I'll Have a Baby; Hold the Marriage

Movies: Friends with Kids

Friends with Kids came out earlier this year and was touted as a Bridesmaids cast reunion. Indeed, the film stars Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph, and Chris O'Dowd (along with Jennifer Westfeldt and Adam Scott as the leads). Unfortunately, Friends with Kids does not have the humor or optimism of Bridesmaids. It's a pretty bland romantic comedy and even a bit of a downer.

Scott and Westfeldt play Jason and Julie: platonic pals since college. The two remain single and childless while their friends pair off and, eventually, have kids. Julie and Jason observe their friends (Wiig and Hamm play one couple and Rudolph and O'Dowd play another) transform from fun-loving, lusty young adults into angry, tired, humorless parents. And they decide that although they want little brats of their own, they don't want to sacrifice the romance and lust for life like their friends did.

So they do the logical thing and decide to have a kid together. They figure that as good buddies, they'll be able to share the duties of child-rearing while still being open to sex and romance with other partners. It's ingenious! Except that, of course, this is a romantic comedy so you know they'll get together in the end.


Friends with Kids had a few nuggets of insight thrown in to an overly-simplistic narrative. At one point, high strung Leslie (Rudolph) discusses Julie and Jason's unusual arrangement with her laid-back hubby, Alex (O'Dowd). Leslie says, "They're doing this to undermine us" and Alex scoffs at the idea that Julie and Jason's life choices have anything to do with Leslie and Alex's marriage. This was a throwaway scene, but I really wish that Westfeldt (who wrote and directed the film) had spent more time exploring it. We're always hearing about the so-called "Mommy Wars"--staying at home vs. working; daycare vs. a nanny; breast vs. bottle. People get so caught up in how others raise their kids (or if others choose to reproduce at all, when, and how often) and probably not because they actually care about the kids' well-being, but because they think other peoples' choices undermine their own. I think women get the brunt of this pressure because, hey, we're the ones with wombs. And we're supposed to all be excellent, perfect mothers. It's enough to make a gal give herself an at-home tubal ligation!

Sadly, the film does not explore parenting pressure at any length or depth. Instead, we get to see Julie and Jason's slow journey toward realizing that each other is "the One" as they raise their child and their terrible, judgy friends fight and make each other miserable.

A couple things that rang false to me: first, the reason that Julie and Jason never got together in the first place is because they weren't attracted to each other. Jason makes it very clear that he is not sexually interested in Julie, which is hurtful to her. But then--BAM--at the very end, Jason decides that, wait a second, he's actually totally hot for Julie! The two can have a romantic relationship now! Yay! Except that in real life if you knew someone for two decades and never had the desire to hook up with them, why would you now? That's not realistic to me. And I guess you could argue that Jason realizes that he loves Julie on a level deeper than surface attraction, but for a movie that is so intently invested in sex and sexual attraction as a core component of a lasting romantic relationship, it seems disingenuous for the movie to throw all that out the window at the end.

Secondly, Julie and Jason seem to base their ideas about marriage and kids on two sets of couples they know: Alex and Leslie, and Ben (Hamm) and Missy (Wiig). That's kind of narrow-minded because, for one thing, Ben and Missy have an obviously terrible (and, it's hinted at, abusive) relationship--kids or no kids. Ben is a complete bully (for what it's worth, Hamm is great at playing handsome bullies) who even makes a "joke" about how he had to rape his wife to get her pregnant. Ha! Ha! ...ha? So the whole having kids thing is irrelevant--these two were clearly headed for divorce court anyway. And then Alex and Leslie's relationship really isn't that dysfunctional. Leslie is just a control freak whose tendencies escalate after she has kids. Alex is laid-back to the point of being passive and just accepts that he gets to have sex like, once a month from now on (this fact horrifies Jason, who apparently didn't know that many couples' sex lives drop off after they have kids). Alex and Leslie actually work together--a little couples therapy and a babysitter once in a while would do them a world of good.

