Cruel Intentions; Exotic Fruit Picnic

Cruel Intentions (1999)

Based on: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782)

Director: Roger Kumble

Had I seen this before: Yes, a long time ago

One of the problems with doing several high school movies in a row is that they have a tendency to register somewhere on the "funny and/or charming" scale, and after a bit I start to worry that it's all getting a little too same-y. So I thought I would pivot and throw in a film that I find neither funny nor charming, just to change things up--in fact, this one isn't even really a school movie, just for good measure. (Listen, they talk about school a lot and Sarah Michelle Gellar wears her school uniform in the last scene and I don't want to have rewatched it for no reason, so we're doing this.) I did glance at the Letterboxd page for this film just to get the temperature over there and it seems like this is one of those things that a certain age group mistakenly remembers as being good or at least fun, so I'm going to re-issue my perennial disclaimer: it's okay to like bad movies! I personally do it all the time. And also, my bona fides: I watched several seasons of the original run of Gossip Girl, so I don't want it to seem like I think I'm above this genre. I just wanted it to be better!

The real problem with this movie for me is that I was the sort of insufferable cinephile teenager who already had a very positive relationship with the 1988 Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons by the time this movie came out and I absolutely did not understand the point of making a worse version, with children. Glenn Close and John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves had already put in the work, that's not enough for you people? You need Ryan Phillippe with his Justin Timberlake hair and Joker smile to retread this ground? You think because Glenn Close keeps having near-misses with Oscar she needs to be updated as a coked-up Sarah Michelle Gellar yelling increasingly absurd things? (The fact that this movie is tagged as "Cerebral" on Amazon really sent me down a certain kind of path with it, I implore you to watch this and ask yourself whether the dialogue is engaging your cerebrum in a complex manner.) You had a luminous and enchanting 18-year-old Uma Thurman playing the innocent music student who is very understandably pining for her teacher Keanu Reeves and thought "what if this situation, but it's 27-year-old Selma Blair and we instruct her to dress and emote as though she is a petulant kindergartener"? (I know there are a lot of things in this movie that are supposed to be upsetting, but the fact that multiple people were trying to romance this character that clearly has a mental age well below ten was actually upsetting.) Reese? Reese is fine. I appreciated that Nurse Ratched was there to keep the vibes a little weird. And shout out to Swoozie Kurtz, who I believe is the only person to appear in both films. You get that bag, Swoozie. 

Mostly this movie just left me with a lot of questions. For example, I was not very familiar with the concept of revenge porn in the late 90s, did it generally take the form of a tasteful nude photo that does not show anything explicit but does have the word "slut" flashing in bright blue while the You've Got Mail voice says "slut" over and over? How can Sebastian's alcoholic father be both impotent and diddling the maid? When Sebastian mentions his journal and Katherine asks "could you be more queer" like an even more homophobic Chandler Bing, is that...a thing? Fellas, is it gay to write things down? Was Samuel Pepys gay? (Samuel Pepys might have been gay, I do not know anything about his personal life, pretty ironic when you think about it!) Sebastian also indicates that email is "for geeks and pedophiles," and I guess I probably qualify as one of those things, but I'm almost sure by 1999 I was using email for official school-type communications, so was my school more technologically advanced than the fancy Manhattan prep school that has incubated all these monsters or did Sebastian just never bother registering an address? And do you think Katherine ever thinks back to that conversation as a middle-aged lady who definitely spends her days spamming her MLM downline? And finally, where in the timeline from targeting Annette for seduction, making a wager regarding said seduction, falling in love with her, refusing to sleep with her, sleeping with her, breaking up with her, getting slapped, chasing after her to win her back, then dying suddenly and unexpectedly, did Sebastian take the time to amend his will in order to bequeath his cool car to her? Frankly it's the most responsible and forward-thinking move his character makes in the entire film, I just would have liked to see the scene in his attorney's office where he is like "if I get in a sex-related fist-fight and fall into traffic very soon, make sure Annette gets my wheels." Or do we think Annette just fully broke bad at the end and stole the Jag?

