This Means War Part Deux
Feb. 21st, 2012 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficOkay, you may be saying, I'm not into men kissing. What bearing, then, does This Means War have on me?
Well, not much. The premise goes something like this. Tom Hardy plays lonely heart divorcee Tuck (does his estranged ex-wife hang around with a big neon sign saying "Consolation prize!" Do we get no hint at the issues that led to their split, or later reconciliation? Is there any early scene that implies she and Chris Pine are related, only for it to be revealed in the epilogue that they slept together, making this film either a lot more daring or a lot more shoddy than you'd think?). Tuck decides to get back in the dating game, and since you don't meet any beautiful women in the spy game (despite the fact that he can Pine meet two in the prologue who seem nice) and there aren't any attractive co-workers he could ask out who he wouldn't have to deceive and protect from vengeful terrorists (the only woman at the CIA seems to be the requisite see-we're-not-racist black authority figure, who is so used to saying "What the hell is going on here?" that she busts it out while Pine and Hardy are competing over who can throw the most paper wads into a trashcan. I don't know, that seems pretty harmless compared to destabilizing democratically elected governments. Maybe she should be concerned with that instead. And there seem to be bikini models constantly swimming in the pool above Chris Pine's glass ceiling... maybe he should try to ask one of them out.
The point is, Tuck decides to join an online dating website over the objections of his partner (yes no yes not like that) FDR, played by Chris Pine. For some reason, FDR calls himself FDR doesn't bother to check out Tuck's mystery date at all, despite his later privacy invasions, so when he runs into Reese Witherspoon, playing Heterosexuality Lauren, he chats her up. Lauren, who has just hit it off with Tuck, shoots him down.
Wow. That movie was short. It seems that whole "which man will she choose?" thing got settled fast.
Wait, then he goes to her office and calls her frigid until she agrees to go out with him. Wow, all this time I thought women didn't like being stalked--turns out they just don't like being stalked by ugly people. Thanks, Hollywood!
Then Lauren goes on her date with Tuck and has a great time at a carnival, because where else would you take Reese Witherspoon? She goes out with FDR and he takes her to a club, where the bouncer lets him skip the line and the bartender knows his drink order, you know the rest—I'm glad being the CIA's top field agent isn't cutting into his clubbing time. Lauren isn't impressed and tries to leave.
Alright, so now the movie's over, right? Not only is Lauren not interested in FDR personally, because she doesn't even like the same activities he does. He ends up taking her to a pizza place, which she does like, but still. Someone who finds your favorite activities odious and wants to break off a date just because you attempted it; clearly girlfriend material. And pretending you enjoy things you have no conception of, as FDR proceeds to do to win her over, is obviously a great basis for a relationship. (Tuck, for his part, "discovers" that she enjoys classic cars and takes her for a drive in a classic Ford Mustang, but that seems like more of a mutually enjoyable activity. Because, c'mon, Mustang)
Alright, so FDR is the jerk who only wants Lauren as an exercise in cocksmanship and Tuck is the guy who really likes-likes her, so she ends up rejecting FDR and getting together with Tuck, right?
I couldn't find a non-hipster "they end up together" macro, so just imagine one here.
Now maybe you're thinking this is subversive, Lauren going with the "dangerous" guy instead of the "safe" one (yes, they say "safe"). I mean, they only do that in two-thirds of all movies (in the third, the woman dies for angst). But this is actually even more clichéd than you might think. FDR turns out to be a jerk with a heart of gold who Lauren reforms—by the end, he's proposing marriage and going out on double dates. And he's the only one she has sex with, as the epilogue reveals, so of course she's in love with him. Having sex with people you aren't in love with means you're a slut!
And yes, they had to be aware of that trope, since there were multiple endings and the reveal that Lauren didn't have sex with Tuck is part of the "Team FDR" ending. I'm not really sure you should be allowed to do that, just make as many endings as you like and pick one. You think George Lucas did that when he was making the good Star Wars? "Alright, we shot one ending where Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star and saves the day, and another where he and all his friends die horribly. We'll see which one the audience likes best."
