Bear With Me...
I'm tweaking the appearance, importing archives manually from the previous location, working on my other blog, and making a few life transitions. I'm down to posting once or twice a week, but working on it through the summer!
First thing’s first: reviewers seem to have missed the fact that The Switch is just a rom-com dressed up in grownup clothing. As such, it’s going to act like one, coming to an entirely predictable conclusion if you know the genre at all. So no trying to palm it off as anything else, okay?
That said, the grown-up feel of the movie is exactly what sets it apart from other rom-coms, and the excellent execution allows a certain amount of (dare I say it) suspense — who woulda thunk the movie’s directors, who started out with the excellent but very silly Blades of Glory, would grow up into such sensitive guys?
An inauspicious beginning....
Perhaps I’m showing my age, but I prefer characters who are confused screw-ups muddling through life. Jason Bateman’s Wally, long-time friend to Kassie (Jennifer Aniston), is just such a screw-up. Kassie, too, has given up on finding the perfect man, so she finds a too-to-be-true sperm donor (Patrick Wilson) instead. Kassie gets pregnant — but of course, as even the trailers give away, a drunk Wally has “hijacked the pregnancy.” Cut to seven years later, when Kassie moves back to the city with her kid and hijinx ensue.
I hate to say it, but I agree with the critics on this one: Jason Bateman makes the film. Wally is a neurotic, childish jackass, and it takes considerable talent to make him likable. Or maybe it’s just Bateman’s irresistably crinkly blue eyes on the big screen. I don’t know, but I do know he’s ridiculously adorable. (Side note, during the movie I kept thinking what an awesome blue-eyed baby he and Jennifer Aniston would make in real life. Too bad he’s married.) And look, I could get into the gender ramifications of a pregnancy movie revolving entirely around the guy, but I liked this movie too much to do so.
Seriously, she's just as cute as he is.
Aniston deserves credit too, though she’s obviously never going to get it from anyone. Her performances in this movie and The Break Up require subtlety to make the story work; after all, if Kassie were just a superficial moron we wouldn’t care about her either. The cardinal rule of rom-coms is that you have to want the couple to get together, and we certainly do — and not just for “family values” reasons, either.
The movie also fulfills the remaining conditions for rom-com greatness: stellar supporting cast and great scenery and clothing. Jeff Goldblum is clearly enjoying a renaissance of late, and his turn as Wally’s co-worker Leonard helps leaven the movie considerably. Juliette Lewis, amusing as always, plays Kassie’s wacky best friend Debbie. Patrick Wilson makes the sperm donor (who returns to compete for Kassie’s affections) believably attractive, yet desperate in his own way. And the kid (Thomas Robinson) is only slightly too precious for his role, so he distracts as little as possible from the actual, interesting grownup material. Finally, the understated shots of New York were just as pleasant to look at as the nice clothes.
Awwwwww.
Look, if you want a by-the-numbers rom-com, this is not it. Neither is it a raunchy, laugh-a-minute Judd Apatow flick, or even as harmlessly raucous as Blades of Glory. So don’t see it if that’s all the subtlety you can handle. The Switch is based on Jeffrey Eugenides’ short story, “The Baster,” and believe it or not, I think the movie captures something of the literary pacing. So if you have the patience to appreciate an old-fashioned, character driven story, and a good tolerance for Office/Breakup-style moments of discomfort, you’ll probably enjoy this movie.
Stop the Presses!
Awww, did the poor widdle reviewer have to see something that wasn't an art film?
OK, OK, I’m being a little snarky, I admit. But one of my biggest pet peeves is reviewers who can’t deal with rom-coms being…well, rom-coms. They get all ticked off about the fact that they’re predictable. Yup, they’re predictable. They’re romantic comedies. What else were you expecting? And while we’re at it would you like to explain to me how action flicks aren’t predictable and trite? ‘Cause I’m not getting that.
And as for this gal’s complaint that The Switch is “sitcommy,” there’s a very simple explanation for that. Rom-coms and sitcoms come from exactly the same source, two thousand years of a particular comedy genre. You know, the kind that specializes in stock characters and happy endings. Which is why the damned thing looks so similar through all those centuries, and why it’s never going to change, and why it’s unreasonable to ask it to.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you reviewers can’t deal with rom-coms on their own terms, DON’T SEE THEM. And stop whining about them to the rest of us who can deal with them. And stop dissing Jennifer Aniston, because her response to Bill O’Reilly has put her on my Awesome list.
End of rant.
