A MOVIE MIZ EXCLUSIVE
A few weeks ago, my wife and I were offered free tickets to a preview of the next major motion picture epic produced to control the behavior of females the world over. Jesse M. Patch warned me against attending, but upon seeing my devotion to the aforementioned wife asked that I write a review of the movie for him and him alone. I do not believe in selfish Patchantics. Enjoy, learn, watch for flying poo.
HE JUST SHIT ON YOU
The movie’s second glimpse of humanity involves women of every walk of life comforting each other as they are “pooped” on by men. These walks of life include women at a club, Japanese women dressed like extras from the movie blade runner, and African women in the tidiest hut village this side of Santa Clarita speaking in American idioms. Welcome to the shit.
From here, Kwapis takes us on a magical journey of severely uninteresting people in Baltimore (no sign of Omar or Bubbles or Ray Lewis) pretending to be as real as you or me by flashing movie-star smiles and every five minutes or so grandstanding with soap-box speeches about how men and women relate to each other. The aforementioned magical journey, however, feels less like a journey than a gestalt of rom-com clichés butted against each other by people who believe that John Hughes was a prophet, infidelity can only be blamed on a woman’s “hotness” quotient, and that Harry and Sally were right about everything, dammit! The movie makes no qualms about its thefts, using clips of Hughes’ Some Kind of Wonderful and When Harry Met Sally’s talking head interstitials. Meanwhile, five different movies emerge from the neck of the beast to create the chick-flick hydra and the women are all treated like poop.
In one of the movie’s movies, Ben, played by Bradley Cooper, and Anna, played by Scarlett Johansson, have a meet cute involving bananas and a free cooler. Just when we see the spark of something between them, which we are later told to be a fallacy created by men, we find out that – UH-OH! – Ben is married. His wife, Janine, played by Jennifer Connelly, wants him to stop smoking, have kids with her, and be emotionally available. Instead, Ben spends most of the movie telling ScarJo how hot she is and how he does not have affairs. While sitting naked, post-coital in her bed, he tells her that he does not have affairs. And again, tells her that she is hot. Not only are the women treated like poop here, but also poop objects. Anna/ScarJo is nothing more than a device of sexual observation and participation for Ben leading her ample bosom to dominate many of their scenes together.
Another of the movies in this movie involves Beth, played by Jennifer Aniston, who cannot get her longtime boyfriend Neil, played by Ben Affleck, to marry her. (Ed. note: Ben Affleck is in this movie and has scenes with the character named Ben, which created a small wormhole at the screening I attended.) What is the hold-up? Neil does not believe in marriage. She leaves him, he lives on a boat, her grizzled father, played with extra whiskey by Kris Kristofferson, has a heart attack, and through a keen observation of other men, she realizes that Neil is more of a husband – in name, not in law – than any other real husband. Have no fear, though, he proposed by movie’s end and we get the rom-com movie-ending wedding. To be fair, Aniston fights a singular battle in her movie in this movie, bringing truth to her performance by appearing to actually care about the people and events around her.
In the only movie within the movie to actually invoke the movie’s title, a woman named Gigi, played by Ginnifer Goodwin (is anybody counting G’s here?), cannot for the life of her understand why men are not interested in her. No matter how overbearing she gets, calling dozens of times after a first date, stalking a man to his favorite bar, and being named Gigi, she just does not comprehend her repellence to the opposite sex. Fortunately, she meets somebody who has the opposite problem – THANK GOD FOR DIVINE COINCIDENCES LIKE THIS!! Alex, played by Justin Long, knows absolutely everything about men and women and, what is more, he is a serial dater, sleeping with whatever breasts come within ten feet, then shrugging them off as crazy women who don’t get that HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO THEM (poop anyone?). Gi x 2 and Alex carry on a platonic partnership as he guides her through her dating woes, but men and women cannot be friends. Hi, Harry. Hi, Sally. She of the multiple Gi's eventually tells Alex the truth about who he really is and why he will never be happy, causing both of them to become completely different characters in less than a week’s time. And the women think, maybe the Apple guy is in love with me. Poop on them.
