I can imagine the horrified looks on your faces as you realize I'm about to review a PG-13 teenage romcom about 20-something high school kids and how they can be cruel to each other. No, really. Teenagers are mean, they really are - 'cause movies say so. Oh and by the way, since I forgot to mention it when I posted this, DUFF stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend. Nice.
So what the hell man? Why am I attempting to review something that I usually would pay money to NOT have to see? Well, there's a story here that will probably be longer than the review but stay with me, it's pretty funny. At least I thought so, and it made for one fun weekend.
Salute Your Solution
By Jack White and the Raconteurs
I think I gave a lot of problems my consideration...
...But not for me they always seem to be for someone else
I find myself just looking worthy of my best intentions
Ignoring any kinda pause I might receive at all
All others seem to find a road that's tough to satisfaction
I find a ridicule that isn't cool for me at all
And I got what I got all despite you
And I get what I get just to spite you
I think I gave a lot of problems my consideration...
...But not for me they always seem to be for someone else
I find myself just looking worthy of my best intentions
Ignoring any kinda pause I might receive at all
All others seem to find a road that's tough to satisfaction
I find a ridicule that isn't cool for me at all
And I got what I got all despite you
And I get what I get just to spite you
Now to start, being a 'movie critic' is not for those who want to be popular. Just the two words put together can get you the most horrible looks, not to mention comments. But I'm just one tiny fish in a large ocean, so nasty comments are very few. Usually if someone happens to read a review of mine of something they were involved in, they take the good, they take the bad, they take them both and there you have the facts of life... sorry 'bout that. My brain has been on massive duh mode for a long time now.
I've screwed up before, and will admit it publicly. I remember one film from the UK that I liked because it had a different kind of feel, and cool camera work (which I usually don't comment on) but I TOTALLY got the name of the actress wrong. Like, I wasn't even close. Someone from the film actually read the review and told me - so immediately I wrote of my mistake and corrected it, thanking the person on my blog for letting me know. I was actually kind of tickled that they read it.
Old horror movies are usually no problem - either because people don't have strong opinions about them one way or another or (sorry) the principle people involved are all dead. But newer horror films? Do the ones involved with those read my reviews? Nope. Um, wait, I mean not usually. Now this is MY freaking blog, so if someone takes umbrage with my opinion, too damn bad. My opinion is MINE and I'm keeping it, popular or not.
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| Mr. Wylde says shut up... whoops, sorry, that's Torgo. (True bad horror fans know him very well.) |
So... the weekend was not kind to me. Instead of finishing the movie I have to clean up and publish, plus the stack of really REALLY bad horror movies that I was going to do in a kind of Crapathon, I was laid out and feeling pretty dead. Sometimes I wonder if instead of Fibromyalgia I've actually got Narcolepsy or I-Don't-Give-A-Damn disease. But I try, even if it's just for a little while, to check things out at night before taking my evening pills and crawling back into bed. I had a message from someone I didn't know that said... umm... let's just say it was three words, and invited me to perform a sexual act on myself.
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| Chris Wylde |
Totally perplexed (and giggling a little) I learned who this message was from and what movie it was referring to. Turns out it was actor Chris Wylde, who starred in the movie The Revenant (2009) that I had reviewed in December of 2013. I can't remember movies I reviewed last MONTH. So I read the review again and my giggling got a bit louder. Safe to say that Mr. Wylde was pissed for a pretty good reason - in the review I stated I wished his character dead instantly. Somehow actors don't like that.
If you want to read the whole thing, look up the review. He said I wasn't a "real" critic, and that the "real" critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked it. Well, 50% anyway. Does that mean that only half of their critics are real? (rim shot)
If you want to read the whole thing, look up the review. He said I wasn't a "real" critic, and that the "real" critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked it. Well, 50% anyway. Does that mean that only half of their critics are real? (rim shot)
To be fair, Chris Wylde is liked by a lot of people. And, again to be fair (this time), the movie I ripped to pieces so brilliantly DID receive accolades and he himself won an award for his performance. But I personally didn't like the movie and I stand by that. However I also didn't want to "fight" with anybody, and hoped to bring this situation to a, shall we say, more civil conclusion?
