Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

As I have been unsatisfied with the current romantic comedy movies available, I decided to watch and oldie. This is another Marilyn Monroe classic in which she plays the same character she always does-the dumb blonde bombshell. Her brunette best friend is played by Jane Russell and as usual is the brains behind the duo. While Marilyn's character always gets them into amusing problems, Russell always has the solution.

The two women are showgirls but the majority of the film takes place on the boat when the set sail for France. A rich and unattractive man has fallen for Marilyn, but she claims to love him to the point where they are on their way to get married. His father absolutely hates the idea of his son marrying a gold digging idiot so he hires a private detective to watch the girls as they set sail to meet the son in France. While Marilyn's character is unapologetically materialistic, Russell searches for true love. As she falls in love with the detective (unknowing his true motives for being on the boat), Marilyn spends her time looking for diamonds to the point where she has an old man give her his wife's diamond tiara.

The best part of the movie is how the two women perfectly compliment and care for each other. Marilyn is always trying to convince Russell to marry rich, while Russell helps her blonde friend gain the approval of her father in law. The movie also features Monroe's famous rendition of Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend song and act. My favorite part of the movie is when Monroe finally confronts her disapproving father-in-law and explains that sure she became interested in the son for the money, but grew to love him. She then explains the reason he wanted her in the first place is for her looks and then he grew to love her. She asks him that if he had a daughter wouldn't he want her to marry a rich man and have all of the fine things in the world? The father's reaction is that he thought she was supposed to be stupid.

Sex and the City: the Movie

Until this week I had never actually seen this ultimate chick flick even though it came out a couple of years ago. I've seen the series and I liked watching a lot of the episodes that were early. Given that the second movie is coming out this summer I figured I should finally watch the first one. I really didn't like watching the episodes at the end of the series because it just got to the point where I felt bad for these women. I mean they spent ten years looking for love and struggled so epically to find it. They did seem to find love by the series finale but this movie was made to show that it wasn't happily ever after. It starts out where it left off with all of the happy couples and even Carrie and Mr. Big are finally going to get married.

On the wedding day all hell breaks loose because Miranda was all mad about her husband cheating on her so she told Big that he was crazy to get married. This led to him leaving poor Carrie before the wedding. The rest of the movie shows Carrie and Miranda moving on with their lives and their new apartments. Things do come full circle at the very end and Big and Carrie finally get married at City Hall and Miranda forgives her cheating husband. Somewhere along the way Miranda tells Carrie how she ruined the wedding and they fight for a while in the middle. This story line bothered me a lot because there is no way that Miranda could be responsible for ruining their wedding. If Mr. Big could be influenced THAT much by an angry comment then it is really just an excuse for him to not get married.

As for the subplots of the story and the other friends nothing much happens. Charlotte has no problems with her perfect family and even has a baby. Samantha continues to dress like she is in her 20s when she is approaching 50. She also decides along the way to dump her long time boyfriend and focus on her true love, herself. The end of the movie has the girls gathered on Samantha's big 50 celebrating with her forty something friends at a cool club in NYC.

Needless to say, I really didn't like this movie. It kind of ruined the tv series. The movie was about two and a half hours and was SO boring. I understand that the final scene was supposed to be happy and inspirational, but it is just kind of sad to watch. These ladies are too old for this anymore, especially Samantha. But they have made another one to follow where I am sure their lives will once again fall apart and go back to normal. I just hope they don't keep making ones to the point where we have to watch sixty year olds in bright, shiny clubbing dress with five inch heels still partying in the big apple.

Hot Tub Time Machine

If you liked the Hangover last summer then you will probably like the Hot Tub Time Machine. As you can guess from the title this movie involves four friends who are on vacation and find themselves in a time machine that transports them back to time to the eighties. The eighties is when they were in high school at Winterfest at this resort where they had the best times of their lives watching Poison and skiing. The three adult friends are also traveling with one of their nephews who is twenty years old. In the past he meets his mother who is partying at Winterfest drinking, doing various drugs, and having random sex with many guys at the resort. This is definitely one of those dumb guy movies like the Hangover, but it is still funny. There are a few gross scenes that made me cringe because they are just gross bathroom humor. There are only so many fart-like jokes that I can sit through and watch. I did laugh though mostly because of the way the characters handled the past.

Most movies when characters time travel they try to stay out of sight and relive the same actions so as not to change the future. These characters started out the same way, but soon realized that their futures suck. Because they hate their future lives they might as well do whatever they want and see how the future changes. As a result the past finds their iphones, energy drinks, and one of the characters sings a black eyed peas song for an entire audience. The scene where he starts singing it is definitely one of the best in the movie as the eighties audience hears the strange new music. Because I am not a huge fan of these kind of movies I would probably rent it, but if you like them it would be worth paying to see in theaters. The movie also has Darryl from the Office and he is pretty funny.

Leap Year

I now realize that this blog has become a review of each new chick flick that comes out mainly because that is what I primarily watch. I know there are great serious movies out there and people recommend them all of the time, but I can't resist every absurd romantic comedy that somehow gets made. Naturally I had to see Amy Adams in Leap Year. This movie didn't get a lot of attention and wasn't in theaters long. This isn't surprising considering the plot. Amy Adams plays some interior decorating woman who helps people make apartments look nice and sellable. She is about to move in with her long time surgeon boyfriend and expects a proposal. After he doesn't propose at some fancy celebration dinner, he flies off to Ireland for some medical conference. Amy Adams then takes it upon herself to fly to Ireland and propose to her boyfriend because according to Irish tradition, a woman can propose to a man every leap year.

