ALINE BROSH MCKENNA AND THE FEMALE ACTION MOVIE

After I binged out on Mexican horror movies for Halloween I needed a break. Not a break from watching movies, that would be the smart thing to do.  I needed to see something nice.  A chick flick.  After a couple of false starts I settled on Morning Glory (2010).  I remembered that it got fairly good reviews when it came out, then promptly vanished forever.  That's just what I needed, something fluffy that would drift away on a breath, that would show a glossy snapshot of a pleasant world.  Morning Glory is about the Clumsy-cute Spunky Girl Who Won't Give Up.  She finds herself thrust into place as director of the worst rated morning talk show on television and she has to get those ratings up or they will cancel the show.  The only way to do it is with a plan that is so crazy it just might work - drag in a surly highly respected journalist and try to force him to banter.  It's a Shirley Temple movie, with Harrison Ford as the old grump who must be won over by cute little Rachel McAdams' cheerful never-say-die attitude.  But of course what it really takes is for her to finally snap and bitch him out for being a hateful old jerk. It was cute.  It washed my brain clean.

When I looked it up I found that it was written by Aline Brosh McKenna, the screenwriter of The Devil Wears Prada (2006), which I kind of hated.  One thing I didn't hate about it though was the writing.  As I said, I eventually started to like it.  That's what happened with Morning Glory - I never really hated it but I finally liked it for what it was.  So I figured what the hell let's check out something else by Aline Brosh McKenna and see what happens.

I looked up 27 Dresses (2008) and it seemed like the sort of thing that was the least like anything I would ever want to experience, so I knew I ought to see it.  The way I am different from a lot of people is instead of just learning about things I know I will like I try to learn about things I might not like, but I try to find something good in them.  Some stuff I know about, like zombies.  I saw Lucio Fulci movies in the '70s at drive ins and dollar movies so zombies are OLD OLD hat to me.  You can keep your zombies.  Unless they include Milla Jovovich all strapped up in black leather.  But being a bridesmaid, that is something I don't know about.  I have been to a couple of weddings and what an incredible waste.  Weddings are anathema to me, so the idea of there being a person who is a wedding junkie, or women who dream all their lives about the perfect wedding, that is just INSANE.  The titular dresses are a closet full of bridesmaid dresses, and this whole movie probably got kickstarted by the brief online Horrible Bridesmaid Dresses craze.  The hero of the movie is the person who always does everything for everyone else and never for herself, a wedding junkie with a closet full of horrible dresses, one from each wedding she has been in.  She is played by Katherine Heigl, who seems to be popular for her non-threatening everywoman appeal.  She is hopelessly in love with her handsome boss and when her younger prettier sister comes along and snatches him up something has to snap.  You could send this movie back to 1938 and put Claudette Colbert in it and it would work just the same - changing dresses in the back of a taxicab (driven by Allen Jenkins) as she rushes from one wedding to the next.  It was after seeing this that I understood that these are Female Action Movies.

An action movie has a hero seeking a fabulous object in exotic locations with an inferior sidekick, facing obstacles and adversaries which become progressively more difficult until at last the good guy wins.  Except in these movies it isn't vengeance or a million dollars in gold, it's the fulfillment of a lifelong dream or true love.  There are no explosions except emotional ones, no leaping through windows shooting two machine pistols as a ball of flame explodes behind you, except with your heart.  The sidekicks are not ever-present, sometimes they are quite intermittent but they are there, to act as a sounding board or to give advice - not cute and spunky like the hero but helpful and convenient.  The adversaries are not evil, just unsympathetic, selfish, oblivious to the feelings of others, and they are not defeated, just brought around to the side of righteousness.

Armed with that knowledge I tried out I Don't Know How She Does It (2011), though not without some trepidation.  I almost chickened out.  Sarah Jessica Parker is the urban mother of two who does something important in investment banking that nobody understands which causes her to always be going somewhere and breaking promises to her daughter.  Maybe she just waited to start a family but at some points Parker is looking a little haggard, and maybe too old for these cheerful chatter roles, but what else has she got going for her?  She's going to have to be playing crazy grandmas someday. Through much of the movie I found myself exclaiming "I HATE THIS," and yet the overall effect was that I actually liked it. One very important adventure aspect of the Female Action Movie is public embarrassment.  In each of these movies there are moments of supreme public embarrassment which, contrary to her expectations, the hero survives with few repercussions.  Falling down, hitching up your underwear where everybody can see you, getting lice from your kid.  It happens, it's over, nobody dies - like crossing that jungle rope bridge over the piranha river chased by cannibals, it seems like it is going to be terrible but then it is over and you cut the ropes and keep running.