So, my point in breaking all this down is that Julie and Jason make this important life decision based on a rather small sample. They look at their friends and think "kids have ruined their marriages", when actually Ben and Missy's marriage was over before it started, and Alex and Leslie have a pretty normal, if stressed marriage. Kids have little, if nothing, to do with it. So the whole premise of the movie is flawed.

I was disappointed by Friends with Kids because it had the potential to be an interesting exploration of alternative parenting choices, and the pressure society and our friends and loved ones put on us to not only to get married and have kids, but to do it in exactly the "right" way and have a smile on your face while you're doing it. Instead, the movie was tired and cliched. It wasn't horrible. It just didn't live up to its potential.

3 out of 5 stars

When the Bud Becomes too Painful Not to Blossom

Movies: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I love a good coming of age story. The journey into adulthood/loss of "innocence" is one of those most compelling aspects of human life, and it's something we all go through in one way or another.

That said, a lot of high school movies suck. Possibly because they're often made by greedy, cynical adults who "just don't understand". High school movies tend to cast beautiful, tall, perfect actors in their late twenties as 17 year old kids. These films fall into two camps: movies where teens get wasted and have bizarrely tidy/softly lit sex; or movies where teens' lives are ruined by pregnancy/abortion/drugs/bullying/[insert cliche here] and that misery is played out in a dark avalanche of schadenfreude for the audience's entertainment and self-righteousness.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, directed and written by Stephen Chbosky (who also wrote the book, which I confess I've never read), is a rare teen movie that transcends its genre. There is still a whiff of "after school special" hovering around it, since the teens in this movie each have a laundry list of pretty awful problems to deal with. But even at its darkest, Wallflower never wallows into preachiness or melodrama. The film remains buoyant, genuine, and--most importantly--humane.  A high school movie where the characters treat each other with kindness and care--but not in a totally phony way? That's a big deal.

In Wallflower, Logan Lerman plays Charlie, a gentle and shy high school freshman. He hopes to make some friends, or at least be allowed to eat lunch with his big sister and her friends, on the first day of school. Alas, the only friend Charlie makes is his English teacher (Paul Rudd), and he eats alone in the cafeteria. But Charlie isn't the terrified, wilting wallflower he initially seems. He gets up the courage to sit with the openly gay class clown--Patrick, played by Ezra Miller, who is pretty freaking awesome--during a football game. Patrick introduces Charlie to his stepsister, Sam (Emma Watson, in a wonderful post-Harry Potter performance). Sam and Patrick decide to take Charlie under their wing, like teen guardian angels. They take Charlie to parties where he experiments with mind-altering substances. They get him into The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which was also a rite of passage for me--albeit in freshman year of college). And Sam gives Charlie his first kiss as if it were a gift. "I want to make sure that the first person who kisses you loves you." she says.

The thing I liked about Wallflower is that it never seems fake or forced. One of the core messages of the movie and book--"We accept the love we think we deserve"--is passed from Charlie's English teacher to Charlie to Sam. And it's the kind of message that could easily be expressed in a sappy, shallow manner. But Chbosky handles this idea--that learning how to love yourself is imperative so you don't let others treat you like crap--sensitively and earnestly. And it's surprisingly deep. Because it's so true; and it's something many adults--let alone kids--struggle with.

I won't go too much into the drama in Wallflower. Much of it is typical teen drama (dating, mating, and relating). But there are some surprisingly dark issues explored. Patrick, Sam, and Charlie struggle with things that have been done to them or ways other people have treated them. All three characters were treated poorly by someone who proclaimed to love them. And they learn over the course of the movie that when someone who says they love you hands you shit on a silver platter, you have the agency to reject that shit. Which, of course, goes back to the theme: "we accept the love we think we deserve." They learn not to accept what other people hand them, while calling it love. Instead, they seek love among each other and in themselves.