Anyway, most of the movie is dedicated to Tuck and FDR spying on Lauren to try to do insider trading on her panties. She says Tuck is too safe, so he takes her to a paintball game and acts like a psycho (this works). Again, this was aimed at women, right? I mean, I know we as a nation wrote off the female gender as completely insane once they started finding Twilight romantic (True Blood didn't help), but c'mon. Then again, they had this script in production for years (at one point, Seth Rogen and Martin Lawrence were attached). So maybe this started out as satire of the Bush Administration, then Obama rolled around and because they believed either that he had stopped infringing on civil liberties or that it wasn't so bad if a Democrat did it, they changed it so that Lauren never finds out about the spying and the fact that both men have planted tracking devices on her ends up saving the day.
Now, this is going to sound like a weird thing to say, but I think the problem is that director McG has no interest in the rom-com genre. Which is fine, he's a guy, it's expected, but he's directing a rom-com. Yet, he doesn't even know the genre, they just know the conventions. For instance, usually in a movie like this, there's a part where the couple break up and they spend a while being sad to raise the stakes and get the audience to see that if they don't be together, they'll be miserable for the rest of their lives (or until they meet someone who could deign to fall in love with, say, Mila Kunis or Justin Timberlake). That doesn't happen in this movie, unless you count FDR and Tuck breaking up their partnership—then triumphantly declaring they're back when they save each others' lives in an action sequence—then sixty-nining. Hmm…
Instead, the movie goes straight from Lauren going "Double boyfriends, we are OVER!" to her getting kidnapped and needing to be saved. And of course, the reason they are OVER is that they didn't tell her they knew each other. Although how she would expect them to tell her they knew each other, given that she didn't tell them she was dating both of them, goes unexplored.
Why is it all romantic comedies have a third act where the man has to apologize for something that isn't his fault, or is even the woman's fault? Do a lot of screenwriters think that's what female audiences want? "Hmm, women love to make me grovel for forgiveness after I do something that isn't really my fault—they must love movies where the hero has to grovel for forgiveness for what amounts to inadvertently hurting the woman's feelings, instead of her being mature enough to admit she was mistaken."
This kind of half-assed storybuilding runs all the way through This Means War. What makes Tuck fall so head-over-heels in love with Lauren? He has an amiable first meeting with her in which he meets someone he liked on the internet and they smile at each other. C'mon, at least give them a Meet Cute.
Wait, FDR and Lauren get a Meet Cute, and it's just them bonding over an obscure little director known as Alfred Hitchcock. I'm not saying they should be comparing favorite films from the Guinea Pig series, but this is supposed to be "auteur" McG slipping some passion into a big studio film. And his little quirk is thinking Hitchcock is a good director? Sorry, but there's no there, there.
Things liven up a little whenever people need to hurt each other, like the aforementioned sequence where Tuck takes out a paintball course (coupled with how Tuck's ex-wife takes him back after finding out he's a government killer who narrowly escaped death at the hands of a vindictive German, maybe this film thinks women have the sexuality of a Charlie Atlas ad: "Kicking sand in someone's face? THERE GO MY PANTIES!) or a sequence where Tuck and FDR both prowl through Lauren's apartment as she sings along to rap music (yes, she is also a neurotic career woman who bemoans how single she is, why do you ask?). But all the bits where someone has to be funny or romantic fall flat. It's like McG wanted to direct another big action movie, but he's still in director jail after Terminator: Salvation, so he tried to sneak one inside a romantic comedy that didn't at all call for shoot-outs or car chases. Instead of adding a ticking clock to the proceedings, the villains just distract from the romance. All emotional entanglements are dealt with in a volley of CGI.
The thing is, I actually like McG as a director. The first Charlie's Angels was a lot better than it had any right to be. But I think I may have peeked there. Despite having a good eye for action, the man can't seem to find a good script to save his life, and he doesn't have the storytelling instincts to elevate bad material. John August, the writer of the Charlie's Angels movies, has an anecdote about that. McG wanted a big sexy dance number in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. August is all "dude, they're super-thieves. If they need someone's keycard, why don't they just grab it while he's in the john or something?" McG goes no, no, we need a big sexy dance number.
So in the end, the Angels being sexy is more important than the Angels being competent. Then again, maybe they just like doing elaborate Dita von Teese strip routines. But if that's the case, they should probably do it in their off-hours, not when they're on a case.
