What I did on my holidays
Goodness. What a busy week I’ve had. Any yet, actually I haven’t been that busy. I just spent the past week in Cardiff, catching up with everyone and basically pretending I was a student again. It was glorious. Going back to work on Monday is gonna suuuuuuck.
Didn’t “do” much this week, but that was fine by me. Spent one day in town going to New York Deli, Troutmark and Forbidden Planet. You know, the important stuff. Bought a couple of books and Civil War: Iron Man purely because it contains The Confession and as much as I know that reading it is going to rip my heart to shreds, I have to do it.
But other than a brief sojourn into the city centre I did very little except hang with everybody, read fic, pootle about on the internet and watch films. A lot of films.
I guess that is what happens when you base your entire holiday around watching Captain America and having a Marvel Movie Weekend. Which is what I did. This was something we’d been planning for over a year. Since before I went to Comic Con last year.
So what did we do? Simple. We decided to watch every single Marvel Movie we could before and after watching the Captain America Movie. Except Daredevil and Elektra. No one needs to be subjected to those. We started with Fantastic Four on the Friday night, which is a fun and entertaining movie that I will always have a soft spot for. Then we followed it with Spiderman which makes me want to punch Tobey Maguire in the face. It’s so frustrating that I find him so irritating because I love Peter Parker. He’s… well pretty high up on the list of my favourite heroes, even if I’m not sure quite where. And Tobey Maguire isn’t totally without acting ability, even if you couldn’t tell from watching this movie. Another reason he annoyed me is that he look like Jake Gyllenhaal, only devoid of his charm and attractiveness. Really looking forward to the reboot.
On Saturday morning we watched X-men Origins: Wolverine because… uh, I think we might be masochists?
And then because we apparently hadn’t inflicted enough pain on ourselves, we watched Spiderman 2.
We decided to alternate to spread out the crap a little, so next watched X-men. And then that evening we went to the cinema to see Captian America. Oh boy. I love that film beyond imagining. The last film to wring such physical joy from me on seeing it was Star Trek. And I saw that 5 times at the cinema. I just… just… everything about Steve Rogers that caused me to fall harder and faster for a fictional character than I ever have before, was perfectly distilled into that film. I don’t have the words. It was just wonderful.
We decided after that that we should watch the continuity movies in chronological order. This decision had nothing to do with the fact that none of us could quite bring ourselves to put ourselves through X-2, X-3 and Spiderman 3. Nothing at all.
So when we got back we watched uh… an extra legal copy of X-Men: First Class. (Ok so it’s technically not a continuity movie, but still. It rules. So it counts).
Then Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk (the good one), and another extra legal copy of Thor.
From the Marvel Movie Marathon we discovered two things: if Marvel Science glows blue, that means it’s working, and we never want to be the parents or surrogate parent figures of a Marvel movie character. These are not jobs with long life expectancies.
Other films we watched were Inception, Chances Are and Tangled. And proper love film reviews of those last two follow, along with The Men Who Stare at Goats.
Oh and we saw Captain America the second time. And it was still awesome.
I had been looking forward to this week for so long and I’m so glad it was so awesome. I just hadn’t realised how much I needed it. For a start I just needed a break. From work partly, but also from life in general. Now, I won’t deny that I am an exceedingly lucky shit, and I ought to be more grateful than I am about how my life in general is at the moment, and don’t get me wrong, I am. But, well, I haven’t had any time off since I started my job (christ, 11 months ago tomorrow it will be) that hasn’t involved me bouncing up and down the country, rushing around to meet up with people, and generally not having the time to just do nothing. Hell, I’ve barely had a weekend that hasn’t involved much of the same. So it was nice to have everyone I wanted to see in one place, to have no hard and fast plans, to not have to be somewhere or do something, to not have to try and cram everything into a few all to short days. Just be able to recharge my batteries.
But more than that, I needed to just hang with my friends. This is the only place I can really explain it, because I know my family wouldn’t understand, and neither can my colleagues, but I needed to sit around and mock films and generally dork about with my friends. It’s one of the things I miss the most, the communal watching experience, the silly jokes, but more than that, the ability to be me, free and unfettered.
