He's Just Not That Into You

For those who want to try Yuna (Hedy Burress) spotting, she's playing one of Jennifer Aniston's sisters.

I've already introduced this movie in a few other posts, so I won't bother repeating myself here. A film with eight or nine main characters was a little hard to follow, for a start. Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) goes on a date with Conor (Kevin Connolly) who is in love with Anna (Scarlet Johanssen), who is having an affair with married man Ben (Bradley Cooper), who is married to Janine (Jennifer Connelly), who works with Gigi and Beth (Jennifer Aniston), who is not-married to Neil (Ben Affleck). Conor is also working with advertising executive Mary (Drew Barrymore) to increase his real estate business while Gigi is relying on Alex (Justin Long) to remind her to ignore the "signs". If a guy is that into you, he'll be asking you out. End of.

Did I miss anyone? Probably.

The film's not a huge, fantastic drama. It's a sweet chick-flick with far too many famous faces (I spotted Hedy Burress by narrowing it down to the three people with speaking parts whose faces I didn't recognise). It's a little hard to keep track of who isn't returning whose phone-calls, but it's still generally quite enjoyable in spite of that.

The film is rated 12a in the UK or PG13 in the US. You probably could take teenagers to see it, but they most likely wouldn't get as much out of it as twenty to thirty-something women, who would seem to be the film's main audience.

It was fun. It was two hours long but didn't feel like it. And the buzzword thing wasn't nearly as irritating as it might have been, since only one character really did it, and she was barely on screen.

This isn't the best movie any of these actors have made, but it's nice. Just not really special.

I am very suspicious

New film He's Just Not That Into You has no less than nine famous actors shown in the trailer; Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson, Justin Long, Jennifer Connelly, Ginnifer Goodwin, Kevin Connolly, and Bradley Cooper (I couldn't find the actual trailer I've seen at the cinema - the link is just the first one I found on youtube).

This makes me very suspicious, and I can see only two explanations. Firstly, that the script is so good that all of these big names agreed to accept a lower fee than normal to appear. Secondly, that they blew their entire budget on the cast.

The film is based on the self-help book of the same name by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo. Turning a self-help book into a film has worked before, in Mean Girls (ignoring all those weird tribal sequences), which was based on the book Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman.

He's Just Not That Into You (the book) came, in turn from an episode of Sex and the City, as discussed on Wiki.

Honestly, at first glance, it looks like an non-christmassy version of Love, Actually (which, to be fair, I haven't seen). And that whole myspace/facebook/text/buzzword/buzzword/buzzword thing? N00bs. I hate that thing, where people on TV inhabit either an entirely fictional version of the internet, or the glossy surface - as opposed to the gritty underbelly. Where everybody writes 'you' with one letter (that's in media world, not the real one).

I'm a bit of a purist. Like one of the original punks seeing a fifteen-year-old stick a pin through his ear, because that's what one does, these days, to be rebellious, don't you know.

Anyway, back to the film. I'll probably see it out of curiosity. Cynical as I may be, I hope that it will actually be an interesting film, not just a glittering one.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

I think I know why director Kevin Smith doesn't have a day job. If his character's work ethics are even vaguely similar to his, he's better off doing something creative, far, far away from real people.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno does exactly what it says on the tin - best friends since high school, Zack and Miri decide that, in order to pay off their bills, they should make a porn film. While one character is easy to sympathize with, it's easy to believe that the other one is getting far, far more than he could possibly deserve.

Miri is a beautiful girl, with low confidence and few friends apart from Zack, who continually tells her that she's just as unattractive as she once was in high school (and really, if she did look like that in high school, her classmates were clearly blind). He also steals her handwarmer (that's just mean), and has such an utterly terrible working attitude that's it's hardly surprising that they can't pay their bills. Later in the film (and here's a bit of a spoiler) he runs away completely, abandoning Miri to their debts. What a nice guy. What a great friend.

The chemistry between Miri (Elizabeth Banks) and Zack (Seth Rogen) seems utterly fake. The sexual tension is written in but not felt, and laid on with a trowel. Zack and Miri don't feel like friends or potential lovers, however desperately the script wants you to think that. The film does have some funny moments, and a great scene from Justin Long, but generally speaking, it has the same problems I've seen in other Smith films, and other Rogen films, with very few of the good points. Although, you do get to see Jason Mewes naked (yum). Definitely worth the wait. I was honestly expecting just the gratuitous female nude shots - well done for being non-sexist.

I should probably confess here that, while I don't mind Kevin Smith, I really don't like Seth Rogen, because I think he abuses his position as a writer and/or producer in order to act out his fantasies with beautiful actresses. Despite purposefully making himself less attractive than the people leading male roles traditionally go to, he still always gets the girl. And that would be admirable if he didn't make sure that the 'girl' in question is a stunning up-and-coming actress. It would be good if someone at least acknowledged that these girls are way too good for him, even in the films that he's written - and I don't just mean his own character, in some kind of self-deprecating scene designed to make us think he's obviously really sweet and romantic and has hidden depths. To quote from an article on Alternate Takes (a fantastic film site, go take a look);

Laura Mulvey famously argued that in classical Hollywood cinema, the female serves as the “bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” - that women are objectified by the implicitly male gaze of the camera, the audience, and the male lead.

Now, that may be true of most movies, but there's no need to be quite so transparent about it, is there Rogen?

Zack and Miri is funny, but forgettable, and supremely irritating in several ways. It's also quite amazing just how Miri's character manages to keep her curls intact with no water or electricity.