I'm not sure if I succeeded or not. I really wish it had been one of the "up" weekends where my brain works and I'm able to do things for more than a few minutes at a time. I did have a freaking good time exchanging barbs with him - I really hope he realized that during our tête–à–tête (yes I know that means private conversation but I like the word) I was figuratively beating him with a sponge, not a rock. But I'm extending an olive branch here and decided to check out his newest movie The DUFF, but I do not promise to give a good review just because a cute and famous guy verbally jousted with me. And here we go:
The DUFF (2015): So as with all teenage stories, no one in this movie appears to be under 21, so what, are you going to kiss this Wylde guy's ass now just because he swore at you AND you're going to call him cute?
Dammit hubby, I told you not to touch my stuff while I'm in the bathroom. And enough with The Simpsons jokes. Besides, how bad can it be? Okay, okay I'll watch a couple of trailersohmygod somebody shoot me now PLEASE!
Maybe I can pop a couple of tabs of acid and re-watch The Remaining or The Reverend, or whatever the hell that movie was called and do an all-out sweet review. No, unfortunately the combination of my great powers of prose that works only intermittently and my diminishing brain power are not strong enough for either street drugs or fake reviews. Dammit.
I've revised this twice now, once 'cause the hubby wanted a Simpsons Duff picture and I picked the wrong one (of course), then again when I found the right one, I thought what he was trying to say was no matter how we look on the outside we all come from the same place. Nope, wrong again (and you're not surprised). What he MEANT was that all these teen movies, although they have different titles, are all the same crap. Actually both analyses are pretty damned accurate.
Y'all know my horror movie worksheet (patent pending), right? This ain't officially a horror movie but it scared the shit out of me - AND my worksheet was completed just by watching the incredibly awful trailers.
Here's the movie in one sentence (without watching the film and no peeking at the wiki - I promise):
A movie-ugly girl asks a popular boy to make her movie-gorgeous and she'll help him pass a class, there's all kinds of dumb jokes and tearful moments about girls and what bitches they are in high school, but in the end, the MU girl is now MG and the popular boy now wants to be her boyfriend and everyone learns an important lesson - no, wait, they don't.
Every high school is the same. It was the same when I went, it was the same when my husband went and it will be the same when somebody else's kids and grandkids (we have neither) go.
So let's see the movie and find if my guesses were true or false (search your feelings, you know it to be true). We've got cute as hell Bianca (Mae Whitman) but uh-oh, trouble. She doesn't have her hair up or wear glasses but she does wear OVERALLS and REGULAR CLOTHES and the kind of makeup they use in movies that makes it look like you don't WEAR makeup. Eek, and she's shorter than her friends so she's got to be the MU girl. True? DING!!!
A friend of Bianca (I saw the term "man-whore" a lot when looking around afterward, WTH?) when they were small but friend no more because of his popular status, Wes (Robbie Amell) is the football star who's in danger of being cut because he's flunking science (her best class). He agrees to help her dress better and get more popular if she helps him pass the class. Though they hate each other, in the end, they fall in love each other. True? DING!!!
And the rest... are of course the popular bitches. They wear expensive clothes and makeup and carry their iPhones around like they're glued to their hands. Oh, and they're all taller (or at least wear high heeled shoes). You can't be MG unless you meet a minimum height. True? DING!!!
After some more conflict, we get down to the payoff which has to be very public so the whole school can watch. Let's guess, oh, a dance. Bianca shows up at the dance so incredibly MG that Wes dumps his popular girlfriend Madison (Bella Thorne) and he and Bianca dance happily into the credits. True? DING!!!
Huh. Looks like I'm gonna get cussed out some more. I thought geez, the woman who wrote this was supposed to tell a visceral account of a teenager's angst? It's just another formulaic version of many other teen angst movies that have cluttered up the movie screen for years. Sort of. This was not entirely author Kody Keplinger's fault. Apparently the book she wrote is waaaay different from the movie. Duh.
In the book there's sex. Lots of it. A frenemies with benefits kind of thing. That doesn't really translate to either comedy or a PG-13 rating. They also took great liberties with the plot, adding characters, taking away characters, and adding numerous social media references to the script (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) since the book was written in 2010 and this is 2015.
If there is anything genuine and realistic about this book, it's the fact that the author actually wrote it when she was a senior in high school, at the age of 17. And while she is beautiful, I bet she was NOT considered the MG girl in her class.
Now THAT is freaking genuine - But I wonder if she really was as happy about the changes they made to her true-to-life account of the woes of a misfit teenager as she appears?
Sooo... what have we learned here today class? One, Miss Murder is not a bedtime story lady, she is a cranky critic whose whole intent of starting a blog was to cut apart and make fun of horror films, bad or (supposedly) good, not watch romcoms that are incredibly unrealistic.