It sounds stupid and pretentious but it’s true. I work with a bunch of geeks and I like them all very much, and they understand me more than most, but I still can’t be everything I am around them. I can quote obscure TV shows and books and let my enthusiasm for insignificant things show through, but I can’t squee over how wonderfully slashy the last whatever I just watched was, I can’t bounce about the fic I just read, and I can’t go all mushy over Chris Evans in dress uniform. In short, I can be a fan, but I can’t be a fangirl. And I wouldn’t really want to. My colleagues don’t need to know that much about my private life. (Case in point, this week, my friends were able to guess 3 out of the definite 4 people on my Exceptions List without trying, and got the fourth eventually. The guys at work don’t need to know that. Really.)
And my family, well… my family have long since accepted that they will never understand some of the things that excite and enthuse me, and they are willing to put up with me rambling about the latest thing I’m obsessing over as long as I am willing to put up with blank stares when I’m done.
So, really, my friends are the only people who know everything about me, and don’t just accept me, but understand and positively encourage it. And normally, I’m popping in for a whistlestop visit, there’s a party or a something to do, and while we have a great time and a great catch up, I am always aware that time is short, and so we shouldn’t just all be sitting in the front room on our laptops, not really saying much but sharing the companionship of mutual geekness.
So. That basically sums up why I love my friends so much and why this week was amazing and wonderful and just what I needed. I didn’t quite expect it to turn into such and essay, but then, I never do. (Also I am amused at how I keep referring to my friends as if I don’t know that you guys are pretty much the only people who ever read this)
I’m going to go and cook some dinner, and when I’m done, I’ll write the movie reviews that I sat down to write in the first place.
First up
The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009)
This was on my list because the trailer looked ridiculous and I never got round to seeing it. And it was that. It is the goofiest film I have seen in quite some time. In the 60s the army set up a secret division called (if I remember correctly) The New Warriors with the aim of exploring non-violent and non-technological warfare. The unit is run by an ex-soldier-turned-hippie and using a variety of different New Age techniques and doctrines, starts developing psychic powers.
Flash forward to now and the Iraq War and a reporter (Ewan McGregor) seeks to prove himself to his ex-wife by becoming a war correspondent. Whilst waiting for entry to the country he meets George Clooney’s character who claims to be psychic. Ewan McGregor accompanies George Clooney into the desert in an attempt to uncover the truth and to help George Clooney on his secret mission. Hijinks ensue. Including spiking a military base’s water supply with LSD. And George Clooney has a ridik moustache.
As I said, incredibly goofy. But thoroughly entertaining. And just the tone of film I happened to be looking for at the time.
But what really made me like this film was that even if the plot hadn’t been so goofy, it would still have been genuinely funny. A lot of the humour didn’t come so much from the situation as the characters, especially Ewan and George bickering in their trek through the desert.
Half of the humour does come from the fact that the New Warriors or whatevs like to call themselves “Jedi” which leads to some classic exchanges like:
Ewan McGregor: What’s a Jedi?
George Clooney: I am.
and George Clooney telling Ewan McGregor that he has an “inner Jedi”. There are other, more subtle Star Wars references that tickled me as well.
The flashbacks to George Clooney’s training were good even if he does sport the most hair you ever did see. There is a scene of awkward!Dancing that may well be my favourite.
Also, there is just something inherently funny about the sight of George Clooney giving Ewan McGregor a piggy back.
All in all, a very silly and fun film. Some people might feel that the humour is a little dark, considering that it is set during a war that is very much current, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. George Clooney and Ewan McGregor have really good chemistry on screen, and their bickering is one of the highlights of the film. Plus, Ewan McGregor does that cute shy happy half smile of his that just sort of turns me to mush.
Secondly,
Chances Are (1989)
On my list because Robert Downey Junior. It looked like the kind of ridiculous crappy rom com he made in the 80s and 90s and that it would be silly and entertaining.
It turns out that it tries to be that, but manages to be *really creepy*.
So, a woman (Cybill Shepherd) has been happily married for a year and has just found out she’s pregnant. Her husband is played (at the moment - we’ll get to that later) by the guy who played the bad guy in Flubber (and because of that I just can’t see the character as being anything other than a douchebag because he is a douchebag in, like, everything) His best friend is in love with her, and decided to tell
DouchebagFromFlubber on the day of their wedding, but that seems to be fine by him because they let him have a key to their house. He might live with them. It is unclear.