Humility is easy to find in this life. Just weeks after having an “over it” moment when I saw Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, I found myself pleasantly surprised while reading Sarah Silverman’s The Bedwetter and Olivia Munn’s Suck It, Wonder Woman!. Looks like I too was guilty of not giving a couple of funnyladies the credit they deserve. My bad.
Olivia Munn never really did it for me on Attack of the Show. But my interest was piqued by a Vanity Fair interview where Munn seemed a lot cooler than G4 had led me to believe. Munn’s book confirmed my suspicions: it’s funnier than the stuff she’s already done, and gosh darn it, she has the psychic scars to be a real comedienne.
The essays detail several different topics. Among them is Munn’s life growing up as an outcast, army brat, and unpretty geek — and yes, there are pictures to prove it. Munn’s advice to men is hilariously up front, and I really enjoyed her tales of Hollywood horror. I’m now wondering if she gets to write her own material on her shows, and guessing maybe not. Admittedly, it must be difficult for mostly male teams to write for a woman like Munn. But having read her book, I’d love to see her do standup about the subjects she covers.
With Sarah Silverman, it’s the opposite case: she’s got standup chops, definitely writes her own material, and even headed up her own show. I think her comedy has moments of absolute brilliance, but other moments of not-so-brilliance. So I had mixed feelings about her before reading the book.
After reading it, however, I really appreciate Silverman’s comic craftsmanship, as well her devotion to producing a quality product. And of course her blunt honesty — not surprising given her jokes, but perhaps more poignant when turned to her own young life. It’s also fascinating to read her side of the story regarding her VMA jokes about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. (Come to think of it, Russell Brand had debacles too — maybe it’s just not a good idea to host the VMAs?) Silverman’s book shows a nice turn of phrase and (of course) some outrageously inappropriate stories of the sort you’d expect, but it’s also really well-written.
Both books include some interesting illustrations and pictures. And both give an interesting view on being attractive, smart, and funny — somehow that never seems to work out very well in the show business world. Which may be why both women have such great comic material to work with.
I’d recommend these books to any general reader who isn’t too much of a prude — a picture of a naked penis appears in Silverman’s book, and Munn gives sex tips. Even if you don’t think these gals are funny performers, you might be surprised at how much you like their prose. I know I was.
Right before the movie started, my viewing companion told me it was a remake of a French movie. I hadn’t known that, but I like to think I would have guessed it — after the first five minutes, which was a meticulous study in stuffed mice, it was clear that we were not dealing with your typical broad American comedy.
Barry shows Tim his stuffed mice.
The premise is straightforward: Tim (Paul Rudd) needs to find an idiot to bring to dinner to impress his boss. Despite the objections of his ridiculously hot, French girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak), Tim plans to bring dimwitted IRS employee Barry (Steve Carell). Meanwhile, Tim is doggedly pursued by his crazy ex-girlfriend Darla (Lucy Punch), and tries not to drive Stephanie into the arms of her client Kieran (Jermaine Clement).
Though I did enjoy this movie, it left me and my viewing companion in serious need of a beer. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, but there’s also enough pathos (courtesy of a great performance by Carell) to keep it from being a feel-good comedy. Director Jay Roach (of Austin Powers fame) delivers a well-paced story: you know there are going to be plenty of painful revelations, but you’re still not sure exactly when they’re going to hit. The underlying sadness wasn’t easy to shake, even when leaving the theater — seriously, it was those damned mice. You’ll have to take my word for it since I can’t find a closeup.
Barry and Kieran share a moment.
The cast is really what makes the movie. Carell and Rudd are comic veterans, of course, as are Larry Wilmore and Ron Livingston, playing heartless co-workers (and it’s particularly amusing to see Peter from Office Space playing a corporate jerk). Kristen Schaal is very funny as Tim’s hyper-driven assistant. There’s an overabundance of British talent here: David Walliams as the Swiss investor, Lucy Punch as Darla — and as Kieran the diva artiste, Jermaine Clement gives Russell Brand’s Aldous Snow a serious run for his money. Finally, there’s Zach Galifianakis (Barry’s boss Thurman), who I have to admit I still don’t quite get, but who was definitely doing it for the theater at large.
Critics were lukewarm on this film, I think because it’s not as broad as the commercials made it out to be. I think it’s still well worth seeing, though — just don’t expect it to be The Hangover, and you’ll be fine.
