I watched the movie Her, about which Paul said, “I was interested when I heard about it—but as soon as I heard the title, I knew I wouldn’t like it.” I felt similarly: I found the concept (man falls in love with computer operating system) interesting, but the title off-putting. I plowed through the off-put feelings: just as Paul didn’t want to be someone who would watch a movie called Her, I didn’t want to be someone who would not-see a movie based on the title. Plenty of titles are chosen for plenty of reasons.
Well. I liked the concept and was very interested to see how they’d deal with it. I thought they did a good job making things look near-future-y. But I didn’t like either of the two leads, and it’s hard to root for a couple when you don’t like either one of them, or the way they talk, or the things they say, and when you would pay cash money not to hear their sex-talk. I’m still glad I saw it, though. I would like to see it again with different actors and a different script.
I watched This is 40, which is a movie I didn’t think I’d like. It seemed to fall into the category of “Movies where I love everyone in it but, you know, I really have reached my lifetime limit of seeing people sitting on the toilet, and while I recognize that many people experience acute discomfort as hilarity, I don’t experience it that way MYSELF.” (See also: Bridesmaids.) And it IS that kind of movie, and yet I liked it anyway. It’s basically Bridesmaids, but when they’re 40 and married and parenting, rather than when they’re dating and getting engaged. So there’s a lot of swearing, a lot of nudity, a lot of raunchiness, a lot of bathroom stuff, a lot of behavior and arguments of the sort I don’t like and can’t identify with at all, and yet I DID like it and I DID laugh. But I’m not really recommending it, because it’s exactly the kind of thing I usually don’t like, so maybe I was in a weird mood.
Megan Fox is in it, and I found I really, really liked her, which surprised me because all my previous impressions of her (photos of her being snarly-provocative when I’ve Googled “fox”) have been so negative. She was FUNNY.
I read Stephen King’s book Bag of Bones, which I apparently missed when it came out in 1998. I think it’s because that was around the time I was pregnant with my firstborn, and I was not in any mood for scary stories.
Anyway, after 50 pages (my usual cut-off), I still didn’t like the book. I persevered and finished it anyway, because it was the last book in my library pile. I wish I hadn’t. I felt like it took a lot of effort to force this book to happen, which, considering the level of author intrusion and the theme of writer’s block, maybe it DID. The Big Reveal seemed like it was only a big deal because of the build-up: if we’d heard that part of the story first, I think all we would have thought is, “Well, why did it lead to a big issue THIS time and not any of the OTHER millions of times that sort of thing has happened?” Also, the type of revenge didn’t make sense, considering the parties who were most injured by it.
I was particularly grossed out by the storyline between the 40-year-old male narrator and the 21-year-old girl he first thinks is 14. “Oh, Stephen!,” she says, “Er, I mean Mike! PLEASE sleep with me! I know you’re a famous novelist and super-rich, but that has NOTHING to do with it! Good thing your wife and baby died so WE can be together now and you don’t even have to feel guilty about it! I’m like her, but way younger and hotter and more adoring—AND my baby is the same age yours would have been, so you can pretend!” And he’s so TORN because he’s so NOBLE, but it really is LOVE and he’d feel the EXACT SAME WAY and be JUST as helpful to her if she weren’t young and hot and beautiful and so very young. Really! He would! Or probably he would, if he knew her AT ALL beyond how she looks and dances and keeps kissing him and pressing her pert firm young….well, anyway, he IS noble! And it is TOTALLY her choice! TOTALLY! HE would NEVER have made a move, but SHE kept insisting! And it’s okay because first he had his wife die! And he let it be a brief and merciful death!
I, too, liked the concept of Her but was put off by the trailer. I still haven’t watched it. I like your observation that you’d like to watch it again with different actors and a different script; I often feel like that with Sci Fi films. Or I like books but want to read them written by someone else (generally I want to read the version of the book that wasn’t written by a white man; I hated the book Half Sick of Shadows but felt that written by someone who was queer or a woman or not white it might have been redeemable).
“Stop eating cupcakes!!” is my favorite part of This is 40 and is often quoted at our house!
Her has been sitting in our movie queue for awhile and I just haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it. Part of the problem is I just don’t find Joaquin Phoenix appealing (I particularly don’t find a mustachioed Joaquin Phoenix appealing) and I feel like this is problem given he is the only “face” you have to work with in this movie.
I was bothered by the same when I read Bag of Bones.
I haven’t read/seen any of these but I think I’ll skip This is 40. I can’t stand cringe humor (Bridesmaids made me laugh but it was SO painful). That’s also why i never really liked Seinfeld–so much cringing. Yuck!
Hmmm, I don’t remember that part of Bag of Bones bothering me. I wonder now if it’s because I was around 19/20 when i read it, but if I read it now it would bother me.
I haven’t seen Her – I really liked Joaquin Phoenix in Signs, but then he went totally off the rails and that doesn’t always sour things for me but just the previews of this made me feel icky. I’m intrigued about you and your husband not liking the title – any particular reason? I haven’t seen This is 40, mostly because I really dislike Judd Apatow’s wife, as an actress and as a person whenever I’ve seen her or read the kinds of things she says. I agree with what you said about Bag of Bones, and in addition I found the way King wrote the little girl’s dialogue insanely annoying – she sounded like a backwards three-year-old at times and like a Rhodes Scholar at others. I was still incensed on King’s behalf when I read a review of the book that revealed a huge spoiler, though. Have you read Doctor Sleep? Might be my favourite King book ever at ths point.
