Tag Archives: romantic comedy

Management

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Last week I think was a good week for catching an indie romantic comedy. Management was an enjoyable, if deeply flawed, example of the genre. There’s this guy, Steve Zahn, who is the night manager at his parents’ small-town motel. He’s the kind of actor that you know who he is, but have no way of saying what it is you’ve seen him in before.[1] One day, corporate art saleswoman Jennifer Aniston stays at the hotel, and he gets the idea to give her gifts, courtesy of “management”, in the hopes that… well, I doubt he knows exactly what it is that he hopes for, being the sad sack of a lonely man that he is. Whatever he hoped for, he got a whole lot more than that. But what would have been an unlikely one night stand is turned on its head when he flies out to see her after her departure the next day.

And that’s where the implausibility comes in. I don’t think he was a stalker, so much as a sad sack of a lonely man who also has no sense of realistic boundaries. But she didn’t have the audience’s insight into his head, and would surely have seen him as nothing but a stalker. So, we have about 75% of a movie that is predicated on the least likely reaction I can conceive of, wherein she decides to keep him in her house overnight so that they can hang out for a day or two. There are many more obstacles on the path to what may or may not be true love, as the genre dictates, but it’s hard to really buy anything after that one glaring flaw.

Still, if you can ignore that, it’s pretty decent, starting out with Office-style discomfort humor but frequently branching out into the genuinely funny kind that has no need to be preceded by “horrified”. The best acting is turned in by Steve Zahn’s mom and by his Asian sidekick; as you would expect of an indie comedy, the bit characters are the ones to shine. And I guess that’s mostly why I still watch these: yay, acting surprises!

[1] But not, I think, a character actor. It’s hard to explain why not, which possibly indicates my inaccuracy as to this point.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

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This is a really easy review, because of how the story is well-covered ground. You know, A Christmas Carol? Or the Disney version, or the Muppets version, or the Bill Murray version? I’m saying, you know this story, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past does itself the service of not leaping out with a sudden surprise twist that leaves you wondering if you’re watching the right movie after all. The question, then, is what’s the point of watching a romantic comedy remake of an old story you’ve already seen (or read) several times? The point is this: it’s very, very funny. Funny via quite a few different genres of humor. It’s also a little bit sweet, like you’d expect from the “romantic comedy” tag, but it’s not cloying by any means. Mostly, though, funny. If you like laughing for an hour or two, check it out!

Adventureland

Have you noticed how practically everything that’s going on in Hollywood in the past three or four years isn’t more than a degree of separation from Freaks and Geeks? Which was a short-lived NBC coming of age drama, in case you entirely failed to be aware of it. But then I doubt you’d have noticed this new thing. I’ll tell you who has, though: Terry Gross, that chick from Fresh Air.

The latest such endeavour connected to a failed-but-brilliant decade-old high school show is Adventureland, a nearly perfect fusion of coming of age drama and romantic comedy in which a kid whose failure to be Michael Cera I could only rarely get past loses his chance to explore Europe and find himself in the summer of 1987 between college and grad school, when his father runs into an economic downturn. Instead, he comes home to Pittsburgh and takes a job at the local amusement park. Hijinks as well as self-finding ensue.

There are two things that make the movie better than it has any right to be. The first and more universally applicable is that the characters are so fully realized. Lots of them are annoying as all get out, but even the ones for whom the audience feels little or no sympathy are still completely believable, with nary a caricature to be found. And the main characters are as flawed, sympathetic, and nuanced as you could really ask for. (Particularly Ryan Reynolds’ lothario of a maintenance man, who could easily have been one-dimensional with little to no quality drop-off for the film.) And the second thing is that the female lead hits all of my buttons for The Right Girl.[1] I know a movie can only give a cursory character study at best, but, yeah.

If you’re wondering why I’m leaving the Not Michael Cera guy out of this review? It’s mostly because I don’t want to spoil the experience of him.

[1] Also, I am not alone in this assessment, though this is not the first time Ryan and I have agreed on such things.

Yes Man

Return of the Wednesday dollar movie, yay. Less yay is that I still haven’t seen Friday the 13th’s remake yet. But that’s okay, because I will. What I did see was Yes Man, a very much by-the-numbers romantic comedy in which Jim Carrey meets the beautifully-voiced and pleasantly quirkily-featured Zooey Deschanel by virtue of saying yes to everything that comes his way.