My generation traffics in irony. Our motto is "If you can't say something sarcastic, say nothing at all. Especially on Facebook." And when you're surrounded by endless snark and cynicism, you forget how nice earnestness feels once in a while. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an earnest movie that catches you off guard with it's humanistic approach to high school, and life in general.

4 out of 5 stars

My Fat Friend's Wedding

Movies: Bachelorette

Bachelorette is an enjoyable, if a bit "on the nose", bad-girl movie. The lovechild of Heathers and Bridesmaids, Bachelorette is neither as evil as the former nor as kind as the latter. It's a bitchy movie, but not a nihilistic one.

When I say "on the nose" above, what I mean is that the characters in Bachelorette are broadly drawn stereotypes. There are two significantly overweight characters in the film: Bride-to-be Becky (played by the awesome Rebel Wilson, who played Kristen Wiig's creepy roommate in Bridesmaids), and groomsman Joe. Both of these characters are nice, funny, and caring towards their fellow human beings. The rest of the characters are conventionally good-looking and slim, and with the exception of Becky's nice-guy fiance, Dale, the skinny characters are selfish, immature, stupid, slutty, drug-addicted, and just plain mean.

While it's nice to see an inversion of the "fat guy gets skinny chick" stereotype, with plus-size (but otherwise conventionally good-looking) Becky getting fit, attractive Dale, it's also just plain dumb the way these characters line up perfectly as heroes and villains. Becky is the first of a group of high school friends, the "B-faces", to get engaged. Her fellow B-faces (why do high school girl groups always have names? I'm pretty sure there were no "Plastics" or "Heathers" at my high school) include slutty coke-fiend Jenna (Lizzy Kaplan), unbelievably stupid Katie (Isla Fisher), and Type-A mean girl Regan (Kirsten Dunst, walking the line between loyal friend and complete bitch nicely). Regan is the first to find out about Becky's engagement and calls her friends expressing her confounded feelings that the fat friend, known as "Pig face" in high school, is the first to get married!

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS. FAT GIRLS GET MARRIED!!?? My mind is blown, seriously. Especially since, you know, overweight people make up the majority of Americans and like, 90% of Americans marry at least once in their lifetime. But ok, ok. Let's take this movie at face-value. Becky is the fat, and also awesome friend, and she is achieving a traditional, heterosexual rite of passage before her skinny, terrible friends, which is like TOTALLY CRAY-CRAY AMIRITE?!

Jenna, Katie, and Regan come together as bridesmaids of Becky. Regan is the maid of honor, which is smart on Becky's part because Regan is basically a more glamorous version of Tracy Flick from Election. Regan may be a bitch, but she gets. shit. done. I want a maid of honor like her if I ever get married.

During a drug/alcohol-fueled pre-wedding moment of tomfoolery, these three geniuses manage to tear Becky's plus-size wedding dress. The rest of the movie revolves around them trying desperately, in the middle of the night, to repair and clean the dress. Meanwhile, the gals continually run into the groomsmen, who are out for a night on the town with hapless Dale, the nice guy groom who doesn't want to go to a strip club (awww...but also, yeah right).

I won't go into details about what happens, but I will say that Regan redeems herself by actually being there for Becky minutes before she has to walk down the isle. Becky falters for a moment, whispering, "My mom thinks I'm too fat for [Dale]." Regan, who spent much of the movie mocking Becky's weight, looks Becky in the eye and says "Becky. Fuck everyone."

Fuck everyone. 

Wow. Obviously, you can't use "fuck everyone" as your day-to-day mantra because everyone would say "fuck you too" back and you'd have no friends. But at a moment like this, when it's time to woman-up, put on the big-girl panties, "fuck everyone" is exactly what I would want a friend to say to me. This is why Regan manages at the last minute to transcend the hero/villain dichotomy of Bachelorette. Sure, Regan is terrible in a lot of ways, but she still saves to day--with her sheer iron will and dominance. Some people in the movie refer to her as a psychopath. But I think she's just smart.