I’m not sure I can put a finger on what bugs us about the title.
Yes, the little girl bugged me too. If I didn’t KNOW he had kids, I would think he didn’t have kids.
I haven’t read Doctor Sleep yet.
Interesting – I had no idea that Leslie Mann was Judd Apatow’s wife until I googled it after reading your comment.
Your description of the Bag of Bones character was hilarious. One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve been listening to a lot of his newer books is what a creepy old perv Stephen King is! And how even when the wives are good wives, they still nag and sag and he definitely writes a lot about that. It really has been bugging me and I’m glad I’m not the only one who notices it! And yes, definitely the best part of Her was Los Angeles in the future. “When you would pay cash money not to hear their sex-talk” YES!
I haven’t watched This Is 40 mainly because every Judd Apatow movie I’ve seen has been at least 30-40 minutes too long. Like there was no equivalent of a book editor for scripts and they just go on and on. I find them relatively amusing for 90-100 minutes and then it’s ridiculous. However, perhaps I will give it a whirl based on your recommendation because I realize that this “movies are too long” thing seems to be some kind of issue I’ve picked up since turning 40. It’s like I just don’t have the patience or time for movies over 90-120 minutes anymore.
please review everything.
Hmm, I’ve seen This is 40, enjoyed it, know who Megan Fox is, and yet have no recollection of her being in the movie. Perhaps I was more distracted than I thought while viewing – Paul Rudd got car-doored while on a cathartic bike ride at the end – right? (Right???) (He’s way more my type than Megan Fox, so that right there might be the issue :-) )
Anyway, it’s a definite possibility that I haven’t really seen a movie since 2002.
PS – Haven’t seen Her but recommend the thematically similar Lars and the Real Girl.
She was Desi, the hot clerk at the wife’s store, the one they thought might be stealing.
“Lars and the Real Girl” is hilarious and touching. And I think, quite different from “Her”, although I have not seen the latter.
A friend gave my husband This is 40 for his birthday, and I was reluctant to watch it because mostly the critics hated it. Then a good friend who is a marriage and family therapist recommended it just because it felt very real to her. And I watched it and that’s how I felt about it too – not because my husband and I would ever act that way toward each other or be in those situations, but because the feelings themselves felt very true. The frustration with a habit your spouse has that you think is unhealthy for them, the way anger with your spouse isn’t linear like it is in most movies, but circles around so that you can be angry and then make up without true resolution, then be angry again when something else sets you off. And even though I didn’t think the teenage daughter was a very good actress, I can see into the future my own (now pre-schooler) behaving just the way she did.
Also, Megan Fox is awesome. Every interview I’ve ever read with her she comes across as extremely smart and savvy, and as someone who knows exactly how to make people’s perceptions of her work mostly to her benefit.
I believe the teenage daughter in “This is 40” is Apatow and Mann’s real-life daughter. Nepotism much?!
“When you would pay cash money not to hear their sex-talk” made me laugh till the neighbors came out. And the older I get, the truer it is. You obviously think this is arousing, scriptwriter! But no!
I’m sorry you didn’t like Bag of Bones. I liked lots of things about it, including the wife and the fact that it was a ghost story (something he doesn’t do often) though it’s an annoying novel in other ways. But King has been working on his problems with women for a very long time. At first, for years, he never had a strong woman who was good, or a good woman who was strong. Then he obviously either had an epiphany or a talking-to, and he started working through that: a lot of his middle-year novels are good women who start out weak or abused and get strong, sometimes scary strong (Rose Madder, Gerald’s Game, Dolores Claiborne, Susannah in the Dark Tower novels.) Later, he has women who can just be who they are. He is by no means perfect, but he has gotten better. For some reason, he has always been more comfortable with women of color being strong than with white women. I suspect there are Issues there somewhere.
Sorry, really long comment. I have Thoughts about Stephen King. :)
I found this really interesting! I’ve also been noticing a lot of ugly bad women and beautiful good women in his books. Has he ever had a beautiful woman be bad, or is it always goodness represented by beauty, badness represented by physical repulsiveness?
I did notice some things going on in some of the Bag of Bones scenes. Like, I read it and thought, “Something or someone has led to some additional insight here.” (Or, like, early readers said “Oh god, I hate this” and he tried to explain better what he meant.) (Or, like, his wife/daughter read it and threw it at him.)
This is another thing I’m pretty sure someone talked to him about (I suspect his wife, who seems to be very smart.) He obviously thinks, or thought, fat=repulsive, but in his middle years he started having some good fat characters, including one or two good fat women. (Gertie in Rose Madder comes to mind, and Ben in It is a great fat kid, though he gets skinny when he grows up.) These days he has people of different sizes like it’s basically normal and some of his worst characters are thin. Dolores Claiborne is ugly and good. In The Stand, Mother Abagail is old and wrinkled and the (morally) best character in the book. In Mr. Mercedes, the girlfriend character of the main character is a pretty, but normal middle-aged woman with sagging and wrinkles. Once again, he is more comfortable with women of color being ugly, or fat, and good or strong than with white women, but I do actually think he has been working on it. I give him credit, but definitely not all the credit, for that.
I can’t remember a single gay character in King off the top of my head, can you?
No, I can’t. I gave it a day, and I still can’t think of any! That’s interesting—I hadn’t noticed that.
I agree with the “please review everything” comment.