You know you're married to a pretty spectacular woman when you're with her at a movie that's ostensibly a chick flick and during one of the movie's romantic high points (relatively speaking) - a moment at which most of the misguided audience let out a collective "awwwww" - your wife turns to you and says the six words in today's headline.
(Strange - six words and movies, that reminds me of something. But what exactly? Hang on, I'll think of it.)
The movie in question? He's Just Not That Into You. My advice: Stay away. Far, far away.
Now, to be fair, there were a handful of things I liked about the movie.
1. For no apparent reason - other than that Ben Affleck's character had a boat - the movie took place in my fair hometown of Baltimore. And it made Baltimore look gooood, man. Exposed brick lofts, exposed brick condos, exposed brick drinking establishments. Come to think of it, there was a really lot of exposed brick. Surely some building in Charm City has plaster walls, right? Anyway...
2. Prominent and tasteful use of a great older song by Wilco (my favorite band, in case I haven't mentioned it). "I Must Be High," recorded way back in '95, was playing in one of the many exposed-brick-bar scenes. Amazing how much better a movie scene gets when there's a Wilco song involved. Do your ears a favor and enjoy this live version.
3. Ben Affleck's character wants to keep a ratty pair of tan cargo pants and his girlfriend, played by Jennifer Aniston, wants him to get rid of them. Which, if the pants were chocolate brown, and if they weren't actually pants, but a very stylish woven necktie, is very similar to an experience I once had.
4. With the big-screen pairing of Ginnifer Goodwin and Justin Long, I could reminisce about their work as Diane Snyder and Warren Cheswick (I'm not sure why, but I think it was Warren P. Cheswick, right?) in canceled-before-its-time Ed. Which, strangely, is the second Ed reference in the last three weeks on SFTC. That's a new record, for sure.
And yet... and yet... despite those four nuggets of wonderfulness, I really did not like this movie. It's painful to watch people who otherwise seemed intelligent and well-adjusted make wrong decision after wrong decision about their relationships (which I know is realistic; I just don't want to have it crammed down my throat for two hours) and then have to sit there and digest happy endings for, well, more than half of them. Blech.
Also, it's painful to watch all of that nonsense and then have to endure a scene in which the Keane song "Somewhere Only We Know" - actually, it was worse: a sadistically extended version of the Keane song "Somewhere Only We Know" - is played as the background music for one of the incredibly predictable happy endings. Nothing against the song, per se, although if I were in charge of music for this movie, I'd have chosen something else if for no other reason than its appearance in the trailer for The Lake House three years ago. Damn thing still makes me think about bad Keanu Reeves movies. (Is that redundant?)
Oh right! I know what that six-word stuff reminded me of: It's time for a Six-word Movie Review! About two-thirds of the way through the movie, I thought of my six words, and nothing in the last third made me reconsider. I don't think I can top my wife's perfectly chosen half-dozen, and - as she pointed out - using the six-word review you're about to read means I can't use this one again if we see a movie that's (gasp) worse than this one. But I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that won't happen for a very long time. So here goes...
The film: He's Just Not That Into You
The six-word review: Made me want to kill myself.
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