MOVIES
So, with two small kids, etc, I really don't get a chance to see too many movies. Every once and a while, though...
Last night, I stayed up late and watched one that I wish I could take back.
FAILURE TO LAUNCH - uuuhh, it was terrible! I kept watching it because I kept hoping it would get better. Matthew McConaughey makes good eye candy, but even so, in this role I discovered him to be less appealing than usual. Sarah Jessica Parker plays the female lead and I also was realizing that maybe she is not as good of an actress as I previously thought. She seemed very "Carrie Bradshaw" in this film, even though the character was nothing like Carrie. Maybe Sarah is just locked in now to a type character that she can't break out of, or not enough of an actress to play someone other than herself.
At any rate, I thought at the beginning it was going to be a great romantic comedy, but it fizzles out very shortly after the opening scenes. Then you start wondering haven't I seen this before?, only it was another McConaughey movie in which he plays a noncommital guy who starts to fall for a girl who may or may not be actually tricking him into loving her, after which there is a confrontation and reconciliation, only THAT movie, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, was actually kind of good, and had some real chemistry between the actors, unlike this one, which seemed after a while like an incredibly long game of charades that you wish would just end so you could see who the winner was.

SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE

This one I thnk I really have seen before, only I am pretty sure it was on an airplane when I was too cheap, or too distracted, to rent headphones, so I caught everything but the dialogue. It seems pretty funny that in many ways, you can still understand what the movie is about, and what happens, without ever hearing the words. I knew what happened in the movie, but watching it with the dialogue added so much feeling and emotion to the story that I got caught up, all goofy and girly, into their love story. Maybe it's the music, too, that adds emotion to the story and makes us FEEL more than we see. Makes me wonder if people perceived the same difference when we switched to "talkies" during the beginning of film's golden age.

Anyway I wonder, when I watch that movie, about choices. If you were able to choose, like Diane Keaton's character, between a younger, handsome, adoring fan and an "old dog" who had learned some bad tricks, but seemed to be your soulmate, what would you choose? I think this film shows off Diane's dramatic talents - the scene in which Jack Nicholson's character says he is leaving to sleep in his own bed, and the camera flashes to her face, which shows a mature woman trying to compose herself while crumbling inside is priceless. I am not sure I would have handled things the same way as "Erica' did (and god, the sobbing, the endless sobbing when he left was about to make me not like her character anymore), but her acting is believable, the chemistry imaginable, and it allowed for romantic escape, which is why us women watch the movies we do in the first place.

This, because it's too cold to take the sick kids out geocaching, and my husband had a football game to go to. Hopefully I'll be too busy to lose myself in movies soon, but it is nice once and a while to recline and simply rest, and when I do, you better bet it's a chick flick I'll be choosing!