Hot in Cleveland has had some ups and downs; I loved the Huey Lewis sex episode, but the Wayne Knight/oh-no-what-have-I-said episode was just too unapologetically…sitcom-y. Last night’s episode went above and beyond the call of sitcom duty, though, by doing a nice little deconstruction of romantic comedies.
If there’s one thing I’ve brought gotten from being a scholar, it’s a love for the “meta.” “Meta”, to me, means addressing not just the subject at hand (say a genre of comedy) bu employing theme and variation on said subject and occasionally breaking the fourth wall so the tropes can play out in ironic, semi-ironic, or not at all ironic ways. The zen of meta is doing it just enough — too much is too clever by half; too little and you’re not being ironic at all. And hey, if Metacritic can be meta, we can all be meta.
So, last night, when the characters in Hot In Cleveland explicitly dissed rom-com stereotypes, but also lived them, the show went meta — thus proving it’s more on board with the Zeitgeist of “young” shows like Community than I would have guessed, and providing an enjoyable riff on a topic dear to my heart.
PS I just love Jane Leeves’ character and I want all her clothes.
You know, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with my rant on The Daily Show/sexism fiasco, but I’ve only just realized what was bothering me.
Last night, the Show returned and took on the Sherrod scandal with a very funny bit where Wyatt Cenac and Jon Stewart argued about why we can’t have discussions about racism. It was, as usual, a well-written reminder of why race is still an issue that needs to be talked about. But as I watched, I kept thinking, Why on earth couldn’t they have done this with the sexism thing? Why can’t we have a funny skit about why we can’t talk about sexism?
No, really, why? Edgy race jokes, playing on the show’s own correspondents, are par for the course, but the one time sexism becomes a real issue, they trot out every female employee in an earnest and defensive display that might as well have said,”That’s not funny!” Why was there one lame joke in response to the ordeal (“Jezebel thinks I’m sexist pig!”) while skits about race are a staple of the show?
Obviously, the writers had more time to deal with the Sherrod scandal, but I don’t think that the entirety of the situation. Erasing racism and sexism means equal opportunity joking. By treating sexism as, paradoxically, too serious to joke about, The Daily Show is actually hurting the cause. Its exellent and edgy jokes about race treat the meta-issue, namely that no matter how much we’d like to think we’re past racism, we’re not, and we need to keep talking about it until we are. But, apart from a few excellent Sam Bee skits during the Clinton candidacy, there aren’t many skits that treat sexism qua sexism.
Until we can joke about race and gender in the same way, we’re stuck in vicious little holding pattern: sexism, unlike racism, is never a four-alarm issue in the “serious” news, but now it’s also too serious to joke about in the funny news. We lose on all counts.
As frustrating as it is, last night’s clip was still funny, so here it is — but seriously, imagine how much cooler the Show would have looked if it had done this for the sexism thing!!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Lost in Race | ||||
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Advertisers for men’s products are finally getting that guys don’t buy masculine ideal — or maybe it’s just that the twentysomethings of Gen-Y can’t understand communication without irony. That’s been my experience anyway.
But it’s still fun to watch all these commercials parodying “manly” behavior (like the Dove ad that encourages men to feel “comfortable” with themselves) and this Gillette ad that makes fun of the Dove ad:
The above ad is doing an impressive balancing act, mocking “manly” activities by means of exaggeration but still insisting on the validity of its own masculine product. Simple exaggeration is an approach that Axe also employed — all those chicks throwing themselves at you is funny but still desirable — throwing in the occasional absurdity (that chocolate guy creeps me out).
The next step in advertising was to make fun not just of the ideal, but of the form itself. So now commercials are parodying commercials by imitating their stereotypes from an ironic distance. Which is awesome, and fits right in with the current preference for ironic communication.
Old Spice, despite being your dad’s line of product, was at always at the forefront of this kind advertising. It started with those brilliant Bruce Campbell commercials, where he’s playing the ultimate manly man, surrounded by all sorts of “masculine” objects, talking nonsensically about the masculine mystique:
That was followed by that weird commercial where Campbell did a sleazy lounge version of “Hungry Like the Wolf” surrounded by babes.
Now we’ve got the latest line of Old Spice commercials, which take the over-masculine metaphor to its logical limit.
In the first place, Isaiah Mustafa, better known as “that Old Spice” guy, has become his own comic brand — the latest videos have nothing to do with the product and simply a celebrate the betoweled Mustafa proposing on behalf of a fan, reading Tweets, and generally hamming it up.