Anyway. Let's end on a nice note with some things that I liked. I had a very intense attachment to the Counting Crows song "Colorblind" in the early 2000s, so its presence did cause me to feel some emotions in the midst of this movie, although not about this movie, per se. When the teens volunteer at a nursing home, they walk by an old lady who is repeatedly spraying a parrot with water as the parrot says "Stop it" over and over. This is by far the best part of the movie. Sebastian started to grow on me a little once he got sad and started dressing like a vampire. It's sort of interesting to watch the earnest scenes between Reese and Ryan knowing that they would get married a couple of months later and eventually have two children who look exactly like them and then get divorced and then Reese would get drunk and yell "I'M A U.S. CITIZEN" at a cop during a traffic stop (that last bit isn't really relevant, it just still makes me laugh). Finally, all the slow-motion, disapproving head-shaking in the last scene as Katherine's many crimes are made public and her special cocaine cross necklace is revealed for all the world to see is extremely amusing.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Why should I care?"

Is it under two hours: Yes

In conclusion: Again, I'm so sorry, but the more movies I cover the more I am just not convinced that Regina George is even that mean at all? She what, kept a private burn book? Please.

A Pile of Exotic Fruits Next to a Bottle of Mineral Water from H-E-B

No one really eats in this movie, probably because of all the coke, but the most iconic scene--Sarah Michelle Gellar teaching (27-year-old) Selma Blair how to kiss--did have an artfully arranged stack of exotic fruits next to a bottle of mineral water. I couldn't find a star fruit and I recently discovered that I don't like figs, so this lot will have to do.

Up next: A teen take on a classic tale (3/4)

10 Things I Hate About You; Bratwurst

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Based on: The Taming of the Shrew (1592)

Director: Gil Junger, side note, please check out this man's IMDb pic

Had I seen this before: Yes, a long time ago

I'm kicking off a little mini-genre within the Back to School theme, which is: modern high school versions of old stories. Classics, but make it teeeeeeeen! (Something like William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet would not count, for example, because it is originally about teeeeeeens and also none of those hooligans ever see the inside of a classroom.) Since this one involves a lot of heart-on-sleeve wearing, I thought I would open with a couple of embarrassing confessions of my own. One, I did see this movie when it first came out and my main memory of it was that I was already too old to be very invested in it. Reader...this movie came out in March of 1999 when I was *holds notes at arm's length, squinting, due to advanced age* eighteen years old. But I was a second semester college freshman, which, as you know, is as far from high school as it is possible to be. Two, the second this film started I literally threw my hands in the air and said "Yeeeeeaaaaaah Barenaked Ladies!" much to the absolute non-response of my child. (This was followed immediately by "oooooh David Krumholtz!" just so you know where I'm at, enthusiasm-wise.)

So I had a couple of things going on with this movie--a lack of youthful affection for the particulars of the film but an abundance of unexpected nostalgia for at least the music of 1999, which is plentiful. For example, I had completely forgotten about the existence of the Semisonic song "Fascinating New Thing," and my brain was so distracted by its rediscovery that I couldn't tell you what was happening in that scene at all. Some sort of paint...balls? And just, the general Letters to Cleo of it all was sort of overwhelming. (I was also unable to to focus on any scene involving Andrew Keegan because every time he appeared I thought "Didn't that guy start a cult?")

The leads work pretty well--Dan came into the room and watched a few minutes of the scene at prom and then later commented that he finds Julia Styles' acting "wooden," which I felt surprisingly defensive about. But also, I'm not sure it's fair to hold any teen actor up against Heath Ledger, who is just a freight train of charisma and presence (and of making me feel lightly bummed out). I think Julia Styles is fine, and she sells the parts she really needs to (did I tear up at the poem and then roll my teary eyes at myself yes I did). I found Joseph Gordon Levitt to be on the twerpy side and if Krumholtz wasn't there keeping things moving I would have had a harder time with his whole plot line. Larisa Oleynik is very cute and looks right at home in late-90s fashion, which is mostly all she needs to be and do. (Are platform sandals back yet? Just...wondering.) Gabrielle Union is clearly too old to be in high school, let alone a sophomore, but who isn't happy to see Gabrielle Union?

As an adaptation, this movie takes a sort of interesting throw-various-things-at-the-wall approach. It's clearly modern but there are random bits of Shakespearean dialogue thrown in, and it alllllllmost works as just teenagers being overly flowery but I found it a little too scattershot and sort of jarring each time. It squeezes in references that are in some cases subtle (the sisters' last name being Stratford) and in some cases just clunky (Padua High School). Trying to contort the premise of the original story into something that works in a Y2K high school setting is not totally successful but it is ambitious, and the fact that Larry Miller is the one selling it makes it function a little better than it should, on paper. (Going from not letting either daughter date, ever, for any reason, to letting the younger daughter date if the older one does...as a...joke? ...a legitimate parenting tactic? is fully nonsensical.)

