Popcorn Reviews: CRAZY, STUPID LOVE & THE CHANGE-UP

Apprentice Writer is fascinated by the phenomenon of identical twin movies.  You know, the ones thAT seem to share the same DNA in terms of logline yet seem worlds apart in execution.  Examples previously reviewed in this space were the drudging No Strings Attached vs. the unexpectedly entertaining Friends With Benefits.

Today's Installments:  In one corner, The Change Up.  In the other Crazy Stupid Love.

Both involve a devoted husband/father figure suddenly plucked out of his regular role (one by body-switching magic, the other by spouse who chooses to separate) and plunged into the role of free-to-look-at-other-women bachelor (one by landing inside the form of single best friend, the other by being taken under the wing of mega ladies man).  It is no doubt clear to the Gentle Reader which one Apprentice Writer liked and which one she loathed.

The problem was not casting, given that she likes all four male leads.  She has no clue whether Jason Bateman or Steve Carell actually are dads in real life, but she completely accepted them in those roles.  She is also very fond of Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling, and no, it's not just because they are fellow Canucks.  It's because she thought RR did a great job in The Proposal and RG did a great job in any movie she's ever seen him in.

The problem also wasn't premise, because she is willing in the case of books and movies to accept story-based paranormal phenomena (although, it must be said, the method by which the body change occurs is stultifyingly juvenile and if AW had taken this as an indication of the quality of the film as a whole and stopped watching at that point she would have saved herself time and grief).

The problem was lack of good story, lack of good dialogue, lack of charm, and most importantly, lack of any sort of likability of any of the characters - all of which CSL had in abundance.  Apprentice Writer predicts that the scene between Emma Stone's character Hannah and Ryan Gosling's character Jacob (if you've seen the movie - you know the one) will become as iconic as Meg Ryan's in When Harry Met Sally.

The only part of TCU which AW liked was the following instruction from bachelor character to dad character about to embark on the singles scene and trying to make himself look good:  "This is called hair product.  Too little and you look like a pedophile.  Too much and you look Persian."  This made AW howl, because she is married to a Persian man. Though he is innocent of gel excess, she has been to many a party where other Persian men were guilty.  This cracked her up, not just because it was true, but at the indication that the Persian community (at least, in Los Angeles) is so sizeable and certain habits so well-known that Hollywood believes the joke will have meaning for mainstream audiences.

The only part of CSL that AW didn't like was the speech ending scene (just like she didn't like speech ending in Scent of a Woman), because of the sermonizing speech, because there was absolutely no reason for the babysitter and her parents to be at that graduation, and because of the squick factor of how things ended between the son and the sitter.  But she loved that things did not end in black and white for the married couple, and that the bachelor character didn't try to justify himself to the dad or go overboard in trying to be convincing about character change.  It made sense for his character, and it was good for the movie. It is, perhaps, significant that even Mr. Apprentice Writer recently quoted the movie during a mutual shopping trip when he urged AW to "...Be better than the Gap!" which made her laugh.

Altogether, AW is left with the certainty she will watch CSL repeatedly, and with the question:  which movie developed the concept first, and which one piggybacked? Was the original conceiver rewarded with the superior film, or did the hijacker actually do a better job with the pirated premise?

Insults of Note

Ever since Monty Python's Flying Circus famous insult culminating in "...and furthermore you smell of elderberries!", it has become a mark of honour to come up with a noteworthy insult.

Apprentice Writer would like to nominate one:


"The problem is, your head has the proportions of a styrofoam peanut."

Ryan Gosling's cool bachelor character to Steve Carrell's uncool divorced dad character during sunglasses shopping, in Crazy Stupid Love.

Of Love & Raptors

One of those great real-life-but-sounds-like-a-movie stories:

Falcons need help with their love life.

Just ask Dr. Jane Goodall, of the unimpeachable wildlife knowledge credentials.  One of the many books she write talked in part about the alarming plummet in raptor populations worldwide due to pesticide etc. use, and how tremendously difficult it is to help falcon pairs with their dating life so as to increase chances   of breeding.  The very funny scene in recent animated movie "Rio" when the macaw pair didn't take to each other and got some help from scientists to set the mood, with a disco ball and Lionel Richie's "Say You, Say Me", is apparently not all that far from the truth.

It turns out some falcon couples can manage just fine by themselves, after all - if they have a secret weapon.  That secret weapon is choice of real estate.  Turns out, "location, location, location" is just as important for our feathered friends as it is for us.

A falcon pair decided to nest, of all places, on a concrete windowsill of mega-publisher Harlequin's corporate headquarters in Toronto.  Not romantic, say you?  Think again, say the pair.  They've now produced chicks Blaze, Amorata, and Mira and have a twitter & live cam following #harlequinfalcons.

Love conquers all, as Harlequin's unofficial motto may always have been, including - or maybe especially - for species hovering at extinction.

Tweet of the Day

Seen at Twitter:

"Let's have a moment of silence for all those people stuck in traffic on the way to the gym to ride stationary bicycles."
Unknown

This delights Apprentice Writer as much as a newspaper photo she once saw of a large building in background with "GYM" sign, and in foreground a staircase going up to it (empty) as well as an escalator (full of people carrying their workout duffle bags).

Quote of the Day

"I know what you're thinking.  It makes a crunching sound.  And the answer is no."

Anne Hathaway's character Emma, in "One Day"

Ha!
For the curious: Emma is anticipating just-good-friend Dexter's suggestion after they've just discovered the French beach they're lazing on is a nudist one.