Mustafa is a great physical comedian, and the humor of his character is that he’s a straight-up unaware buffoon, like Zapp Brannigan with a little Colbert thrown in — why else does the heading at the top of his Old Spice channel say “I’m on an internet”? Unlike most buffoons, though, Mustafa’s actually handsome. Which is part of the appeal, obviously.
The commercials rely on the same overkill of manly tropes (horses, power tools, motorcycles) that previous ones did, and throw in quite a bit of visual humor as well (shirts flying on and off, scenery being yanked around).
It’s also interesting that this line of ads is addressed to women even though it’s a male product. I think this ads to the meta- element of the humor; it’s not just men talking to men, it’s a man talking to women on behalf of men, telling them their expectations (diamonds, cakes, tickets to “that thing you love”) are ridiculous. I like this gender equality; both men and women are portrayed as ridiculous in the Old Spice world. And hey, there may even be a little fear-based humor (men being afraid of guys like Mustafa) or general relief that someone is pointing out how ridiculous all these fantasies are.
In short, the reason these commercials are so successful is the same reason Airplane is so successful: lots of different kinds of humor, going on all at once. By my count (and yes, I did count once), Airplane averaged about 5 jokes per minutes. Given that each of these ads is about 30 seconds, I think Old Spice has doubled that. Wow.
And rhe franchise is big enough to have inspired its own parody/pastiche, this guy shilling the BYU library:
Not bad. Not bad at all.
It’s the small instances of comic sexism that annoy me most. As when, in Yahoo’s latest best/worst list, Jennifer Aniston gets voted worst actress for The Bounty Hunter, while Ben Stiller gets voted best actor for Greenberg.
Um, they’re both playing themselves, so I’m not sure what the deal is here — oh, wait, I forgot that Greenberg is a neurotic indie dramedy, so it’s automatically good, but The Bounty Hunter is a screwball rom-com, so it’s automatically bad. And that it’s OK for Ben Stiller to play himself, because he’s Ben Stiller, while Jennifer Aniston is never going to do anything right. And women just aren’t funny anyway.
Neither one is a great actor, but they’re equally passable. Is that really too much to admit?
I’ve been thinking a lot about people’s responses to the viral video of a family dancing at concentration camps. Some people just freaked right out; others just waited for permission to laugh, wondering if it might be OK because the people doing it are Jewish.
Believe it or not, this isn’t the only time that levity has happened at a concentration camp. There’s absolutely no question that concentration camp prisoners told jokes and made fun of the guards — this is documented oral history. Hitler was morbidly afraid of being laughed at, and Jewish periodicals took their revenge by making fun of him. And of course loads and loads of gallows humor, both in and out of the camps.
Below is a video about the video, which features Jane Korman explaining her reasons for making it in the first place. In her view, everything relating to the Holocaust has become “numb and numbing”, and she wanted to get people thinking about it again. She chose the right medium; there’s a fine line between provoking laughter and provoking shock.
If you do find this offensive, you still can’t legislate people’s reactions. No, really, you simply cannot tell someone whether to be amused or offended. It’s not going to work. But it seems like people who are opposed to the video are doing just that; their “worry” about how people will take the video is just another way of trying to tell people how they should take it.
I agree with Jane Korman; whenever you say the word “Holocaust”, people have this pre-prescribed reaction that’s hardly their own. And it’s as though we somehow want every aspect of the story to be tragic — but this is simply not true.
As I’ve written before, joy and playfulness are part of what it means to be human. By insisting the story be “serious” according to our own narrow dictates, we dehumanize the people who had enough spirit to laugh and joke even while imprisoned in a concentration camp. The maker’s father, a survivor, talks about “rising from the ashes” and finding joy in horror is part of this.
I’m ending with what I think is one of the most beautiful triumphs of humanity there is: Mel Brooks’ “Springtime for Hitler.” I wonder if the video’s critics would be as outraged by this? Or is it just the fact that the latest video isn’t fictional??
All right, buckaroos, I’ve given in and I’m changing over to a WordPress template so I can have better archives and comments and all that cool stuff. I wonder why I didn’t do this sooner? Oh, yeah, because I knew this — i.e. everything going wrong when computers talk to each other — would happen.
So there’s not much time to obsess about comedy, but…
Vince Vaughn (40) and Craig Ferguson are both expecting babies.
And I’m geeked about seeing Betty White on my beloved Community, meh on Joe Jonas guesting on Hot in Cleveland.
Betty White is my hero.
All right. So now I just have to get this thing hooked up to the old site, get some archives going…Someday it will work. Someday.