Speaking of Larry Miller, a running theme through all of these high school movies is the importance of the adult cast that our teens are bouncing off of. Miller has a deeply thankless, tiresome sort of role as the Overprotective Father of Daughters, but he gets some of the strongest laugh lines mostly due to his delivery. It would be easy for the strict parent to be the element of the film that bogs everything down, but I personally was happy every time he was on screen. (Is this because I am now significantly closer to the 40-something parent of teens than the teens? No, it's the children who are less compelling.) Is the fact that Allison Janney's principal character spends all her time openly writing erotica and is also named Ms. Perky a little bit of a hat on a hat? Sure, but I'll allow it. I thought Daryl Mitchell's abrasive English teacher was sort of funny but I was genuinely a little distressed at how easily Kat got kicked out of class, repeatedly. (She is removed from class for saying some sort of vaguely feminist and correct things about Ernest Hemingway but there is no punishment for flashing a detention teacher? Or for Bianca committing full-blown physical assault at prom? I also have some concerns about the lax safety standards about archery practice at this high school, I guess this is what happens when the principal has bratwurst on the brain at all times.)

Anyway, as someone who also likes Thai food, feminist prose, and angry girl music of the indie rock persuasion, I overall found this more charming and funny than I expected to. I also just want to point out that Kat's weird friend's Shakespeare dress looked more normal than half of the 1999 prom outfits.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Those damn Dawson's River kids sleeping in each other's beds and whatnot"

Is it under two hours:  Yes

In conclusion: Sometimes having black underwear is just a hedge against period stains, sorry to ruin the mystique, everyone.

Bratwurst in Beer with Onions from Foodie Crush

We are introduced to Heath Ledger's character as he is being scolded for a previous "flashing" incident in the cafeteria involving a bratwurst. The joke is then elaborated on when Ms. Perky inserts it (sorry) into her florid prose. I cannot tell you how disappointed in me Anna looked when I excitedly said "oh, bratwurst!"

I think it's because she doesn't really like sausage.

Up next: A teen take on a classic tale (2/4)

Heathers; Spaghetti with Lots of Oregano

Heathers (1988)

Director: Daniel Waters

Had I seen this before: Enough times to have the entire film memorized, apparently

About 15 minutes into this, I had a couple of realizations: 1) A passing thought I had while watching Mean Girls but didn't bother including in the write-up was that I thought they would be...meaner? Like, there is bullying, but it's lacking a sort of quintessential cruelty that one might expect in a movie literally called Mean Girls? And that's almost certainly because I cut my teeth on Heathers and my standards for meanness in girls are very, very high. 2) Guys...I think this movie holds up.

I'm not very consistent about doing plot summaries in these things, but since this one is in the "cult movie" category, it seems like it might be worthwhile. So, if you haven't seen Heathers, it's a dark dark comedy about Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder), a high school junior who is in the popular group that rules the school, otherwise comprised entirely of girls named Heather. They are rich and mean; they have signature colors; they play croquet; they abuse their social underlings. Veronica is intrigued by new student J.D. (Christian Slater doing a pretty good Jack Nicholson), a dark brooding type who seems to see through all the high school hierarchy bullshit and calls out the popular class for the assholes they are. Soon, Veronica and J.D. hook up, and when a prank on Heather #1 turns sort-of-accidentally deadly, they stage it as a suicide. More high school carnage follows, J.D. grows increasingly out of control, teenage suicide becomes a cause célèbre, and there is a dream-sequence funeral for the ages. (It's hard for me to pick up a video game controller without Glenn Shadix's delivery of the line "Em Tee Vee video games" from that scene echoing through my brain.)