The other non-movie movie has E. from Entourage playing E. from Entourage, but instead of being a husky-voiced manager who seems not to care he plays a raspy-voiced real estate agent who truly does not care. Through a new strategy, he begins selling strictly to homosexuals and wearing purple shirts. This one-note joke is not funny; nor are any of the one-note jokes about stereotypes. Poop on everyone, especially those in purple shirts.
Then Luis Guzman shows up. The married couple dealing with infidelity and smoking are remodeling their house with the help of “undocumented workers” led by Javier, played by poor, poor Guzman. In his only scene, he stares at Jennifer Connelly, responding with the same dissatisfaction and confusion as I experienced watching this jumbled, unfunny mess of a movie based on a book that somebody must have read once and mistaken for a different book, thinking that there was quality material to be mined for a feature-length motion picture to be enjoyed by rational, thinking people who had experienced life, talked to other people, and maybe even related to someone once on even a partially profound level. Guzman gives the best performance in this movie-based life form.
Along with the aforementioned crimes against humanity, everybody in this movie is connected in some way, sending Robert Altman into a graveyard spin, and the term “dry-hump” is spoken twice. To wit: “…with an ass that makes me want to dry-hump all day long.” “Did you say dry-hump?” Then the blonde proceeds to remove her clothes and jump into the pool naked because she believes that true love means a married man leaving his wife for her. I was embarrassed. I felt pooped on. If only I had a copy of the book to wipe myself with.
In Kwapis’ He’s Just Not That Into You, our first peek at humanity shows a young boy repeatedly calling a young girl “poop.” In all forms to this boy, that girl is poop. Knowing nothing about the girl but that she hangs out in parks and looks confused as to why she is in the movie – a trend that follows for several of the performers – I could only assume that she did smell like poop and may well have been just that, poop. Instead of unveiling the mystery of whether or not this girl is indeed composed of excrement, the movie assures us that the boy only compares the girl to human waste because he likes her.
The movie’s second glimpse of humanity involves women of every walk of life comforting each other as they are “pooped” on by men. These walks of life include women at a club, Japanese women dressed like extras from the movie blade runner, and African women in the tidiest hut village this side of Santa Clarita speaking in American idioms. Welcome to the shit.
From here, Kwapis takes us on a magical journey of severely uninteresting people in Baltimore (no sign of Omar or Bubbles or Ray Lewis) pretending to be as real as you or me by flashing movie-star smiles and every five minutes or so grandstanding with soap-box speeches about how men and women relate to each other. The aforementioned magical journey, however, feels less like a journey than a gestalt of rom-com clichés butted against each other by people who believe that John Hughes was a prophet, infidelity can only be blamed on a woman’s “hotness” quotient, and that Harry and Sally were right about everything, dammit! The movie makes no qualms about its thefts, using clips of Hughes’ Some Kind of Wonderful and When Harry Met Sally’s talking head interstitials. Meanwhile, five different movies emerge from the neck of the beast to create the chick-flick hydra and the women are all treated like poop.
In one of the movie’s movies, Ben, played by Bradley Cooper, and Anna, played by Scarlett Johansson, have a meet cute involving bananas and a free cooler. Just when we see the spark of something between them, which we are later told to be a fallacy created by men, we find out that – UH-OH! – Ben is married. His wife, Janine, played by Jennifer Connelly, wants him to stop smoking, have kids with her, and be emotionally available. Instead, Ben spends most of the movie telling ScarJo how hot she is and how he does not have affairs. While sitting naked, post-coital in her bed, he tells her that he does not have affairs. And again, tells her that she is hot. Not only are the women treated like poop here, but also poop objects. Anna/ScarJo is nothing more than a device of sexual observation and participation for Ben leading her ample bosom to dominate many of their scenes together.
