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This Means Meh
Feb. 11th, 2012 06:44 pmSo, I'll admit it. For the past few weeks, the movie This Means War has vexed me. No, I haven't seen it. Just the very premise confounds me. It goes something like this--Tom Hardy and Chris Pine are CIA agents (yes, Hardy speaks with his natural accent, so I guess we just let foreign nationals into the CIA now). They're best friends, but when they find out they're both dating the same woman (Reese Witherspoon!) they start trying to kill each other. To win Reese Witherspoon's love.
Okay. Now, who is meant to be sympathetic in this movie? I know, the goal is that they're all sympathetic, but c'mon, who are we siding with? Can't be Hardy and Pine--any rational adult would dump the girl rather than try to kill their bestie. It doesn't even make movie sense; Reese Witherspoon isn't that good-looking. And don't say she has a great personality, because anyone who's dating two men at the same time by definition has a horrible personality. And we can't sympathize with Witherspoon either, because she's cuckolding two men at once.
So then it came to me. This movie is really two movies at once. At one point it was this entirely different movie, then maybe it became this other different movie, but after years of development they were smushed together to try to appeal to everyone. But in their original form, it went something like this.
A. The guy movie. Pine and Hardy are two agents who find out they're both dating this insanely hot temptress--think Sophie Marceau or Monica Belucci. Maybe they're not friends; maybe they're rivals and this is the last straw. All sorts of badass fights ensue, but eventually they become friends to save her from something. Now Belucci wouldn't be played as a bitch or anything; she's be more of an Irene Adler or Vala Mal Doran type. At the end, she walks off into the sunset and the two guys shake hands, promising not to fight over her again. Then she sends them both sexts and it's like "Uh-oh, here we go again!"
Okay, that's horrible, but you get where I'm going. Perfectly serviceable plot and the 'idiot ball' (note I'm not using this in the literal sense of being an idiot, but more of the character who is behaving badly to drive the conflict) is with Belucci.
B. The chick flick. Here's where Witherspoon comes in. Let's be honest, Witherspoon's niche isn't playing insanely hot sex goddesses, it's in playing the girl next door, the lead in rom-coms, a woman other women can relate to. It's the same ballpark as Bella Swan, although that's a loaded simile; basically, Katherine Heigl territory. She doesn't look like a supermodel, she looks like an idealized version of your average female movie-goer. The same principle as Jesse Eisenberg or (grrrr) Shia LeBeouf.
If it's any consolation, men totally do this too, ladies. There's a reason millions of dudes paid to see Ron Jeremy have sex.
In our chick flick, through an improbable series of meet-cutes where Witherspoon somehow gets picked up by two guys at once, she ends up dating two men. But, here's the kicker. She tells them both upfront, says she wants to date them both, and gives them the opportunity to back out if they're uncomfortable with that. They say "fine, cool, that's great" and then go around fighting each other behind her back, in action scenes that are a bit more wacky than the high-body-count action of Movie A. Here, the 'idiot ball' is with the guys--she was honest with them, so the female audience sympathizes with her even as they live out a fantasy of two hot guys fighting over their avatar.
Now, either of those two movies would've worked, it's just that one is aimed at men and one is aimed at women. But by trying to aim at both, they've robbed both plots of their je ne sais pas. It's like saying "Hey, Star Wars appeals to guys--but let's make Darth Vader a type-A career woman who needs to let that lovable Grand Moff Tarkin teach her how to unwind--that way we'll get the female audience too!" You can see how that wouldn't work, so naturally George Lucas will make that the plot of Star Wars: A New Hope 3D
Okay. Now, who is meant to be sympathetic in this movie? I know, the goal is that they're all sympathetic, but c'mon, who are we siding with? Can't be Hardy and Pine--any rational adult would dump the girl rather than try to kill their bestie. It doesn't even make movie sense; Reese Witherspoon isn't that good-looking. And don't say she has a great personality, because anyone who's dating two men at the same time by definition has a horrible personality. And we can't sympathize with Witherspoon either, because she's cuckolding two men at once.
So then it came to me. This movie is really two movies at once. At one point it was this entirely different movie, then maybe it became this other different movie, but after years of development they were smushed together to try to appeal to everyone. But in their original form, it went something like this.
A. The guy movie. Pine and Hardy are two agents who find out they're both dating this insanely hot temptress--think Sophie Marceau or Monica Belucci. Maybe they're not friends; maybe they're rivals and this is the last straw. All sorts of badass fights ensue, but eventually they become friends to save her from something. Now Belucci wouldn't be played as a bitch or anything; she's be more of an Irene Adler or Vala Mal Doran type. At the end, she walks off into the sunset and the two guys shake hands, promising not to fight over her again. Then she sends them both sexts and it's like "Uh-oh, here we go again!"
Okay, that's horrible, but you get where I'm going. Perfectly serviceable plot and the 'idiot ball' (note I'm not using this in the literal sense of being an idiot, but more of the character who is behaving badly to drive the conflict) is with Belucci.
B. The chick flick. Here's where Witherspoon comes in. Let's be honest, Witherspoon's niche isn't playing insanely hot sex goddesses, it's in playing the girl next door, the lead in rom-coms, a woman other women can relate to. It's the same ballpark as Bella Swan, although that's a loaded simile; basically, Katherine Heigl territory. She doesn't look like a supermodel, she looks like an idealized version of your average female movie-goer. The same principle as Jesse Eisenberg or (grrrr) Shia LeBeouf.
If it's any consolation, men totally do this too, ladies. There's a reason millions of dudes paid to see Ron Jeremy have sex.
In our chick flick, through an improbable series of meet-cutes where Witherspoon somehow gets picked up by two guys at once, she ends up dating two men. But, here's the kicker. She tells them both upfront, says she wants to date them both, and gives them the opportunity to back out if they're uncomfortable with that. They say "fine, cool, that's great" and then go around fighting each other behind her back, in action scenes that are a bit more wacky than the high-body-count action of Movie A. Here, the 'idiot ball' is with the guys--she was honest with them, so the female audience sympathizes with her even as they live out a fantasy of two hot guys fighting over their avatar.
Now, either of those two movies would've worked, it's just that one is aimed at men and one is aimed at women. But by trying to aim at both, they've robbed both plots of their je ne sais pas. It's like saying "Hey, Star Wars appeals to guys--but let's make Darth Vader a type-A career woman who needs to let that lovable Grand Moff Tarkin teach her how to unwind--that way we'll get the female audience too!" You can see how that wouldn't work, so naturally George Lucas will make that the plot of Star Wars: A New Hope 3D