Despite that premise, the movie wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. I know it is kind of weird to watch a movie that I expect to be cheesy and terrible, but I still watch every one of them religiously. The only romantic comedy I refused to watch was Fever Pitch because it involved the Boston Red Sox. But back to Leap Year, Amy Adams ends up stranded in Ireland and makes a long journey with some Irish guy to find her boyfriend. Of course she falls for the Irish guy (in the poster) along the way and realizes that he is right for her. I still don't really like movies where the characters switch their significant others so easily, but at least the surgeon wasn't likable in this movie. This was much better than the Accidental Husband because that one made absolutely no sense why Uma Thurman would ditch Colin Firth. Their relationship didn't have problems and he wanted to marry her.

New York, I Love You

Based on the successful french film Paris, je t'ame, New York I Love You tells about 11 short stories about love in New York City. I read reviews about this movie and it did pretty well, but I didn't really get it. I only understood a few of the movies and the rest didn't really feel finished. I guess I wanted to see more. I like the format of movies that tell multiple stories in one film like Love Actually, but a lot of these stories didn't have an ending or work out. A few of them were cute and made sense, but others I had on idea what happened. I think I would need to watch it again to understand. There were quite a few famous people in it like Natalie Portman and Orlando Bloom and there were also a lot of characters. I guess my problem is that you don't really spend a lot of time with any of the characters or learn their stories completely. Some of the characters I didn't even understand why they were even in the movie. A lot of the stories were also pretty sad and involved death of some kind. It was definitely not a chick flick or romantic comedy.

I did find it interesting how they incorporated New York city into the plot. The movie could be viewed as a tribute to New York City where the characters are in fact insignificant, but what is important is showing how many people are interacting and having some kind of story in the beautiful scenery of the city or central park. It does show different parts as well as cultures that are in New York so it creates a mixture of different economic and racial backgrounds. It also shows people of different professions from writers to artists to business men. It was also interesting how many scenes involved smoking cigarettes. It felt like the way most of the characters interacted was by smoking a cigarette outside with another person. Given how smoking is banned from television advertisement and pretty much vilified in society, it was interesting to show it as a way for strangers to interact and meet in the city.

The Accidental Husband

I really have no idea why I watched this movie. My friend had it and it was a chick flick so I naturally I couldn't resist. I can believe most plots in chick flick movies but for some reason the story and inconsistencies really bothered me. Uma Thurman plays a relationship advice radio person who in the beginning scene advises a caller that her fiancee might not be right for her. The fiancee is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. He was in P.S I Love You. So he hears the whole conversation on the radio with his co-workers. He is a fireman. Obviously he is pretty mad this random lady could end his relationship, even though they must not have had a very strong one to begin with seeing as how she was seeking radio advice. To punish her, he has some techno kid he knows break into some database legal thing and make a marriage license so that they are legally married. This way she is punished because she really is engaged to Colin Firth, who incidentally is very angry when he finds out she is married. The rest of the plot doesn't really make that much sense. Spoiler alert they do fall in love. The rest of the movie is a bunch of random scenes that don't make logical sense as to what the characters are doing. For example, when Thurman first confronts her actual husband, which I am not entirely sure that document would hold up in court, he tricks her into getting drunk by making fun of her for not drinking with the fireman guys. Her life begins to spiral apart. He then finds her at work where he walks with her to the cake tasting. Makes a complete fool of himself with eating all of the cake. These two old ladies, however, love him and ask about how they met. This whole elaborate story of meeting could be avoided by saying yeah we are not engaged, he's just helping me or something like that. What really bothered me about this scene was that it didn't make sense why these two old women, already married to their respective husbands were at a wedding cake tasting place. They were like just eating a slice of cake and the beginning of the scene showed that the shop was only a wedding cake place.

Oh and of course as they end up together, Colin Firth easily lets her go because he can see that he lost her. Yea that would really happen. How can you be engaged to someone else, they had been dating for years, living together, and she easily ditched him. Oh and he was pretty casual about it. Of course they waited until the wedding to do so, which is just rude to all of those guests who came and brought presents. Oh and the fireman was really angry when he lost his fiancee at the beginning of the movie because she was the love of his life. But he got over that loss just fine.

I believed the premise of When in Rome easier. And that movie involved a plot where a woman steals coins from a fountain and those men who through the coins fall madly in love with her and stalk her in New York City. I guess movies where characters are in love with people and then ditch them right before the wedding bothers me. At least in this one the two dumpees didn't end up together because those endings are annoying as well.

Up

I never thought a kids cartoon movie would make me cry in the first fifteen minutes. People I know who saw it told me it was sentimental and made them tear up, yet I did not believe. I didn't get to see the movie in 3d because I had to rent it, but the visuals of the colorful balloons and animated people were still really cool. I really liked this movie because it was so well done and actually had a plot. So many kids movies now are really bad like the talking chihuahua ones that parents are forced to sit through for their kids. The fact that Up appeals to both children and adults is probably the reason it was so successful. It really touches on the idea that relationships are so important in our lives and that we need to appreciate the people we are with while we are still together with them. I thought that the little boy was cute, albeit annoying at many times. I guess I liked him from the moment that he stood on the porch and tried to help the old man to earn his patch. I thought that the way he advertised his help was really funny. The middle of the movie dragged on kind of long and I was sort of waiting for their adventure to end, but the ending of the movie was really good. It is strange how you can feel so much sympathy for these weird square headed people, but you really connect to them. I know that I am one of the last people to see this movie, but I would recommend it to people.