So I don't mind if McG wants to direct brainless action movies; he's better at it than many. Just so long as he stays away from the Terminator franchise. And Superman, because I just read that he wanted to cast Shia LeBeouf as Jimmy Olsen. That's one signal watch Superman would never answer.
Well, not much. The premise goes something like this. Tom Hardy plays lonely heart divorcee Tuck (does his estranged ex-wife hang around with a big neon sign saying "Consolation prize!" Do we get no hint at the issues that led to their split, or later reconciliation? Is there any early scene that implies she and Chris Pine are related, only for it to be revealed in the epilogue that they slept together, making this film either a lot more daring or a lot more shoddy than you'd think?). Tuck decides to get back in the dating game, and since you don't meet any beautiful women in the spy game (despite the fact that he can Pine meet two in the prologue who seem nice) and there aren't any attractive co-workers he could ask out who he wouldn't have to deceive and protect from vengeful terrorists (the only woman at the CIA seems to be the requisite see-we're-not-racist black authority figure, who is so used to saying "What the hell is going on here?" that she busts it out while Pine and Hardy are competing over who can throw the most paper wads into a trashcan. I don't know, that seems pretty harmless compared to destabilizing democratically elected governments. Maybe she should be concerned with that instead. And there seem to be bikini models constantly swimming in the pool above Chris Pine's glass ceiling... maybe he should try to ask one of them out.
The point is, Tuck decides to join an online dating website over the objections of his partner (
Wow. That movie was short. It seems that whole "which man will she choose?" thing got settled fast.
Wait, then he goes to her office and calls her frigid until she agrees to go out with him. Wow, all this time I thought women didn't like being stalked--turns out they just don't like being stalked by ugly people. Thanks, Hollywood!
Then Lauren goes on her date with Tuck and has a great time at a carnival, because where else would you take Reese Witherspoon? She goes out with FDR and he takes her to a club, where the bouncer lets him skip the line and the bartender knows his drink order, you know the rest—I'm glad being the CIA's top field agent isn't cutting into his clubbing time. Lauren isn't impressed and tries to leave.
Alright, so now the movie's over, right? Not only is Lauren not interested in FDR personally, because she doesn't even like the same activities he does. He ends up taking her to a pizza place, which she does like, but still. Someone who finds your favorite activities odious and wants to break off a date just because you attempted it; clearly girlfriend material. And pretending you enjoy things you have no conception of, as FDR proceeds to do to win her over, is obviously a great basis for a relationship. (Tuck, for his part, "discovers" that she enjoys classic cars and takes her for a drive in a classic Ford Mustang, but that seems like more of a mutually enjoyable activity. Because, c'mon, Mustang)
Alright, so FDR is the jerk who only wants Lauren as an exercise in cocksmanship and Tuck is the guy who really likes-likes her, so she ends up rejecting FDR and getting together with Tuck, right?
I couldn't find a non-hipster "they end up together" macro, so just imagine one here.
Now maybe you're thinking this is subversive, Lauren going with the "dangerous" guy instead of the "safe" one (yes, they say "safe"). I mean, they only do that in two-thirds of all movies (in the third, the woman dies for angst). But this is actually even more clichéd than you might think. FDR turns out to be a jerk with a heart of gold who Lauren reforms—by the end, he's proposing marriage and going out on double dates. And he's the only one she has sex with, as the epilogue reveals, so of course she's in love with him. Having sex with people you aren't in love with means you're a slut!
And yes, they had to be aware of that trope, since there were multiple endings and the reveal that Lauren didn't have sex with Tuck is part of the "Team FDR" ending. I'm not really sure you should be allowed to do that, just make as many endings as you like and pick one. You think George Lucas did that when he was making the good Star Wars? "Alright, we shot one ending where Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star and saves the day, and another where he and all his friends die horribly. We'll see which one the audience likes best."
Anyway, most of the movie is dedicated to Tuck and FDR spying on Lauren to try to do insider trading on her panties. She says Tuck is too safe, so he takes her to a paintball game and acts like a psycho (this works). Again, this was aimed at women, right? I mean, I know we as a nation wrote off the female gender as completely insane once they started finding Twilight romantic (True Blood didn't help), but c'mon. Then again, they had this script in production for years (at one point, Seth Rogen and Martin Lawrence were attached). So maybe this started out as satire of the Bush Administration, then Obama rolled around and because they believed either that he had stopped infringing on civil liberties or that it wasn't so bad if a Democrat did it, they changed it so that Lauren never finds out about the spying and the fact that both men have planted tracking devices on her ends up saving the day.