Possibly they just have some threesome thing going on. I wouldn’t be surprised. The best friend does not look like he would object as he appears to be in love with both of them.
Anyway, it’s their anniversary and outside the restaurant DouchebagFromFlubber is run over and killed. The reaction to this scene probably should not have been group cackling and rewinding to see it again, but Cybill Shepherds reaction to seeing her husband knocked down in the street was just ridiculous.
Once in heaven he insists to be sent back to earth and since he kicks up such a fuss, the angels send him straight back instead of having to wait in the line for reincarnation. Or recycling as they call it the majority of the time. *shrug*
Unfortunately, in their haste they forget to give him the inoculation that would prevent him from remembering his past life’s memories.
Cut to: 23 years later
Robert Downey Junior flirts with some girl in the (Harvard, I think) library and lets her off of her fine by distracting the librarian, with the best line in the whole film:
“They’re fooling with the folios! And fiddling with them too!”
And this is where the creepy starts to happen.
The girl turns out to be Cybill Shepherd’s daughter. And Robert Downey Junior is the reincarnation of her father but he doesn’t remember this.
A series of events happen that lead him to being taken under the best friend’s wing
and invited back to his house where he discovers the girl he flirted with in the library that one time also lives there.
Cybill Shepherd has not got over her husband’s death in the intervening 23 years, leaving his favourite snack out on the bedside table every night and having his picture taped to the inside of the fridge.
The best friend is still in love with her, but has never told her because he didn’t want to quote “rush her” unquote.
Whilst at the house, Robert Downey Junior is assailed by all of his previous life’s memories and realises that the girl into whose pants, lest we forget, he had up until this point been trying to get, is in fact his daughter.
He then decides to persue the love of his life, ie Cybill Shepherd. So now we have
a) a girl trying to sleep with someone who is, unbeknownst to her, the reincarnation of her dead father
b) Robert Downey Junior aware that he is the girl’s father, attempting to fend off her advances without telling her the truth
c) A man in love with his best friend’s widow but lacking in the balls to actually do anything about it, and being unaware that the young wannabe journalist he has taken under his wing is in fact the reincarnation of his best friend
d) Cybill Shepherd who is still pining over her dead husband
e) And Robert Downey Junior again, determined to win Cybill Shepherd back
Try telling me this film isn’t creepy, I dares ya.
RDJ finally convinces Cybill Shepherd that he is the reincarnation of her dead husband and she, seemingly unperturbed by her husband being in the body of a man 23 years younger, agrees to go on a date with him. Although, that body is Robert Downey Junior’s, so I don’t exactly blame her.
The daughter still attempts to pursue RDJ but he tells her there’s someone else, without mentioning the small fact that it’s her mother that he’s really after and that he’s the Daddy she never knew.
At some point the obligatory psychic turns up, because what is a movie about ghosts or reincarnation or angels without an obligatory psychic?
After their date, Cybill Shepherd and Robert Downey Junior decide to have sex in the living room as the best friend is away, completely ignoring the fact that at some point later on their daughter is going to walk in the door and see her mother getting it on with the guy she has been trying to shag.
Turns out that the best friend is the one that turns up though and then there may have been a fight, I don’t know, I’d kind of stopped paying attention at this point because the creepy had got too much.
Anyway, Cybill Shepherd decides that actually she loves the best friend now because he’s always been there for her in the past 23 years and Robert Downey Junior isn’t exactly the man she married what with the different body and the youngness and the 23 years leading a completely different life and the best friend also gets convinced that RDJ is, in fact, his best friend.
Robert Downey Junior ends up in hospital, for some reason, where the inoculation angel from the beginning of the movie can come down and give him his injection so that he forgets all of his previous life memories and get on with boning his daughter in peace. While her mum and step dad, who remember all of the previous few day’s events don’t tell either of them and actually think it’s “cute”.
Aww.