I don't know the last time I watched this, but it's very likely that it was in a pre-Columbine world, when the aesthetics of J.D. with his floppy hair and black duster and scheming smirk were unattached to any real-world horrors. And I assumed that now it would be somewhere between uncomfortable and unbearable to sit through, or at the very least cringe-inducing to reflect on how entertained I was by it as a teenager. But if anything, the movie seems slightly ahead of its time--using the 80s stereotype of the monstrous popular high schooler to set up the idea that the smart but angry white guy loner with a chip on his shoulder who opposes them might be even worse. A toxic know-it-all who wants to (literally) burn it all down, all the while insisting that he is the put-upon victim of society, the appeal of J.D. wears off pretty quickly but you understand why it was there initially in the context of a bunch of bitchy narcissists and lunkhead jerks.

There are so many things about this movie that still work so well, and some that I think probably don't but because they were seared into my brain at a formative age, I found it easy to glide past them. (The title of this blog at this point should probably be "I'm Sorry But I Fell In Love With This Before the Age of 21.") For example, the utter horribleness of Heather #1 is still effective but I do think some of her more over-the-top lines are probably a little more clunky and full of empty shock value than they seemed in my youth. But the overall feel of this film is still so dark and so funny, enhanced by an eerie, somewhat sinister, synth-y nightmare score and the one 80s wardrobe to rule them all. The late-80s-ness of this is probably one of the best things about it, making it seem like an almost alien world that is amazing to look at--it's like a pitch black rendering of Pee Wee's Playhouse. 

Winona Ryder is a perfect center to this slightly unearthly universe--she rocks some Gen X Barbie power suits and suspenders over tight tops and one  black dress that makes you think "whoa people can be shaped like that?" She scribbles manically in her journal while sporting a monocle on a chain. She is cynical but alarmed, self-confident but still caught up in other people's machinations, beautiful but odd. Our hero!

And, much like Grease, this high school movie has incredible adult performances on the periphery. Veronica's wealthy, detached parents joke drily and offer her pâté but have no idea what actually goes on in her world or how to respond to it. The beleaguered, clueless staff of Westerburg High try addressing the "suicide" problem first by downplaying it ("I'd be willing to go a half day for a cheerleader"), then by hippy love-festing it, chain-smoking cigarettes all the while, and offering the most out-of-touch support possible ("Whether to kill yourself or not is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make"). And J.D.'s father reads as an absolutely terrifying psychopath--mirroring the way Veronica has running jokes with her own father but making it deeply uneasy--in case you needed any extra foreshadowing as to where that character was headed. 

I don't know if this movie still resonates with young people, although the existence of both a musical version and a recent abandoned attempt at what looked like a fairly misbegotten television version indicates that some executives at least seem to think so. But if you're looking for deep alienation with style and slushies, I say give it a shot. It'll be very.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: Literally every single one of them, I'm sorry, I am what I am

Is it under two hours: Yes

In conclusion: Regina George wouldn't last two minutes in the ring with Heather Chandler.

Spaghetti with Easy-Peasy Oregano Pesto from Soli Organic

Another mark in Veronica's favor is that not only does she explain what her favorite meal is, she has it for dinner and includes it in her nightmare. I'm just saying, if every movie I watched involved a character's face being shoved into a plate of their favorite food by a dream version of the best friend they sort of accidentally murdered, my life would be much easier and I wouldn't have to stretch so much on some of these recipes.

Up next: A teen take on a classic tale (1/4)

Grease; Cherry Soda with Chocolate Ice Cream

Grease (1978)

Director: Randal Kleiser

Had I seen this before: You know it

I didn't originally have Grease on my list for this theme because I was trying to stick with movies that were primarily about school and not dominated by a specific genre (i.e., musical or sports or horror or teen sex comedy). But last week we lost Dame Olivia Newton-John, who was, for me, a formative Australian. And so I felt it was only right to revisit Grease, as it is certainly a back to school movie as well as, perhaps unfortunately, a formative movie musical in my life. I first saw it when I was too young to understand several lyrics (The chicks will do what for Greased Lightning? Is...is he saying "scream"?) and wholly ignorant of its flaws. And I was fully braced, at this point in time, for it to be bad in a way that I would have to apologize to the 13-year-old for but on the whole I found it more odd in a way that I had to try to explain to the 13-year-old with only a lightly apologetic shrug. "The 70s were weird" is one lesson that I will absolutely impart to my daughters before they leave the nest.