Now, this is going to sound like a weird thing to say, but I think the problem is that director McG has no interest in the rom-com genre. Which is fine, he's a guy, it's expected, but he's directing a rom-com. Yet, he doesn't even know the genre, they just know the conventions. For instance, usually in a movie like this, there's a part where the couple break up and they spend a while being sad to raise the stakes and get the audience to see that if they don't be together, they'll be miserable for the rest of their lives (or until they meet someone who could deign to fall in love with, say, Mila Kunis or Justin Timberlake). That doesn't happen in this movie, unless you count FDR and Tuck breaking up their partnership—then triumphantly declaring they're back when they save each others' lives in an action sequence—then sixty-nining. Hmm…
Instead, the movie goes straight from Lauren going "Double boyfriends, we are OVER!" to her getting kidnapped and needing to be saved. And of course, the reason they are OVER is that they didn't tell her they knew each other. Although how she would expect them to tell her they knew each other, given that she didn't tell them she was dating both of them, goes unexplored.
Why is it all romantic comedies have a third act where the man has to apologize for something that isn't his fault, or is even the woman's fault? Do a lot of screenwriters think that's what female audiences want? "Hmm, women love to make me grovel for forgiveness after I do something that isn't really my fault—they must love movies where the hero has to grovel for forgiveness for what amounts to inadvertently hurting the woman's feelings, instead of her being mature enough to admit she was mistaken."
This kind of half-assed storybuilding runs all the way through This Means War. What makes Tuck fall so head-over-heels in love with Lauren? He has an amiable first meeting with her in which he meets someone he liked on the internet and they smile at each other. C'mon, at least give them a Meet Cute.
Wait, FDR and Lauren get a Meet Cute, and it's just them bonding over an obscure little director known as Alfred Hitchcock. I'm not saying they should be comparing favorite films from the Guinea Pig series, but this is supposed to be "auteur" McG slipping some passion into a big studio film. And his little quirk is thinking Hitchcock is a good director? Sorry, but there's no there, there.
Things liven up a little whenever people need to hurt each other, like the aforementioned sequence where Tuck takes out a paintball course (coupled with how Tuck's ex-wife takes him back after finding out he's a government killer who narrowly escaped death at the hands of a vindictive German, maybe this film thinks women have the sexuality of a Charlie Atlas ad: "Kicking sand in someone's face? THERE GO MY PANTIES!) or a sequence where Tuck and FDR both prowl through Lauren's apartment as she sings along to rap music (yes, she is also a neurotic career woman who bemoans how single she is, why do you ask?). But all the bits where someone has to be funny or romantic fall flat. It's like McG wanted to direct another big action movie, but he's still in director jail after Terminator: Salvation, so he tried to sneak one inside a romantic comedy that didn't at all call for shoot-outs or car chases. Instead of adding a ticking clock to the proceedings, the villains just distract from the romance. All emotional entanglements are dealt with in a volley of CGI.
The thing is, I actually like McG as a director. The first Charlie's Angels was a lot better than it had any right to be. But I think I may have peeked there. Despite having a good eye for action, the man can't seem to find a good script to save his life, and he doesn't have the storytelling instincts to elevate bad material. John August, the writer of the Charlie's Angels movies, has an anecdote about that. McG wanted a big sexy dance number in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. August is all "dude, they're super-thieves. If they need someone's keycard, why don't they just grab it while he's in the john or something?" McG goes no, no, we need a big sexy dance number.
So in the end, the Angels being sexy is more important than the Angels being competent. Then again, maybe they just like doing elaborate Dita von Teese strip routines. But if that's the case, they should probably do it in their off-hours, not when they're on a case.
So I don't mind if McG wants to direct brainless action movies; he's better at it than many. Just so long as he stays away from the Terminator franchise. And Superman, because I just read that he wanted to cast Shia LeBeouf as Jimmy Olsen. That's one signal watch Superman would never answer.