1 or More Popcorn Reviews

There hasn't been any popcorn around here for awhile. Time for a new batch of movie reactions, minimal or more according to the Gentle Reader's preference.

Conan the Barbarian:

One: Urgh.

More: Apprentice Writer thought that any update of the Arnold Schwarzenegger atrocity would have to be an improvement. She thought wrong.

Blue Valentine

One: *sniffle*

More: So, so sad! So, so well-acted! Every moment onscreen for Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams both is utterly believable, and utterly tragic, in this story of an everyday blue-collar couple struggling to be a family. The bewilderment and emotional pain of wife, husband, and child is so clear and so heartbreakingly everyday AW almost couldn't bear watching. She had to self-medicate with a feel-good fluffy movie immediately after.

Bridesmaids

One: Girl-Self-Empowerment

More: AW approached this warily, feeling mistrustful of the mega-accolades surrounding this female-centric comedy. Happily she did end up liking it, though she could have done without the toilet humour that seems to have made up a large part of what audiences apparently felt made the film noteworthy. She liked Kristen Wiig as the protagonist, Rose Byrne as the stealth villain, and Melissa McCarthy as the ultimate girl-self-empowerer. The character she liked best, though, was Chris O'Dowd as the police officer. This was a surprise given how much AW loathed and despised his character in "The Crimson Petal and the White". An indication of his talent as an actor, and Ms. Wiig's talent in screenwriting.

Sherlock Holmes, Game of Shadows

One: Hurray!

More: Not quite as hugely entertaining as the original, perhaps because of ginormous expectations to live up to, but still roaring good fun.

Our Idiot Brother

One: Warm-and-fuzzy.

More: Paul Rudd goes both out of character (who knew the ultimate clean-cut guy could do grunge and shleppy?) and at the same time stays even more intensively in character (the ultimate good guy who deserves happiness and to get the girl) in this comedy about family (as opposed, it should be noted, to "family comedy"). AW had some genuine laughs that outweighed the too-rushed-and-therefore-unsatisfying resolution.

No Strings Attached / Friends with Benefits

One: Snooze / Laugh

More: Two movies with the exact same premise hit the market at the same time: what are the chances? AW is interested in who stole from whom creatively purely to figure out whether the very clear loser/winner demarcation corresponds to creator/copycat roles. NSA suffers from complete lack of chemistry between the leads and complete lack of charm in the story, whereas FWB has both, and a funny little self-satirical story-in-story as icing on the cake.

What say you, Gentle Reader? Agree? Disagree? Share your popcorn views.

REVIEW: The Singles

THE SINGLES

by Meredith Goldstein

Mainstream Women's Fiction

April 2012

Premise: A wedding causes five single invitees to evaluate their lives.

Cover: Title - Simple, direct, effective. Art - Very pretty and reflective of content, with the gold metallic lettering cleverly calling to mind the rings (i.e., life partners) that the novel protagonists don't have. The theme of social pressure for people to couple up literally forms the centre of attention.

Overall, well done and attractive.

First Sentence Test: "Twenty-nine-year-old bride-to-be Beth Eleanor Evans, a slender, freckled, strawberry blonde whom people called Bee because of her initials, stood in front of the whiteboard she'd purchased that day at the Target off Route 103."

Did this make AW want to read on? No

What Works: Weddings seem like a hot topic right now, fascinating to far more people than just those intending to tie the knot in the near future if the multitude of wedding reality shows and are any indication. This novel, and the earlier "Girls in White Dresses", seems to ride the wave.

Why? Why are weddings intriguing for people not directly participating? As a person who was, yes, sucked into regular viewing of one or two of those shows, please allow Apprentice Writer to voice her theory: it's the expanding effect weddings have on the psychology of onlookers. No one (at least, not in this novel) remains within their regular emotional parameters prior and during the wedding. Their highs get higher and their lows lower, and it can be tremendously addictive entertainment to have a window on what happens under those circumstances. As such, AW was sold on the premise of this book.

She enjoyed the ensemble approach, with events looked at through the eyes of multiple characters rather than just one point of view. AW also liked how each POV character had clear strengths and weaknesses; there were none who skewed heavily to the "good" or "evil" side. AW would like to think that this realistic and balanced approach has something to do with the author's background as a newspaper etiquette and advice giver, a perspective that would tend to encourage the view that a) we all have our personal issues to work through, and b) one need not ever given up on anyone completely. This is how the characters come across, and AW appreciated it.

What Doesn't: AW received an Advance Readers Copy, and therefore has no way of knowing how much of the manuscript that finally went to print may have changed and improved. That being said, the authorial style and voice didn't always entirely flow for her. Run-on sentences (as from first page, above) were not uncommon, as was a tendency to repetition: "She was blinded just a few seconds later by a vicious, almost blinding fluorescent light."

AW disliked the biological reality descriptions included in some scenes for two reasons; it seemed to her that the point could have been gotten across without going into as much detail, and also, it seemed to underline how the choices of some characters kept them at what seemed like a high school/college level rather than people moving on and establishing themselves in their professional lives. It is true that often, individuals may be moving forward in some parts of their lives while feeling as though they are stuck in others. This is a common and relatable phenomenon for many if not most readers. But characters such as the woman who accepts and swallows an unknown pill from a near stranger and then (against advice) drinks steadily without eating gets no sympathy when things start going wrong.

Overall: A slice-of-life novel about people trying to find their post-college groove and figure out the age old question of how or even whether to find a partner that manages to make the reader, whether single or partnered, feel their status is valid.