Jim, you see, is this sad sack of a guy who got divorced several years ago and has pretty much given up. Whatever he does not commit to experiencing cannot disappoint him, so he commits to nothing. Except, he runs into an ex-coworker at an extremely low point and gets talked into a seminar about the power of “Yes!” From there forward, his life turns into a whirlwind of adventure and romance that has only one possible flaw. Well, okay, maybe two. I’d hate to spoil them, though.

Both the movie’s apparent message and especially its underlying actual message have a lot to recommend them, for anyone who is in shutdown mode. Pleasant though it would be, the world won’t come to you. (And I say that as someone for whom it actually did, once.) If you’re happy, that’s as far as it goes, and more power to you. But if you’re not, you pretty much have to stop waiting and get out there outside your numbed comfort zone and find the good things. And it will suck part of the time, but without the risk, you won’t ever get out of the hole. Also, though, you can swing too far in that direction. So don’t do that one either?

I guess my point is, if I didn’t think pretty highly of my present circumstances, I would find this movie inspiring instead of merely competently funny and exceedingly fun.

WALL-E

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So there I am, sitting at the bar, nursing the water between my third and fourth beers, occasionally snaking a fry from Ryan, sure because they taste good but mostly for the thrill of the hunt, when suddenly the girl next to me says, “Hey, babe. Is this guy boring you? Why not come with me, I’m going to see a movie about robots who could conceivably go to another planet!” Which is why I never had my fourth beer.

But that’s okay, because I got to see an impressive movie instead, in which a tiny robot has decided to clean up this town. And, okay, this town is Earth, and he was probably programmed rather than deciding. But he sounded like R2-D2 (by virtue of being voiced by the same sound editor), so that earns him a lot of credit. WALL-E is the last of his product line still running, so he has the planet to himself. And over the course of probably hundreds of years, he’s picked up personality from unlikely sources. I have to say, as last beings on the planet go, he probably gave Will Smith a run for his money, melancholy pathos and all.[1]

So, after a period in which we get to absorb the tragedy of the ruined planet and its last inhabitant or two, everything changes with the arrival of a bitchy feminine robot on a mission designed by some humans that are still wandering the galaxy. And, you guessed it, WALL-E’s life will never be the same again. A lot of people claim that Pixar makes movies that are equally enjoyable by kids and adults. I’ve skipped a lot of them recently; I think the last one I saw was The Incredibles, and I was quick to acknowledge I was watching a kid movie, contrary to that same claim I’m saying people sometimes make. I point this out as a preface.

Because, I’m not going to claim that with WALL-E, Pixar finally made a movie that can be enjoyed by adults and kids alike. It’s more like… honestly, I felt like Pixar made an adult movie and then added a bunch of kid-laughs after they remembered they were Pixar and are only allowed to make kid movies. So now the kids are able to sit in the theater and not be bored by what their parents are watching. Which is a trend that I hope continues, because damn, but the effects are consistently spectacular, and it’s nice not to be even a little bored between them. Yes, it was a child-like, innocent movie. But if it was specifically kid-oriented, then I’d think the other Pixar movies would have sucked me in better than they did.

P.S. If you happen to watch it, there’s a thing that bothered me a little bit. I get why a Disney movie isn’t going to delve into the mechanics of reproduction, but did it seem to anyone else that the humans should have become extinct a generation or two prior to the events depicted, or at the very least should have been on their way in this generation?

[1] I should pause here to point out the possibility that my identification with our robotic main character here may have colored my favorable impression of the movie. But I’m pretty sure that’s it’s also as good as I think it was.

Run Fatboy Run

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Way back at the dawn of Delirium here, I watched a fantastic movie called Shaun of the Dead. It was a satirical zombie-laden romantic comedy which was also hilarious, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Later, I watched Hot Fuzz due to it sharing some of the same actors, including the lead actor and co-writer, Simon Pegg. Hot Fuzz was a satirically over-the-top action movie, and it was also hilarious as well as highly recommendable.