I had some momentum going so it was either We Bought A Zoo (2011)  or Laws of Attraction (2004).  I don't know about the zoo thing, and kids and animals so I will pass on that one.  Laws of Attraction stars Julianne Moore and Pierce Brosnan as two high-powered divorce lawyers who instantly hate each other so obviously they must fall into bed as soon as possible and eventually wake up from a drunken spree - married.  This wasn't quite as specialized as a Female Action movie as McKenna's later work and it would be a good married date movie because naturally any divorce movie ultimately affirms marriage.

Finally I tried to finish it off with Three To Tango (1999) but McKenna was merely co-writer on it and frankly it stank so bad I happily quit after 15 minutes of heavy-handed yoks and gay jokes.  So there you go.  That was my foray into Aline Brosh McKenna territory and what I learned from it was that your sidekick will always be there for you when you do something stupid and humiliating. If you just keep trying and never give up you will finally find true love, have your dream wedding, and balance a happy home with a career in high finance.  Sometimes you just have to snap, and smack somebody down, and think about yourself for once, and show them you are a human being too, but it will all work out okay in the end.  That's how it is in the movies anyway.

Movies

Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935) Probably as good a movie as you could make of this in 1935, with Claude Rains hamming it up a bit as the villain, and a mostly unfamiliar cast otherwise. If you just want a quick rendition of the story to give you an idea of what it is about, this will do. My choice for Family Movie Night, it left us unmoved. 4/10

A couple of nights ago we watched Trouble In Paradise (1932), an okay Ernst Lubitsch drawing-room comedy. When I got it from the library last year nobody was interested, but if someone else recommends a thing then it becomes a must-see. Has some funny bits, but I don't care for Kay Francis or Herbert Marshall. 5/10

On my own I watched How to Date an Otaku Girl (2009) also known as Fujoshi kanojo and My Geeky Girlfriend. Kind of the flip side of the smash hit Train Man, this time it is the girl who is obsessed with comics, animation and boy-love fantasy. I see some of that sort of stuff but I wanted to see it in context. The hapless male is dragged along to a Butler Cafe, where women are served delicate pastries by beautiful young men, costume shops, and comic book stores catering to women's fantasies of pretty boys making out with each other. It develops into a serious romance story, with each having to overcome different obstacles to find true love. Mostly educational, but it makes learning fun. 5/10

Movies

Chelovek Amfibiya (Amphibian Man) - 1962: Soviet science-fantasy romantic melodrama, which I assume was filmed in Cuba. Boy meets girl in mid-shark-attack, but the boy is the silver-clad amphibian man, having been implanted with gills by his scientist father to rectify a lung ailment. Much of the appeal of the love story is in the charismatic and charming leads, Anastasiya Vertinskaya and Vladimir Koronev, with Mikhail Kozakov as villain. I'm sure the exotic and colorful locales helped to make it a huge sensation in the USSR when it was released. Very well-produced with great modern sets in the scientist's lab. More for education than entertainment at this point in history, but fairly enjoyable. Putting Vertinskaya in a bathing suit that becomes transparent when wet was a wise choice. 6/10

He's the Bad Guy.

Movies

Susan Slade (1961) Judging by the trailer I saw a while back, I expected this three-hankie technicolor weeper to be laughably atrocious - instead it pounded me into a teary-eyed jelly with its sweeping violins, grand crane shots and soft-focus close-ups. Connie Stevens' shipboard romance ends in a fate worse than death - for 1961 - and her family must conspire to pretend her child is only her brother to avoid total disaster. It's hard to believe I lived in a time when this was normal, and an unwed pregnancy meant such fear and tragedy. Rather a daring handling of the subject for that time. This is a spectacular big-budget production, with foreign and domestic locations, and the vast indoor/outdoor soundstage setting of the family home is a beautiful piece of design. Even the mailbox is great. The cinematography is breathtaking, the acting is earnest and touching, as expected from Lloyd Nolan as the most wonderful father ever, and surprisingly from Connie Stevens whom I had never seen in anything so demanding. No heartstring is left unplucked. Written and directed by Delmer Daves, who is on my radar now. An outstanding melodrama for the discriminating viewer. 8/10

