Haters Only

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted, but in lieu of the 20th anniversary of Keira Knightley’s Pride and Prejudice, I thought we’d celebrate with a post about how much I hate it.

Usually the praise of this movie centers around aesthetics. It’s pretty, the music is nice, there’s a hand flex, and funny potatoes. All well and good. The hand flex is romantic. The remark about potatoes is humorous. And it might not be so bad if the stupid thing wasn’t supposed to be anything like Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's beloved classic. But it was so different, it might have been better to call it something else. Pride, Prejudice and Zombies is almost a more faithful adaptation. Both movies add nonsense to dumb the original down--one through excessive giggling and one through excessive killing. “We’re giggling so you know we’re not boring. It’s set a long time ago, but we’re still having fun! We promise!” Ugh. I take it back. Even if it wasn’t supposed to be Pride and Prejudice, it would still suck.

Which is a shame because there’s so much about Pride and Prejudice that we love. So much is lost in this adaptation. We love Lizzie who is sharp and independent. But THIS Lizzie is less so when she’s offended by Darcy’s initial slight. In the book—and better movies/mini-series—she finds it funny. Some say it’s not fair to compare a movie to a six hour mini series that can cover more details. Did the movie not have enough time to make her laugh instead of pout? Did the movie not have enough time to NOT have a pig run through the house? Did the movie not have enough time for accurate representation of historical costumes for the period? Maybe they could have scraped some time off the scenes that stretched on for what seemed like years, of her sitting on a swing, or staring at herself in the mirror, or him walking through a field. Oh my gosh! We get it! He’s walking! 

—Then when he stops walking, after the end of the world has come and we’re all in the hereafter, it gets worse. We get his declaration of love. **shudder** Proceed if you dare.

I hate it so much that I’ve dissected it, line for line, to showcase its abhorrent stain on Pemberley’s shades. 

Prepare yourself! This proposal is on-the-nose and embarrassing. There isn’t a morsel of genuine, natural speech. It’s cliche, and a waste of space. Got your loins gathered? Let’s dive in.

“I love, I love you.” Reminds me of that part in “Singing in the Rain” when they’re making fun of the bad dialogue that’s “I love you! I love you! I love you!” Originality points? 0. Clever points? 0. Romantic points? 0. So far, you suck, Mr. Darcy. 

But it doesn’t improve. “You’ve bewitched me, body and soul.” “Body and soul” is implied, buddy. And “bewitched” is the word people use when they want to look like they didn’t just run out of words. Any time you see it, know within your heart of hearts that the author is being lazy. 100% of the time I hear it and cringe. Stop. Using. This. Word. Use words that actually mean something and are personal.

At last we have the ending. “I never wish to be parted from you.” Okay. And? Do you see how it’s phrased? “It’s SO historic because he used the passive voice!” No. It’s just lazy!

There’s NOTHING in this that you couldn’t take and give to someone else. There’s nothing personal. Nothing that sounds like Mr. Darcy. It’s as if they didn’t finish the script and threw something together. And there are those who believe Jane Austen actually wrote this. My friends, do not read P&P looking for this. You will not find it. 

It is inexcusable and irresponsible for a writer charged with the great honor of adapting a Jane Austen novel to present this kind of bland effortless crap fest. 

As a writer, I spent days writing and rewriting a declaration of love until I got it right. I have zero patience for professionals who refuse to hone their craft. It’s infuriating, and offensive. 

Ahem. Now join me, and tell me what you hate about this movie. Any comments about liking the movie will be deleted, and epically un-tolerated. Thanks for understanding. Haters only.

A Case For Love Triangles

 

Hi. My name is Becky, and I love love triangles. I've met some who oppose of geometric romance, so I wanted to sit down, and get out some of my thoughts, and subject you to them at the same time. Hurray!

Love triangles are when one person digs someone, and someone else digs them. It's not necessary that two points of the triangle dig each other, but that's often the way. 

In Fight Club's case, he liked Marla, and Marla just liked him back, but he thought that meant she liked someone else. He was a little confused. It's okay.

So, who would say, "I don't like these love triangles!" when obviously it's a smashing happening? I don't know, dudes. But they say things like, "This is a trope, and tropes are evil!" So, is it a trope? Define "trope!" A trope is, according to whatever came up when I Googled it, "a common or overused theme or device." BUSTED! Looks like love triangles are a trope, guys. Shut it down. 