*shudders*
Creepy fucking movie, I swear. The last point raises the largest plot hole in this whole movie. If the angels could come down at any point and give him the magic not remember injection, why the HELL didn’t they do it when he was a kid and getting his routing vaccines so that this film couldn’t have happened and creeped me the fuck out???!!!!
There was also a side plot that had something to do with DouchebagFromFlubber being a lawyer and trying to take down a mob boss and discovering a corrupt judge just before he got killed and eventually being able to solve his last case and get the bad guys sent to jail, but it just sort of got lost under all the creepy.
Which is a shame really, because if they had run with it and left out the creepy-arse love triangle nonsense, it could have been a really good movie about a guy who gets one more chance to expose corruption, but first he has to convince his wife and best friend that he is the reincarnation of the man they knew. I would have liked to have seen that film. Alas, I got to watch this shit instead.
Robert Downey Junior is the best thing in this movie by far, even in scenes where he is obviously high. He is incredibly young and so pretty it hurts, physically hurts.
But this film is just FUCKING CREEPY. There is no other way to describe it. I think if they had left out the almost-incest then it could have been a sweet film about a woman torn between a man who claims to be her dead husband and is almost but not quite him and her husband’s best friend who has been by her side for the past 23 years through thick and thin. But the almost-incest taints everything it touches, rendering even Robert Downey Junior and Cybill Shepherd’s relationship creepy because you know that at some point the daughter is going to find out that both her and her mother are trying to get into this man’s pants.
In conclusion, RUN AWAY BEFORE SEEING THIS FILM!!
Finally,
Tangled (2010)
Never got round to seeing this at the cinema, so it was on my list. This wasn’t actually a love film delivered film, but I have made it my rule to have to review all of the films on my Love Film list, even if I eventually end up seeing them a different way.
So, what to say about Tangled? It was brilliant. Absolutely hilarious, with some great songs. Taking a leaf out of Shrek’s book, it brings an irreverent humour to an unconventional fairy tale, ripping apart clichés, lampshading tropes and generally having a good time.
I’m not sure what else I can say, except watch it. It’s Disney’s answer to Shrek but with so much intelligence and originality that it doesn’t feel close to being a carbon copy or cynical attempt to cash in on that franchise’s popularity.
A good story, well told. One of the best non-Pixar Disney movies of the last 10 years.
Frying pans, who knew?
Didn’t “do” much this week, but that was fine by me. Spent one day in town going to New York Deli, Troutmark and Forbidden Planet. You know, the important stuff. Bought a couple of books and Civil War: Iron Man purely because it contains The Confession and as much as I know that reading it is going to rip my heart to shreds, I have to do it.
But other than a brief sojourn into the city centre I did very little except hang with everybody, read fic, pootle about on the internet and watch films. A lot of films.
I guess that is what happens when you base your entire holiday around watching Captain America and having a Marvel Movie Weekend. Which is what I did. This was something we’d been planning for over a year. Since before I went to Comic Con last year.
So what did we do? Simple. We decided to watch every single Marvel Movie we could before and after watching the Captain America Movie. Except Daredevil and Elektra. No one needs to be subjected to those. We started with Fantastic Four on the Friday night, which is a fun and entertaining movie that I will always have a soft spot for. Then we followed it with Spiderman which makes me want to punch Tobey Maguire in the face. It’s so frustrating that I find him so irritating because I love Peter Parker. He’s… well pretty high up on the list of my favourite heroes, even if I’m not sure quite where. And Tobey Maguire isn’t totally without acting ability, even if you couldn’t tell from watching this movie. Another reason he annoyed me is that he look like Jake Gyllenhaal, only devoid of his charm and attractiveness. Really looking forward to the reboot.
On Saturday morning we watched X-men Origins: Wolverine because… uh, I think we might be masochists?
And then because we apparently hadn’t inflicted enough pain on ourselves, we watched Spiderman 2.
We decided to alternate to spread out the crap a little, so next watched X-men. And then that evening we went to the cinema to see Captian America. Oh boy. I love that film beyond imagining. The last film to wring such physical joy from me on seeing it was Star Trek. And I saw that 5 times at the cinema. I just… just… everything about Steve Rogers that caused me to fall harder and faster for a fictional character than I ever have before, was perfectly distilled into that film. I don’t have the words. It was just wonderful.