Two, Miss Murder, while not liking to be cussed and 'yelled' at, will not change her blog. Now Facebook says I'm not real. I shit you not. I've told you guys how I was kicked off for being Native American and since two groups were targeted (the other was the LGBT community) I, of course, belong to the one that doesn't garner a whole lot of media attention. I lost that one - and the account I had for over five years.
NOW apparently I'm not a 'real' critic. Okay, if there's a club or a guild or something that you have to sign up for, then I'm not 'official' but I AM real. My birth certificate says so, at least. And I'm going back to bed.
Oh and Mr. Wylde? Thanks for trying to tell me how awful and imperfect I am but honey, I already knew that.
Dammit hubby, I told you not to touch my stuff while I'm in the bathroom. And enough with The Simpsons jokes. Besides, how bad can it be? Okay, okay I'll watch a couple of trailersohmygod somebody shoot me now PLEASE! Maybe I can pop a couple of tabs of acid and re-watch The Remaining or The Reverend, or whatever the hell that movie was called and do an all-out sweet review. No, unfortunately the combination of my great powers of prose that works only intermittently and my diminishing brain power are not strong enough for either street drugs or fake reviews. Dammit.
Y'all know my horror movie worksheet (patent pending), right? This ain't officially a horror movie but it scared the shit out of me - AND my worksheet was completed just by watching the incredibly awful trailers.
A movie-ugly girl asks a popular boy to make her movie-gorgeous and she'll help him pass a class, there's all kinds of dumb jokes and tearful moments about girls and what bitches they are in high school, but in the end, the MU girl is now MG and the popular boy now wants to be her boyfriend and everyone learns an important lesson - no, wait, they don't.
Every high school is the same. It was the same when I went, it was the same when my husband went and it will be the same when somebody else's kids and grandkids (we have neither) go.
So let's see the movie and find if my guesses were true or false (search your feelings, you know it to be true). We've got cute as hell Bianca (Mae Whitman) but uh-oh, trouble. She doesn't have her hair up or wear glasses but she does wear OVERALLS and REGULAR CLOTHES and the kind of makeup they use in movies that makes it look like you don't WEAR makeup. Eek, and she's shorter than her friends so she's got to be the MU girl. True? DING!!!And the rest... are of course the popular bitches. They wear expensive clothes and makeup and carry their iPhones around like they're glued to their hands. Oh, and they're all taller (or at least wear high heeled shoes). You can't be MG unless you meet a minimum height. True? DING!!!
After some more conflict, we get down to the payoff which has to be very public so the whole school can watch. Let's guess, oh, a dance. Bianca shows up at the dance so incredibly MG that Wes dumps his popular girlfriend Madison (Bella Thorne) and he and Bianca dance happily into the credits. True? DING!!!
Huh. Looks like I'm gonna get cussed out some more. I thought geez, the woman who wrote this was supposed to tell a visceral account of a teenager's angst? It's just another formulaic version of many other teen angst movies that have cluttered up the movie screen for years. Sort of. This was not entirely author Kody Keplinger's fault. Apparently the book she wrote is waaaay different from the movie. Duh.In the book there's sex. Lots of it. A frenemies with benefits kind of thing. That doesn't really translate to either comedy or a PG-13 rating. They also took great liberties with the plot, adding characters, taking away characters, and adding numerous social media references to the script (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) since the book was written in 2010 and this is 2015.
Now THAT is freaking genuine - But I wonder if she really was as happy about the changes they made to her true-to-life account of the woes of a misfit teenager as she appears?
Sooo... what have we learned here today class? One, Miss Murder is not a bedtime story lady, she is a cranky critic whose whole intent of starting a blog was to cut apart and make fun of horror films, bad or (supposedly) good, not watch romcoms that are incredibly unrealistic.
Two, Miss Murder, while not liking to be cussed and 'yelled' at, will not change her blog. Now Facebook says I'm not real. I shit you not. I've told you guys how I was kicked off for being Native American and since two groups were targeted (the other was the LGBT community) I, of course, belong to the one that doesn't garner a whole lot of media attention. I lost that one - and the account I had for over five years.
NOW apparently I'm not a 'real' critic. Okay, if there's a club or a guild or something that you have to sign up for, then I'm not 'official' but I AM real. My birth certificate says so, at least. And I'm going back to bed.
Oh and Mr. Wylde? Thanks for trying to tell me how awful and imperfect I am but honey, I already knew that.
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