Bachelorette is hardly a paradigm-shifting film. The characters can be pretty one-dimensional, particularly Isla Fisher's brain-dead portrayal of Katie (between Ansel in Killer Joe and Freddie in The Master, dumb people are having a moment in film). And it really annoyed me, but also kind of cracked me up how, in the first scene, Regan and Becky are having lunch together and Regan orders a Cobb salad, "hold the chicken, bacon, and avocado" and Becky orders a burger and fries, with cheesecake for desert. I wonder if the director intended for them to order such eye-rollingly obvious "skinny" and "fat" people food. It's actually kind of genius how brazen some of the stereotypes were.

Bachelorette is no Bridesmaids, but it's also smarter and funnier than your average chick flick.

3.75 out of 5 stars

Hot Talk

Movies: For a Good Time, Call

For a Good Time, Call is bubbly, happy little movie that had me leaving the theatre with a smile on my face. It's not going to win any awards, but it will probably get some laughs and maybe even tug a few heartstrings.

On its surface, For a Good Time, Call is a raunchy sex comedy about two women in their late twenties who start a phone sex business to make some extra dough in a crappy economy. But what the movie is really about is friendship; specifically, it's about how friendship in and of itself can be a sort of love affair.

Katie (played by Ari Graynor, a lady so cute that she strongly tests my heterosexuality) and Lauren (Lauren Miller, also the screenwriter) don't start out as friends. The met briefly in college, but due to a mishap involving a cup of urine in a moving car, they had a falling out and never spoke again...until 10 years later when their guy pal introduces them since they are both in desperate need of a roommate.



Begrudingly, they move in together. When prim Lauren hears lusty, deep-voiced Katie constantly talking dirty on the phone, she asks what's up. Katie admits that she makes extra money on the side as a phone sex operator. Lauren's response? To make it into a business. The two ladies coin their sex talk business "1-800-MMM-HMMM" and the cash (and heavy breathing) starts rolling in.

But here is where the movie goes from a good-natured sex romp (with cameos by Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen as horny customers) into something more. During a "threesome" scenario, a customer asks Katie and Lauren to look at each other and describe what they see. Instead of the typical lewd talk, a tightly-framed camera focuses on each actress while they say things like "She's the most honest person I've ever known." and "She's so beautiful. Her hair is perfect." Katie and Lauren have gone from vaguely hating each other to what can aptly be called a "homoromantic" relationship. And the best part is: they never make out!

Don't get me wrong--I would not be adverse to seeing them make out. It's just that the For a Good Time, Call doesn't exploit Katie and Lauren's friendship as an excuse to show some unrealistic girl-on-girl (for a hetero male gaze). I'm a woman who tends to have female friends. I've never made out with any of my female friends...but have I told some of them that I loved them? Yes. And I meant it.

Likewise, For a Good Time, Call shows female friendship as love, not backstabbing and bitchery. Sure, Lauren and Katie have some serious ups and downs, but when it comes down to it, they genuinely care about each other and want each other to be happy. This is what real friendship is--when you accept someone's flaws and want the best for them. When you can be yourself around them and know that they won't judge you (much...). Without that comfort, honesty, and caring--why bother?

For a Good Time, Call also handles sexuality in a really positive way. It takes place in a world where women own vibrators, and that is considered normal. There's also a subplot where a character reveals a secret about her sexuality that is indeed unusual, but it's treated as not a big deal. The film has an attitude of "I'm OK, you're OK" when it comes to sex. It's refreshing.

Even though I don't run a phone sex hotline, I felt like For a Good Time, Call really spoke my language. The characters were friendly and relatable. Unlike other female-led comedies such as Clueless and Mean Girls, this movie is populated with people I'd actually want to be friends with. Although clearly feminist and sex-positive, For a Good Time, Call is also just plain fun.

4 out of 5 stars