We decided after that that we should watch the continuity movies in chronological order. This decision had nothing to do with the fact that none of us could quite bring ourselves to put ourselves through X-2, X-3 and Spiderman 3. Nothing at all.
So when we got back we watched uh… an extra legal copy of X-Men: First Class. (Ok so it’s technically not a continuity movie, but still. It rules. So it counts).
Then Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk (the good one), and another extra legal copy of Thor.
From the Marvel Movie Marathon we discovered two things: if Marvel Science glows blue, that means it’s working, and we never want to be the parents or surrogate parent figures of a Marvel movie character. These are not jobs with long life expectancies.
Other films we watched were Inception, Chances Are and Tangled. And proper love film reviews of those last two follow, along with The Men Who Stare at Goats.
Oh and we saw Captain America the second time. And it was still awesome.
I had been looking forward to this week for so long and I’m so glad it was so awesome. I just hadn’t realised how much I needed it. For a start I just needed a break. From work partly, but also from life in general. Now, I won’t deny that I am an exceedingly lucky shit, and I ought to be more grateful than I am about how my life in general is at the moment, and don’t get me wrong, I am. But, well, I haven’t had any time off since I started my job (christ, 11 months ago tomorrow it will be) that hasn’t involved me bouncing up and down the country, rushing around to meet up with people, and generally not having the time to just do nothing. Hell, I’ve barely had a weekend that hasn’t involved much of the same. So it was nice to have everyone I wanted to see in one place, to have no hard and fast plans, to not have to be somewhere or do something, to not have to try and cram everything into a few all to short days. Just be able to recharge my batteries.
But more than that, I needed to just hang with my friends. This is the only place I can really explain it, because I know my family wouldn’t understand, and neither can my colleagues, but I needed to sit around and mock films and generally dork about with my friends. It’s one of the things I miss the most, the communal watching experience, the silly jokes, but more than that, the ability to be me, free and unfettered.
It sounds stupid and pretentious but it’s true. I work with a bunch of geeks and I like them all very much, and they understand me more than most, but I still can’t be everything I am around them. I can quote obscure TV shows and books and let my enthusiasm for insignificant things show through, but I can’t squee over how wonderfully slashy the last whatever I just watched was, I can’t bounce about the fic I just read, and I can’t go all mushy over Chris Evans in dress uniform. In short, I can be a fan, but I can’t be a fangirl. And I wouldn’t really want to. My colleagues don’t need to know that much about my private life. (Case in point, this week, my friends were able to guess 3 out of the definite 4 people on my Exceptions List without trying, and got the fourth eventually. The guys at work don’t need to know that. Really.)
And my family, well… my family have long since accepted that they will never understand some of the things that excite and enthuse me, and they are willing to put up with me rambling about the latest thing I’m obsessing over as long as I am willing to put up with blank stares when I’m done.
So, really, my friends are the only people who know everything about me, and don’t just accept me, but understand and positively encourage it. And normally, I’m popping in for a whistlestop visit, there’s a party or a something to do, and while we have a great time and a great catch up, I am always aware that time is short, and so we shouldn’t just all be sitting in the front room on our laptops, not really saying much but sharing the companionship of mutual geekness.
So. That basically sums up why I love my friends so much and why this week was amazing and wonderful and just what I needed. I didn’t quite expect it to turn into such and essay, but then, I never do. (Also I am amused at how I keep referring to my friends as if I don’t know that you guys are pretty much the only people who ever read this)
I’m going to go and cook some dinner, and when I’m done, I’ll write the movie reviews that I sat down to write in the first place.
First up
The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009)
This was on my list because the trailer looked ridiculous and I never got round to seeing it. And it was that. It is the goofiest film I have seen in quite some time. In the 60s the army set up a secret division called (if I remember correctly) The New Warriors with the aim of exploring non-violent and non-technological warfare. The unit is run by an ex-soldier-turned-hippie and using a variety of different New Age techniques and doctrines, starts developing psychic powers.