The actual bad things are lurking in there, I'm not denying it: this is basically Boys Will Be Boys: The Musical, it's somehow slut-shaming and prude-shaming, the lesson at the end seems to be that women should contort themselves into whatever shape they need to for the benefit of the male gaze (more on that), one of the characters is entirely defined by being the "fat" girl (made weirder by the fact that the actress playing her is thin but wearing a kind of lumpy sweater), Rydell High is uhhhhh...definitely still segregated and you know they made the one Black guy in Sha-Na-Na come in through the back door. These are problems.

But most of what's wrong with this movie is goofy stuff that just endears it to me more. The fact that, in order to set the stage for this tale of the 1950s, to really get into a retro, throwback feel, the opening credits are the most 70s things I've ever seen in my entire life? Perfect. It's a Barry Gibb song accompanied by animation that I'm almost certain is full of Scooby Doo villains in the background. I could feel my insides turning Avocado Green and Harvest Gold by the end. The fact that all the teenagers look like 40-year-olds? Hilarious. They're actually in their 20s for the most part (Stockard Channing, fully in her mid-30s, is the exception, also the recipient of the rudest caricature in the credits, I was incensed on her behalf), but they have 70s faces, which as we all know adds 15 years. To me, this only gives authenticity to the characters because you do get the sense that these actors were genuinely in high school in the 1950s. The fact that the poster for this movie is a picture of Danny and end-of-movie Sandy and is therefore technically a huge spoiler? Tremendous. The fact that one guy at the dance contest is way, way too excited about the hand jive? Incorrect. No one else is excited enough. The fact that in the stage show Sandy is an all-American gal but they decided to cast Olivia Newton-John and were just like "eh, Sandy is Australian now"? A clear improvement! Make more characters Australian! Every movie should have one!

So I don't really believe Olivia Newton-John is a teenager but I do believe she is maybe a college student who wants to kiss John Travolta, which in 1978 was pretty relatable. I also find her highly charismatic and I think she pulls off Sandy being naively nice then lightly scheming then--look, I'm gonna make the argument here--at least somewhat empowered by deciding that she wants to look unbelievably hot in black leather and red lipstick and a cloud of cigarette smoke. I don't find the ending as much of a problem as a lot of people do, mostly because the conflict with Danny was never that he was embarrassed to like her because she was a good girl--he was just embarrassed to like her as opposed to writing her off as a summer fling. And he spends half the movie trying to change for her! He joins the track team and wears a Letterman jacket! So it's not at all one-sided, it's just that Olivia Newton-John's transformation at the end is so iconic that it's the thing people (correctly) remember. It's just a movie about two teenagers who are into each other but are equally bad at expressing their emotions. It's also a movie that ends with people singing at a carnival. Multiple carnival songs. It's like 25% happy ending, this thing. Let Sandy be hot! She's so happy! We're at a carnival!

The point is, Sandy is a tricky character to make appealing all the way through but ONJ did that and she also belted out "Hopelessly Devoted to You," which I can tell you, as someone who has car-sung it many times, is not the most forgiving tune. And that's why we're here today, to remember a legend and to lightly defend her character's agency in her own aesthetic experimentation.

One aspect I don't feel defensive about praising is the impeccable casting of the school faculty and staff--Sid Caesar as the coach? Come on. Eve Arden as the principal? Forget about it. Joan Blondell dishing out advice as a diner waitress, Alice Ghostley holding down shop class, Dody Goodman bringing a charming incompetence to the front office? I can't get enough. All of the older generation actors seem to be having such a good, silly time and their sections still really work for me. I love that everyone in the administration is generally good-natured, they're just understandably exasperated with having to corral all these middle-aged greasers.

As for the Gen Z take, Anna was confused about the car culture stuff and I tried explaining that the boys thought having a cool car would cause girls to want to have sex with them, which is basically the entire plot of this film as expressed through lyrics that are mildly incomprehensible in early adolescence, and she rightfully gave that whole idea a side-eye. "The car could be cool and you still could be bad at sex or whatever," she noted skeptically and accurately. So I guess standards for teen status symbols have changed over the past 45 years, and are probably more focused on the numbers your Soundcloud is doing or whatever.

Line I repeated quietly to myself because that part is good, Actually: "Tell me about it, stud."

Is it under two hours: Yes, which is impressive for a musical! I don't know why I'm still out here defending it this late in the game but here we are!

In conclusion: I'm sorry there were so many exclamation points in this, does anyone know if that's a side effect of COVID?