At this point, it is fair to say that I am essentially sold on Simon Pegg. Therefore, it is no surprise that I’ve been to see his most recent starred and co-written movie, Run Fatboy Run. It’s maybe a little surprising I waited this long to see it, but sometimes life jumps in the way, all scary and monster-like and you have to run through the woods while it plods implacably behind you. You know, the kind of metaphor that would be pitch perfect if I were using it to segue into Shaun of the Dead? It maybe seems a little more out of place describing a straightforward romantic comedy about marathons; I suppose life doesn’t always do what we’d like, though, and there’s no help for that, and you just have to keep on putting one foot in front of the other nevertheless. (Oh, neat, the metaphor fixed itself!)

There’s no denying that this is exactly what Run Fatboy Run is. No satire of sports films here; the montage scene is even played straight. But there’s nothing wrong with these guys doing a normal romantic comedy, as long as they promise to remain hilarious. And, hooray, they have. If my heart was warmed at the same time, so be it! Plotwise, Simon Pegg leaves his extremely pregnant girlfriend at the altar, and 5 years later he’s finally starting to realize what a tremendous mistake that was, by virtue of spending time around her as they do the friendly visitation thing around their son. Only, now he’s an out-of-shape slob who hasn’t accomplished anything worthwhile in that same 5 years, and his ex- has a new boyfriend (will he turn out to be a prat?). So he decides to prove his love by running a marathon. Hijinx, as they say, ensue.

In review: yay, Simon Pegg, for being an awesome writer and actor both. Everyone should be watching all three of these movies!

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

mv5bmtyzodgzmjaym15bml5banbnxkftztcwmti3nzi2mq-_v1_After finishing the first Lucifer volume, I started reading Dzur, which is nice because I haven’t read a Vlad Taltos book in years. Both of these events (the finishing and the starting) occurred while in line to see a sneak preview of a movie coming out next month, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. After getting a couple of chapters into the book, the movie started. And then I left it behind in the theater, not to be discovered in the Lost and Found this morning as I had hoped. None of which would be particularly relevant, except that the last time I lost a book in a theater, it was Brokedown Palace by the same author and set in the same universe. I’m assuming there’s a lesson in that, somewhere. But mostly it means that when I review the new Star Wars book I’m currently reading instead, it will suffer by already not being nearly as good as Dzur was. Dammit.

But anyway, there was also this movie, right? Marshall from How I Met Your Mother is a composer who’s dating actress Veronica Mars (and writing the incidental music for her cop drama TV show), but then after several shots of his cock taking up the majority of the early-movie screen time, they break up because she’s cheating on him with some British rock star. After weeks of misery, he goes to Hawaii for a vacation, only to discover that Veronica and her new rocker boyfriend are staying at the resort. Also, Jackie from the 70’s Show is one of the hotel staff, and she has her eye on Marshall, who I should probably be referring to in some other way to avoid confusion with the film’s title. (Veronica Mars is Sarah Marshall, incidentally.) In any event, hilarity ensues, and there is a pretty great supporting cast to help the hilarity along its way. Also written by Marshall, aka Jason Segel, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is consistently funny across several genres of humor. The writing is a little looser than it could be, with a couple of characters seeming to serve no plot purpose at all, but the laughs make up for a lot.

And what they don’t cover is handled deftly by the film’s soft, gooey center. Three out of the four major characters are achingly human in between the laughs, trying to make their best of a horrible situation that we’ve probably all experienced at some point, a situation in which there is plenty of blame to share around to all parties. But, I mean, don’t go see it because of the romance and drama. Go see it because it’s pretty hilarious, and then just be pleased by the perks.[1]

[1] To sum up, these were a surprisingly realistic and adult portrayal of a rocky break-up, Kristen Bell on constant bikini display, and Marshall-cock.

Good Luck Chuck

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This is how romantic comedies work, and feel free to insert different generic nouns in any particular spot, though by rights they should be used consistently. 1) Boy meets girl. 2) Boy loses girl. 3a) If the circumstances under which the boy lost the girl were at all plausible, boy wins girl back through a completely implausible sequence of actions that would have a boy who was not in a romantic comedy jailed or possibly killed in self-defense. 3b) Else, if the circumstances under which the boy lost the girl were completely implausible, the boy and/or girl return to their senses, upon which boy wins girls back. 4) Happily ever after.