Why are you still reading? We've decided it's a trope, and we all know tropes are bad. Move on with your lives. 

Fine. Okay. Let's divide tropes into two categories, JUST FOR FUN! First we've got our CRAPPY WRITING TROPES. In this section we'll cram all the tropes that aren't REALISTIC, and perhaps are downright insulting. IN YOU GO, ADO ANNIES OF THE WORLD! SEE YOU LATER, KAREN SMITH! References: The Oklahoma! character whose personality is promiscuity, and the Mean Girls character whose personality is promiscuous idiot. Why was there ever more than one of these!? Also, we can say goodbye to the nerd who is passed over in their career, then gets evil, and hot. I couldn't believe it when Wonder Woman 1984 did this AGAIN.

But there's another category, my friends: REALISTIC TROPES. And we should keep these. I'm making this up as I go, and so I haven't thought much about what else fits into this, and maybe we should get rid of those, but let's go ahead and put love triangles here, because - let me ask you a question; have you ever been in love? YOU HAVE!?! And did that person like you back? NO!??! Well, then my friend, congratulations,  YOU HAVE BEEN IN A LOVE TRIANGLE! Wait. What? They did love you back? That's WONDERFUL! Did anyone have eyes for you, or them, while you were jonesing for each other? THEY DID?!?! You know what that means, friends? YOU'VE BEEN IN A LOVE TRIANGLE! I can almost completely 100% guaran-freaking-tee that every single relationship ever, except maybe, gosh, I hope, Adam and Eve's, has been a love triangle. 

My second point.

All the best movies have love triangles. Gone With The Wind, Hunger Games, and not even just romances. There's also Harry Potter, Encanto, Indiana Jones, Les Miserables, X-Men, Spider-man.... We've also got Gladiator and Star Wars which both managed to have love triangles even when two of the points were related! Lord of the Rings? Check! Even your precious Titanic is one big love triangle. So stop bashing on love triangles, when you know you love them! Even if they love someone else.

2020’s Emma

It took me a while to realize what it was about this movie that was driving me nuts. I love this movie, but it drives me nuts. Then it hit me! It’s over-directed. In its attempt to be *interesting* it’s over-directed, which leads us to... UNREALISM! Oh the dread of something not seeming real! I actually don’t get why things have to be real all the time. But I will say when something takes a step away from reality, it should have a reason... stronger than, “Because we’ve heard this story before and now we have to make it different.” It’s a good story as it is, with solid characters who’ve stood the test of time! They don’t need your cleverness! Oh they’re so proud of how effing clever they are. I’m sorry! Okay? (Spoilers.) Emma’s nose bleed. Not needed. Doesn’t add anything to the moment, or the character. The end. Next topic. The social/distanced dance in the street between Emma and Frank! Oh gosh! It’s so cwoot! They’re flirting! They’re bonding! It’s trash! It’s such cleverly directed slosh-bucket. The butts! Nudity is no substitute for wit. (I stole that from the dowager countess of Grantham, but she said, “vulgarity.” Same thing.) Reminding us that people have butts does not improve your movie. Not to boast, but some of us already knew about butts. Where was I? I raged about the nose bleed, the Covid-dancing... oh! The dance at the ball between Emma and Knightley. You know it and I know it, it was sexual! Have you, don’t answer this, ever had sex while dancing? ‘Cause Emma and Knightley have! In fact, that’s how we, and apparently Emma, discovered they liked each other. Whose eyes are those rolling around? Oh. They’re mine. So freaking clever to make the dance so steamy! Do you see how easy it is to be exhausted by the end of such a witty movie? The movie already has a perfectly capable cast, and one of the greatest stories of all time! The script is delightful! The contrived and overbearing, ridiculous, cuteness added in... excuse me. I have to use the bathroom... to barf.

I’m back. Rant over. Thing is, I really like the movie! I pressure everyone to see it, because NOBODY HAS! The actors are wonderful. If they didn’t all get married by the end, I would have married all of them! The costumes were sometimes a bit too modern-seeming... No. shut up. I’m only talking about good things now! Oh! What the frock was with that score?!?! Sorry. That’s negative again. Gosh darn it! Anyway, you may not believe me, but I really do like the movie. Plenty to enjoy... just... don’t think about it. Okay. That’s all. Bye guys.

