddies come out and no one gets naked? I mean, I haven't seen No Strings Attached, but I'm assuming Natalie Portman doesn't show any skin, otherwise every forum I go to would still be in celebration. I'm not trying to be crude, I know there are a lot of cases of gratuitous nudity and I support Megan Fox not wanting Michael Bay to shoot her ass in 3D and if your movie is about, say, a drug deal in Brooklyn, I can understand working around that. But if you're casting for a movie with the premise of "two people have lots of sex, so much so that it formed the basis of a romantic comedy," perhaps the question of nudity should come up in the audition process.
I'm not saying I need a gynecological exam, but was Paz de la Huerta busy? You can look her up on Mr. Skin and it will just link you to her IMDB page, that's how much nudity she does. She would slip a nip on the way to the audition and kiss another woman on the way out. Not hyperbole. Raunchy sex comedy, Paz de la Huerta, there's your male audience. I'm not telling you your business, but FWB is clearly going for the seventies sex comedy homage, the way Easy A (from the same director) referenced teen comedies of the 80s, but I think the clip they show of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice has more nudity than the rest of the movie. It's the future. If we can't have jetpacks, we should at least be able to see naked people in a movie about people having sex, unless the movie is about people having sex through their clothes. And I won't think the world is ready for a romantic comedy about Never Nudes. There's just so much prejudice still out there.
Fuck you, my dad's a bikini waxer!
Oh, right, the movie. Well, as I said, it's kinda being Easy A but for romantic comedies, and the difference is I think that Easy A liked teen comedies. The characters talked about John Hughes movies with affection, and when they ended up acting out the conventions of the genre, it was like they were succeeding in defiance of the cynical real world they were stuck in. Kinda like how Inglorious Bastards had the subtext of cinema killing Hitler, only not really stupid because that didn't happen. (Quick, Quentin Tarantino, make a movie where cinema wins the War in Iraq! We're getting our asses kicked!)
Whereas with FWB, it starts off mocking romantic comedies, literally, then beat for beat follows the "boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" structure of one. Like how Kickass starts off making fun of superheroes, then ends up being about superheroes fighting a supervillain. Only Kickass never had the hero sit down and watch Spider-Man and talk about how stupid Spidey fighting Green Goblin was. And that's what FWB does, so when it sets itself up as a real-talkin' deconstruction of a romantic comedy and then turns into a romantic comedy straight outta Screenwriting 101, it's like "Sorry, we couldn't think of a better or more honest way to end this movie. Enjoy the Katherine Heigl version." But even the drippiest Katherine Heigl movie knows that this shit has been done before and they'll try to come up with a twist. They don't just do what came before and say "This is cliché" and then keep doing it. I feel I'm owed an apology by the screenwriters, is what I'm saying.
Like, I hate country music, but I get it's hard work. I wouldn't say "Country music is so stupid. People who like country music are stupid. I bet I could write a country song, because I'm so awesome and country music listeners are such assholes, and it would be the best country song ever! I'll just slum a little and then go back to beatboxing." I wouldn't come up with the best country song ever. I would come up with a shitty country song that I'd be very smug about.
So even if Crazy Stupid Love is less ambitious in just trying to tell a romance comically, it comes off better in its earnestness than a snarky sexy spoof that can't even take its top off. I'm sorry to harp on this, but if they just quit saying 'fuck,' FWB would be PG-13. A PG-13 sex comedy? I'm not asking for someone to get sprayed in the face with jizz, but come on. The Golden Girls were more bawdy. You ever watched that show? Those girls were DTF.
Also, if the best, most charismatic male lead you can find for your romantic comedy is Ashton Kutcher or Justin Timberlake… I hate to say this, but maybe it's time to cast a black guy. All the good white guys are busy, give Donald Glover a shot. Hell, Idris Elba is doing a Ghost Rider sequel, you might as well give him a phone call, he's in it for the lulz. I hate to give up on bland white people, but you can't make fun of John Mayer if you're Justin Timberlake. He brought sexy back. It's like the KKK calling out the Westboro Baptist Church on their tolerance… which I'm now informed has actually happened.
Also, also, I could buy, say, Amy Poehler having such trouble getting a relationship that she decides she just wants a sexlationship. That's an acceptable break from reality. But you're telling me Maxim cover girl Mila Kunis would have trouble landing a guy? And hey, cuts both ways. Ashton Kutcher is in fact so lame that he was in cast to replace Charlie Sheen on Two And A Half Men (he is the replacement Charlie Sheen, people, the non-union Mexican equivalent as it were), but hey, some women have low standards. Why do you think Glee is a hit? He could probably find someone.
Here, the premise is that Mila Kunis has "emotional damage" that makes a relationship difficult-—not the kind of emotional damage that makes you cry or really depressed, but the kind that makes you say "emotional damage" a lot while you're having long, totally un-awkward conversations with hot people. You know. That kind. I hate to sound desperate, but I think I'd go on a date with Mila Kunis, even with that crippling emotional baggage that never affects her life at all.