In case you’re wondering, Good Luck Chuck falls under 3b. And by rights, this would be enough information to comprise a good review, because romantic comedies are not known for their innovations. However, there are two additional points worth addressing. Except for Chuck’s troll of a best friend, who is appalling for 80% or more of his screen time, the movie is mostly pretty damn funny, above and beyond reasonable genre expectations. And then there’s Jessica Alba. Maybe I’m on crack and she’s one of those classically hot people that everyone can agree on, but to me she’s more pretty in that girl-next-door kind of way, if admittedly at the top of that particular heap. And since cute trending toward pretty matches my personal tastes a lot more than hot, my point is that she works for me physically. But that kind of thing happens all the time, and would not be noteworthy except that her character (who looks just like her!) is a charmingly clumsy penguin enthusiast and trainer at the local Sea world knockoff, who makes trips to the Antarctic in pursuit of her chosen field. The words “tailor-made” spring to mind, is all I’m saying.

Well, and I suppose if you’re the kind of person who wants to know what a movie is actually about, it’s like this. As a pre-teen, Chuck pissed off a goth girl during a game of spin the bottle, so she cursed him to never achieve love, despite that love would find everyone who he was involved with. And sure enough, as an adult, every time he has sex with a girl and then they break up, she marries her next boyfriend. (To demonstrate this effect to the audience, he has sex with a lot of girls. We in the industry call this a plausible excuse for on-screen breasts.) Then he meets Cam, falls in love with her, and tries to find a way to keep from triggering the curse. I maintain that 3b should have been sufficient information, though.

Shaun of the Dead

mv5bmtu2nja0ndk0nv5bml5banbnxkftztcwota0otqzmw-_v1_sy1000_cr006211000_al_Back some time ago, one of my first ex- girlfriends returned to Dallas after a few years’ stint in the Air Force and being married and then divorced. Because of how badly her current life sucked, she was looking to reconnect with elements of her previous life, and I was one of the addressees on that particular email. Then, because of how lazy I am with email, about a year went by. But I found myself unexpectedly in Dallas yesterday, so we got together for a movie and a catching up.

The thing about her is, she really wanted to get married, back in the day. I say this not out of a sense of disgruntlement or even armchair psychology, but by simple math. She was married, at age 18 and mere moments after high school graduation, about 10 months after she broke up with me (who wanted to get through college first). I know all of this seems dreadfully pointless, but I like to set a good background.

Anyway, after making me promise to give her veto power if I picked a chick flick, we settled on Shaun of the Dead. This is the story of me. Well, okay, it’s not, and I’m very bitter about it, because it should be the story of me. It is pretty much dead on with how I imagine that my life is going, and how it ought to go.

Shaun is 29, has a go nowhere job, and spends the rest of his life commuting back and forth with other dead-eyed Brits, playing video games with his roommates, and taking his girlfriend to the same pub every night. As girls in movies are wont to do, she gets fed up and asks for a change, which he flubs as hopeless 20-something slackers in movies are wont to do, and then she dumps him. This is well-trodden cinema fare.

But then, the lucky bastard wakes up the next morning to find that zombies have taken over the landscape, and it’s up to him to fight them off and gather his loved ones together for safety until everything is back to normal. Herein lies my existential angst. I now have cinematic proof of what I’ve always believed, that every problem in my life would be solved by a handy mass dying off of the population due to zombification and subsequent assault on the living.

So, right, the review. It was really funny. A bit gory. A couple of jump in your seat scares. Plus the whole theme they had going where it was impossible to tell that anything happened at first because the dead-eyed zombies were an exact match for the dead-eyed Brits. Good stuff. Most people don’t get ‘zombies as social commentary’ right, but this one does the job. Better movie than the Resident Evils, even without any shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.

Although the movie was great, it’s not really the best part of the story. No, that came early in the zombie onslaught, when Shaun picks up the phone to call his girlfiend and gets a busy signal. “She’s engaged,” he reports to his roommate, who replies “That seems a bit fast, doesn’t it?” Even as Shaun glared at him for making a joke at a time like that, I was awash in schadenfreude sitting there next to Kim, sharing a popcorn. I don’t think she noticed, though.