Screening Log - Made of Honor

Anyone who's been following along knows that my powers of suspension of disbelief are enormous. (We are talking, after all, about someone who adored Sweet Home Alabama, gaping plot holes and all!) But even my credulity isn't unlimited, and Made of Honor was just too forced, too awkwardly constructed, too false.

Even if the movie had been put together a little more smoothly, it would still have been a formulaic and not-terribly-funny chick flick outing. But as it is, the creators felt the need to beat the audience over the head with every vital symbolic moment ("Look! He can say 'I Love You' to dogs, but not to humans! He's emotionally stilted, see?!") and, perhaps most absurdly, to create a bizarre caricature and call him the competition. When Patrick Dempsey's rival is a cartoonish Scottish lord who lives in a grim medieval castle, hunts his own venison, and tosses trees for fun, is the outcome really ever in question?

I'd honestly be curious to know if this movie was released in the UK. I could picture it touching off riots in Glasgow - or at least, cementing British folks' already firm opinions that your average American (and certainly your average Hollywood producer) is utterly ignorant about the world outside her own borders.

Screening Log - Boys and Girls

Okay, so I have a not-so-secret crush on Freddie Prinze Jr. And trashy teen rom-coms are like crack to me. So in theory, Boys and Girls should have been a perfect bit of guilty pleasure on a rainy Wednesday evening. Instead, I can unhesitatingly say that it is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

The funny thing is, I actually saw it in theaters years ago – you might remember it being billed under the tagline “Warning: Sex Changes Everything” – but its awfulness seemed to have slipped my mind. The plot is your basic, run-of-the-mill, When Harry Met Sally rip-off: Nerdy Boy and Cool Girl bump into each other repeatedly through those painful teen years, and strike angry sparks each time. But in college, Nerdy Boy gets a haircut and contact lenses and the two become unlikely Best Friends Forever… UNTIL that one fateful night!

You know the rest. The thing is, Freddie – bless his heart – really can’t pull off “nerd”. Stick to “jock with a heart of gold”, sweetie. As for Claire Forlani, well, there’s a reason she hasn’t been heard from since Antitrust. But the real problem isn’t the acting, it’s the script. I love a cheesy teen romance, but they are what they are, and this script tried far too hard to be something more: clever, moving, philosophical even, about the meaning of love and the things that make relationships work. It failed. Miserably. Somewhere, Nora Ephron is cringing at the messy re-hashing of her “can men and women really just be friends” masterpiece. I feel your pain, Nora.

And one last thing – I haven’t spent a ton of time in the Bay Area, but I’m pretty sure that the Marin Headlands aren’t within walking distance of the Berkeley campus.

Why, Freddie, why?