The bastards have made me sleepy & Must Love Dogs

A sickness descended on my body last Wednesday and has refused to remove itself from my system despite a near-constant hyrdration/urination campaign on my part. This sort-of warfare has been outlawed, I know, but I can't help but feel that I am being attacked by a group of Canadians, some New Yorkers, and/or James Dobsen of Focus on the Family (the preceding listed in no particular order). I don't have any reason to believe this, but all evidence is subjective anyway. For instance, the fossil record is only evidence for evolution if we all agree that such things as matter and time exist, and I think we can all agree that this boils down to nothing more than a personal decision based on cultural values.

While I was half-asleep over the past four days, I watched the following films:
Singin' in the Rain
The Cat and the Canary
Batman Begins
The Interpreter
and about 1/3 of Must Love Dogs

I sampled episodes from the following TV DVD sets:
The Kids in the Hall, Season 3
SCTV, Volume 1 (Network 90)
The Dave Chapelle Show, Season 2

And I listened to the audio book of Stephen King's latest experiment in being a curmudgeon: Cell

I'd like to share my experience with all of these, but, first, I must tell you about Must Love Dogs.

The thing is that I am a big softie and I tend to like just about anything in the moving picture form that has people talking to one another because, at heart, I'm a baby and babies like to look at themselves or things that look like themselves (this would explain why I was able to enjoy fucking Zardoz, man). If you have two people meeting cute and falling in love, I'm usually in. I generally abhor the abandoning of a film in the middle, to cast judgments on it later. What happened here was mesmerizing to me, because as this amazingly cynical and calculated film progressed, the abhorrance I had for the film overtook the above mentioned "cinemus interruptus" abhorrance. Soon after, the film was switched off.

To be fair, I was not the member of the household who turned off Must Love Dogs somewhere between the 35-50 minute mark... that fell to the female in the house, Tara. Not only did she turn off Must Love Dogs, a film that I have no doubt many would call a "chick flick," but soon after turning it off she began speaking with the most disgusted tone of voice I've ever heard from her following a viewing. "...had nothing to do with people or relationships...stupid propaganda...I wanted to like it...I liked John Cusack...I just don't want to waste my evening on this... I've got other things to do...What is this movie?" are the memories I have of what was said in this disgusted tone in the moments after the film was switched off. It should be noted that as much as I hate the notion of stopping in the middle of something, Tara is almost physically unable to do so driven by a sociopathic need to find out how everything ends.

I can't say that I was disappointed that she turned it off. It's a cold film in every way I can think of, with only a trace of sincerity. And I agree that, from what we saw, it had nothing to do with people or, at least, that the film was only interested in the most one dimensional aspects of its characters that allowed it to push forward its plot.

It was bizarre to me, and perhaps this is where the propaganda charge comes in, that the movie assumes its premises in such a way that one who didn't know better would think that the notion that a divorced woman is desperately missing something from her life if she hasn't started dating again in 8 months following the divorce or that a man is seriously nuts if he's not trying to fuck everything in sight just days after his are universal truths known to all rather than truths that make sense for these characters. It would be one thing if the movie presented characters who believed this, but the film, apparently, feels it can take these ideas for granted and leave such pesky things as characterization or motivation on the floor since we're all automatically "with" the struggles these characters are going through.

And what they're going through is a struggle against forces urging them towards these, according to the film, normalities. Diane Lane doesn't want to jump back into the dating game, but her family has other ideas, concerned as they are, for her ability to reproduce. John Cusack isn't interested in fucking anything in sight, but his friend keeps trying to set him up with easy lays. Worse still is the gender disparity: Cusack is divorced and with his new batch of free time, he crafts wooden boats with zeal, eschewing the greater wealth that could be found in making boats of a different kind for craftsmanship. Diane Lane, on the other hand, is depicted as spending all of her time either being sad that she lives alone in her house or searching for a new mate. It's bizarre and like, soooo 1979.

This is to say nothing of the atrocious dialogue in the piece, written with a degree of rhythm but each line is written and performed (apart from Cusack) as if it were the punchline to a joke on Home Improvement. This wry cynicism is balanced poorly with the usual bland schmaltziness endemic to romantic comedies of this sort, and so the movie has an infuriating tone of buzzing bees who really want you to weep for them.

Before we turned the movie off, there was some traction developing in the film, but Tara couldn't stand any more and I wasn't about to protest. I doubt if the movie could have redeemed itself entirely from the hole it dug into my usually willing and pliable heart. How dry the depths of commercial calculation!