Mary Freaking Sue

Here’s why the term “Mary Sue” sucks and needs to die:

Mary Sue’s been around for forever, and nobody cared until the trope was applied to a woman. Novelists have been writing men who are outlandishly perfect for a long time. I give you Westley from The Princess Bride who couldn’t even be tortured and when he actually died, it didn’t take. I also give you The Count of Monte Cristo, who went to prison to get more awesome. These male characters, and many like them, are impervious to everything. They’re inexplicably superior to everyone they meet. They are ridiculous, and unrealistic, and nobody cared. People give Bella Swan of Twilight a hard time for being a Mary Sue and Stephenie Meyers laughed all the way to the bank. Obviously the trope is not keeping fans away. So why bring it up like it’s something anyone should care about? “Rey’s a Mary Sue!” Sorry. Find a different excuse to hate the sequels, ‘cause that’s an unoriginal, boring reason, and history has taught us that nobody really cares about Mary Sues.

So why did someone all the sudden stand up and shout, “Hey! This female character in this fan fic is unrealistically boss! We need a term for this offense so we can shame others and act like it’s a new thing!” I’m having a problem coming up with a reason apart from: blatant sexism.

Am I wrong? I’d love to be wrong.

Klaus

All I hear is, "Klaus is so good." "Everyone should watch Klaus." So, let's talk about it, friends. Let's talk about Klaus.

It's on Netflix.

It's about a mailman whose punishment is being sent to a small town waaaaaaaay up North. The town sucks. Everyone hates each other. Worst of all, nobody goes to school, and nobody mails letters, because of the hate.

Our friend, mail dude, has to mail 6,000 before he can go home, to his life of mailman luxury. He steals a kid's drawing, a drawing of said kid looking sad, and tells the kid she can have it back if she purchases postage. Her parents show up, and he runs off, with the drawing. He runs into a big scary guy, AKA Santa, (or Klaus,) who finds the drawing, and makes the postman deliver to the sad girl a toy. (Klaus has lots of toys.) So the postman does it, and soon every kid in town thinks if they mail a letter to Klaus he'll mysteriously deliver a toy to them in the middle of the night.

Well the kids start getting along, and guess who hates that? A few old people. So they try to Grinch Santa and the mailman. Then everyone finds out the mailman was really just trying to get the heck out of their sucky town, and they're really upset at him.
Here's where I go, "Oh come on. Is that really so bad?" In this movie's hurry to be formulaic, they missed making the mailman's sins against his friends, really that big of a bummer. His girlfriend, the teacher, was doing the exact same thing! Then she holds it against him when it comes out he was doing the same thing? Come on.

Then there's a touching moment, that made me cry, and that's when I went, "Oh. There it is. I cried. That's why everyone likes this movie."

To sum it up, it's okay. It's kind of heartwarming if you like warm hearts and all that. I give it a meh on the Boonie scale. Well... it's better than meh, but it's meh. It's not The Iron Giant. Maybe I'm angry because I expected more.

I liked the kid with the carrot, (above.)

Pixar Movies Sadness Level

Pixar movies rated by sadness.

Now you can do what I do - decide which movie you want to see based on how sad you want to get. Enjoy! (Or don't. If you like sad movies and want to suffer.)

1. Inside Out: Cried the entire time. Never not crying.

2. The Good Dinosaur: Bawl fest 2015

3. Coco: Day of the Sad

4. Up: Oh hello. Would you like to be sad?

5. Toy Story 4: Sad Story 4

6. Toy Story 3: The Toys Start Getting Sad

7. Monsters Inc.: Just thinking about the ending is making me tear up. Don't think about it!

8. Toy Story 2: Jessie's past life in Sadville.

9. Finding Dory: I haven't even seen it all the way through because it's more boring than anything else... which is sad.

10. Finding Nemo: Every parents' worst nightmare.

11. Wall-E: No tears, but super depressing.

12. Cars 3: Sad Cars

13. Brave: There are moving moments

14. Ratatouille: another nightmare

15. Cars: it's kind of sad that Lightening McQueen doesn't win... right?

16. A Bug's Life: Sad that it doesn't have more Heimlich

17. The Incredibles: Hardly sad at all.

18. The Incredibles 2: Even less sad.

19. Monsters University: Not sad even slightly. Downright freaking delightful.

Spider-man: Far From Home

Yay! Go see it.