Flash forward to now and the Iraq War and a reporter (Ewan McGregor) seeks to prove himself to his ex-wife by becoming a war correspondent. Whilst waiting for entry to the country he meets George Clooney’s character who claims to be psychic. Ewan McGregor accompanies George Clooney into the desert in an attempt to uncover the truth and to help George Clooney on his secret mission. Hijinks ensue. Including spiking a military base’s water supply with LSD. And George Clooney has a ridik moustache.
As I said, incredibly goofy. But thoroughly entertaining. And just the tone of film I happened to be looking for at the time.
But what really made me like this film was that even if the plot hadn’t been so goofy, it would still have been genuinely funny. A lot of the humour didn’t come so much from the situation as the characters, especially Ewan and George bickering in their trek through the desert.
Half of the humour does come from the fact that the New Warriors or whatevs like to call themselves “Jedi” which leads to some classic exchanges like:
Ewan McGregor: What’s a Jedi?
George Clooney: I am.
and George Clooney telling Ewan McGregor that he has an “inner Jedi”. There are other, more subtle Star Wars references that tickled me as well.
The flashbacks to George Clooney’s training were good even if he does sport the most hair you ever did see. There is a scene of awkward!Dancing that may well be my favourite.
Also, there is just something inherently funny about the sight of George Clooney giving Ewan McGregor a piggy back.
All in all, a very silly and fun film. Some people might feel that the humour is a little dark, considering that it is set during a war that is very much current, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. George Clooney and Ewan McGregor have really good chemistry on screen, and their bickering is one of the highlights of the film. Plus, Ewan McGregor does that cute shy happy half smile of his that just sort of turns me to mush.
Secondly,
Chances Are (1989)
On my list because Robert Downey Junior. It looked like the kind of ridiculous crappy rom com he made in the 80s and 90s and that it would be silly and entertaining.
It turns out that it tries to be that, but manages to be *really creepy*.
So, a woman (Cybill Shepherd) has been happily married for a year and has just found out she’s pregnant. Her husband is played (at the moment - we’ll get to that later) by the guy who played the bad guy in Flubber (and because of that I just can’t see the character as being anything other than a douchebag because he is a douchebag in, like, everything) His best friend is in love with her, and decided to tell
DouchebagFromFlubber on the day of their wedding, but that seems to be fine by him because they let him have a key to their house. He might live with them. It is unclear.
Possibly they just have some threesome thing going on. I wouldn’t be surprised. The best friend does not look like he would object as he appears to be in love with both of them.
Anyway, it’s their anniversary and outside the restaurant DouchebagFromFlubber is run over and killed. The reaction to this scene probably should not have been group cackling and rewinding to see it again, but Cybill Shepherds reaction to seeing her husband knocked down in the street was just ridiculous.
Once in heaven he insists to be sent back to earth and since he kicks up such a fuss, the angels send him straight back instead of having to wait in the line for reincarnation. Or recycling as they call it the majority of the time. *shrug*
Unfortunately, in their haste they forget to give him the inoculation that would prevent him from remembering his past life’s memories.
Cut to: 23 years later
Robert Downey Junior flirts with some girl in the (Harvard, I think) library and lets her off of her fine by distracting the librarian, with the best line in the whole film:
“They’re fooling with the folios! And fiddling with them too!”
And this is where the creepy starts to happen.
The girl turns out to be Cybill Shepherd’s daughter. And Robert Downey Junior is the reincarnation of her father but he doesn’t remember this.
A series of events happen that lead him to being taken under the best friend’s wing
and invited back to his house where he discovers the girl he flirted with in the library that one time also lives there.
Cybill Shepherd has not got over her husband’s death in the intervening 23 years, leaving his favourite snack out on the bedside table every night and having his picture taped to the inside of the fridge.
The best friend is still in love with her, but has never told her because he didn’t want to quote “rush her” unquote.
Whilst at the house, Robert Downey Junior is assailed by all of his previous life’s memories and realises that the girl into whose pants, lest we forget, he had up until this point been trying to get, is in fact his daughter.
He then decides to persue the love of his life, ie Cybill Shepherd. So now we have
a) a girl trying to sleep with someone who is, unbeknownst to her, the reincarnation of her dead father
b) Robert Downey Junior aware that he is the girl’s father, attempting to fend off her advances without telling her the truth
c) A man in love with his best friend’s widow but lacking in the balls to actually do anything about it, and being unaware that the young wannabe journalist he has taken under his wing is in fact the reincarnation of his best friend
d) Cybill Shepherd who is still pining over her dead husband
e) And Robert Downey Junior again, determined to win Cybill Shepherd back
Try telling me this film isn’t creepy, I dares ya.