Movies

Woman Chases Man (1937) Miriam Hopkins is the poor girl, Joel McCrea is the rich boy in this screwball comedy. Lots of fast talking, scheming, and absurdly complicated situations. Gets to be a lot of shouting and fighting at the end which I find wearisome, but overall it was pretty cute despite its lack of a negligee scene. 7/10

Movies

I'm a Cyborg, but That's Okay (2006) Eccentric and imaginative Korean romantic comedic fantasy. A young woman believes she is a cyborg and wears her grandmother's false teeth when she talks to other machines, and she finds understanding and love in the mental hospital. That is just the skeleton on which a very entertaining and well-executed film is built. Bright, colorful, inventive and fun, with fantastic and realistic elements seamlessly blended. 8/10

Addendum: Re-watched it with Donna, and it was well-received. Not as light as it first appears, and unconventional in every way.

Movies

Poligamy (2009) Hungarian romantic fantasy: an aspiring screenwriter who finds the prospect of parenthood and marriage with his long-time girlfriend oppressive, wakes up in a redecorated apartment with a strange woman, and he is the only one who notices anything different. This happens every day until he learns his lesson. I picked this because I like to try to see something relatively normal from other countries, and I thought it would be something Donna and I could watch together. What I always forget is that, being of a melancholic temperament, I choose things I think will make me feel better, while she - sanguine or choleric or whatever - prefers things that tend to make me feel worse; disturbing unsettling things with no clear resolution that just leave me wishing I had stayed in bed. So I thought this was cute and pleasant, a good window into an idealized daily life in modern Budapest; she seemed to think it was too light, and lacking in substance. Sometimes things are just for fun, to find some pleasure and enjoyment in life. 7/10

Movies

Ask Any Girl (1959) Career Girl/Battle of the Sexes farce. Shirley MacLaine asks her employer David Niven to help her use psychological marketing techniques to hook his brother, Gig Young. Cute and funny, almost racy given the cultural constraints of the day. MacLaine is as cute as a bug's ear, and this is the first time I have have seen any appeal in Gig Young - maybe because he is not playing a lovable lush. Nifty costumes by Helen Rose whom I am noticing for the first time and find she did some of the most memorable of MGM's comedies and musicals from the late '40s through the '60s. As good as any such film of that era and better than quite a few. Surprise one-line appearance by young and manly William Smith, champion bodybuilder who would eventually become a biker movie star and all around movie supervillain. 8/10

Look at that one splash of color - Genius!

Movies

Ghost in the Well (1957) Tragic Japanese romance between nobleman and servant, literally titled Ghost Story of Broken Dishes at Bancho Mansion. When the maidservant deliberately breaks the heirloom plates that were to have sealed the deal on her beloved master's wedding, destroying his prospects and those of his entire family, he strikes her down in a rage and she falls into the courtyard well, becoming the titular ghost. At 45 minutes it is exactly half as long as I would have liked. Nothing truly outstanding, but all very nicely done and quite touching at times. 6/10

Goodbye Again (1933) Muddled hotel room farce - Warren William is the author of salacious novels on a promotional tour, Joan Blondell is his secretary who reminds him what city they are in and what he is supposed to be doing there. A Cleveland matron who had a brief college fling with him has always believed that his novels were all about her, and her appearance at his door begins the conflict. Hugh Herbert is unusually subdued as the vague boob who doesn't know how cuckolded he really is. Composed more of set-pieces than a coherent plot. Warren William has always seemed to me to be a dime-store Barrymore getting by on looks rather than ability - his version of Perry Mason is unnerving to anyone who has grown up with Raymond Burr - and Blondell's devotion to him here is inexplicable if not offensive. Gowns by Orry-Kelly featuring layered cape shoulders and asymmetrical bodices. Overall rather hard to like. 5.5/10