She's just not that into pants.
Another of the movies in this movie involves Beth, played by Jennifer Aniston, who cannot get her longtime boyfriend Neil, played by Ben Affleck, to marry her. (Ed. note: Ben Affleck is in this movie and has scenes with the character named Ben, which created a small wormhole at the screening I attended.) What is the hold-up? Neil does not believe in marriage. She leaves him, he lives on a boat, her grizzled father, played with extra whiskey by Kris Kristofferson, has a heart attack, and through a keen observation of other men, she realizes that Neil is more of a husband – in name, not in law – than any other real husband. Have no fear, though, he proposed by movie’s end and we get the rom-com movie-ending wedding. To be fair, Aniston fights a singular battle in her movie in this movie, bringing truth to her performance by appearing to actually care about the people and events around her.
In the only movie within the movie to actually invoke the movie’s title, a woman named Gigi, played by Ginnifer Goodwin (is anybody counting G’s here?), cannot for the life of her understand why men are not interested in her. No matter how overbearing she gets, calling dozens of times after a first date, stalking a man to his favorite bar, and being named Gigi, she just does not comprehend her repellence to the opposite sex. Fortunately, she meets somebody who has the opposite problem – THANK GOD FOR DIVINE COINCIDENCES LIKE THIS!! Alex, played by Justin Long, knows absolutely everything about men and women and, what is more, he is a serial dater, sleeping with whatever breasts come within ten feet, then shrugging them off as crazy women who don’t get that HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO THEM (poop anyone?). Gi x 2 and Alex carry on a platonic partnership as he guides her through her dating woes, but men and women cannot be friends. Hi, Harry. Hi, Sally. She of the multiple Gi's eventually tells Alex the truth about who he really is and why he will never be happy, causing both of them to become completely different characters in less than a week’s time. And the women think, maybe the Apple guy is in love with me. Poop on them.
Two other movies exist within the movie, but may have been trailers for other movies about movies based on books based on ideas from movies. One involves Drew Barrymore as a woman who meets men on MySpace and cannot get dates to return e-mails and voicemails and – OH TECHNOLOGY! Will we ever learn? She also hangs out with homosexuals, one of whom is played by Wilson Cruz (aka Ricky from My So-Called Life). He has a very funny line about his own aroused genitalia. The movie could have used more of him and his genitalia, mostly due to the sincerity of both.
The other non-movie movie has E. from Entourage playing E. from Entourage, but instead of being a husky-voiced manager who seems not to care he plays a raspy-voiced real estate agent who truly does not care. Through a new strategy, he begins selling strictly to homosexuals and wearing purple shirts. This one-note joke is not funny; nor are any of the one-note jokes about stereotypes. Poop on everyone, especially those in purple shirts.
Then Luis Guzman shows up. The married couple dealing with infidelity and smoking are remodeling their house with the help of “undocumented workers” led by Javier, played by poor, poor Guzman. In his only scene, he stares at Jennifer Connelly, responding with the same dissatisfaction and confusion as I experienced watching this jumbled, unfunny mess of a movie based on a book that somebody must have read once and mistaken for a different book, thinking that there was quality material to be mined for a feature-length motion picture to be enjoyed by rational, thinking people who had experienced life, talked to other people, and maybe even related to someone once on even a partially profound level. Guzman gives the best performance in this movie-based life form.
Along with the aforementioned crimes against humanity, everybody in this movie is connected in some way, sending Robert Altman into a graveyard spin, and the term “dry-hump” is spoken twice. To wit: “…with an ass that makes me want to dry-hump all day long.” “Did you say dry-hump?” Then the blonde proceeds to remove her clothes and jump into the pool naked because she believes that true love means a married man leaving his wife for her. I was embarrassed. I felt pooped on. If only I had a copy of the book to wipe myself with.
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