RDJ finally convinces Cybill Shepherd that he is the reincarnation of her dead husband and she, seemingly unperturbed by her husband being in the body of a man 23 years younger, agrees to go on a date with him. Although, that body is Robert Downey Junior’s, so I don’t exactly blame her.
The daughter still attempts to pursue RDJ but he tells her there’s someone else, without mentioning the small fact that it’s her mother that he’s really after and that he’s the Daddy she never knew.
At some point the obligatory psychic turns up, because what is a movie about ghosts or reincarnation or angels without an obligatory psychic?
After their date, Cybill Shepherd and Robert Downey Junior decide to have sex in the living room as the best friend is away, completely ignoring the fact that at some point later on their daughter is going to walk in the door and see her mother getting it on with the guy she has been trying to shag.
Turns out that the best friend is the one that turns up though and then there may have been a fight, I don’t know, I’d kind of stopped paying attention at this point because the creepy had got too much.
Anyway, Cybill Shepherd decides that actually she loves the best friend now because he’s always been there for her in the past 23 years and Robert Downey Junior isn’t exactly the man she married what with the different body and the youngness and the 23 years leading a completely different life and the best friend also gets convinced that RDJ is, in fact, his best friend.
Robert Downey Junior ends up in hospital, for some reason, where the inoculation angel from the beginning of the movie can come down and give him his injection so that he forgets all of his previous life memories and get on with boning his daughter in peace. While her mum and step dad, who remember all of the previous few day’s events don’t tell either of them and actually think it’s “cute”.
Aww.
*shudders*
Creepy fucking movie, I swear. The last point raises the largest plot hole in this whole movie. If the angels could come down at any point and give him the magic not remember injection, why the HELL didn’t they do it when he was a kid and getting his routing vaccines so that this film couldn’t have happened and creeped me the fuck out???!!!!
There was also a side plot that had something to do with DouchebagFromFlubber being a lawyer and trying to take down a mob boss and discovering a corrupt judge just before he got killed and eventually being able to solve his last case and get the bad guys sent to jail, but it just sort of got lost under all the creepy.
Which is a shame really, because if they had run with it and left out the creepy-arse love triangle nonsense, it could have been a really good movie about a guy who gets one more chance to expose corruption, but first he has to convince his wife and best friend that he is the reincarnation of the man they knew. I would have liked to have seen that film. Alas, I got to watch this shit instead.
Robert Downey Junior is the best thing in this movie by far, even in scenes where he is obviously high. He is incredibly young and so pretty it hurts, physically hurts.
But this film is just FUCKING CREEPY. There is no other way to describe it. I think if they had left out the almost-incest then it could have been a sweet film about a woman torn between a man who claims to be her dead husband and is almost but not quite him and her husband’s best friend who has been by her side for the past 23 years through thick and thin. But the almost-incest taints everything it touches, rendering even Robert Downey Junior and Cybill Shepherd’s relationship creepy because you know that at some point the daughter is going to find out that both her and her mother are trying to get into this man’s pants.
In conclusion, RUN AWAY BEFORE SEEING THIS FILM!!
Finally,
Tangled (2010)
Never got round to seeing this at the cinema, so it was on my list. This wasn’t actually a love film delivered film, but I have made it my rule to have to review all of the films on my Love Film list, even if I eventually end up seeing them a different way.
So, what to say about Tangled? It was brilliant. Absolutely hilarious, with some great songs. Taking a leaf out of Shrek’s book, it brings an irreverent humour to an unconventional fairy tale, ripping apart clichés, lampshading tropes and generally having a good time.
I’m not sure what else I can say, except watch it. It’s Disney’s answer to Shrek but with so much intelligence and originality that it doesn’t feel close to being a carbon copy or cynical attempt to cash in on that franchise’s popularity.
A good story, well told. One of the best non-Pixar Disney movies of the last 10 years.
Frying pans, who knew?