Cherry Soda with Best Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream from Joy Food Sunshine

"Uh, I'm not very hungry, just give me a Polar Burger with everything and a cherry soda with chocolate ice cream."

Up next: Oh who knows, I'm sick and can't be trusted to make these decisions

Mean Girls; Kälteen Bars

Mean Girls (2004)

Director: Mark Waters

Had I seen this before: No

Some reasons I know I'm not a Millennial, no matter how much I teeter on that cusp: I don't like rose gold, I find taking pictures of myself humiliating, I have never really understood how Tumblr works, I don't believe I deserve to have high self-esteem, I've never seen Space Jam, and until this week, I had no relationship to the films of Lindsay Lohan. The Parent Trap, you say? Hayley Mills. Freaky Friday? Jodie Foster, baby! (Counterpoint: I love avocado toast and would rather make my way through the most Byzantine of online ordering mazes than talk to one human person on the phone.) So I missed this one on the first round and then just never bothered catching up with it and at some point its absence in my film-watching history sort of became a part of me.

Finally getting around to watching a movie like Mean Girls as a citizen of the internet is odd because it's less like experiencing a narrative work of fiction and more like recognizing a string of memes set against a backdrop of serviceable connective scenes. How can I tell if a movie is good or bad if pop culture has rendered it unrecognizable as a film, having repeatedly laid before me all of its component parts in random order? Before I watched it this week, I can't count the number of times I had already been called a loser by a picture of a weirdly blonde Rachel McAdams in a car and been told to get in because we're going (gerund-participling). I knew that on Wednesdays we wore pink. I knew that Lacey Chabert wouldn't let me sit with them. I knew that Amy Poehler was not a regular mom, she was a cool mom. I knew that a gym full of girls had been personally victimized by Regina George. I knew not to agree that I think I'm really pretty. I knew that fetch was not going to happen. I knew that she doesn't even go here. I even knew that it was October 3rd! If I'd had more energy while watching it, I would have just been Leo pointing every 38 seconds or so. 

And maybe not even that, because there isn't really the zing of finally seeing something familiar put into context in this case--none of the stand-alone references really require context. Maybe the girl who doesn't even go here? It's mostly just a collection of self-contained jokes that I no longer register as jokes, exactly, more as the shorthand commentary they have become online. Are they still funny or are they just familiar? Or are they funnier because so many other funny people have added heft to them by applying them to various situations? If you search "get in loser" and scroll down the images page, you'll see it crossed with aliens, Golden Girls, Eminem, the Wet Bandits from Home Alone, Joe Biden, RBG, Harry Potter, Friends, Baby Yoda, Rich Uncle Pennybags, and Karl Marx ("Get in loser, we're seizing the means of production"). And that's just the first dozen rows or so. I think there's something kind of amazing about creating a moment that is in itself just a mildly amusing character beat that then branches out to become thousands of other people's jokes. But in its natural habitat it just reverts back to a mildly amusing character beat.

So a subjective overall assessment is tough, because I'm having trouble getting my arms around it, but some facts are objective, such as: how adult are the teens here? Lindsay Lohan-18; Rachel McAdams-26; Jonathan Bennet-23; Lacey Chabert-22; Amanda Seyfried-19; Lizzy Caplan-22; Daniel Franzese-26. I didn't bump especially hard on any of these, I think it probably just matters less in comedy than drama. McAdams, secret Gen Xer, does look like an adult to me but I am more distracted by the strangely unflattering dye job and 2004 eyebrows than the fact that she should be a grad student at least.

Anyway, I should probably take a moment here to note that after two and a half years of avoiding it, Covid has finally weaseled its stupid virus way into my home, and while my capacity for analysis is slightly diminished due to lack of sleep, my motivation for analysis is absolutely obliterated. So Tina Fey will not be getting the full John Hughes treatment today because I do not have it in me, but, quickly: I think she is one of the most talented joke-writers of the past fifty years and has probably made me laugh as much as any other single human, and also that she has an issue with punching down and a tendency to slide into blinkered white feminism. Plus I am still holding a grudge about a 30 Rock joke that hurt my feelings like twelve years ago because my only superpower stems from being a Taurus with a lot of Scottish ancestry, which curses me graciously allows me to stay mad forever. So when I say that as a whole, the sections of this movie propping up all the memes are fine but not great, remember: grains of salt, grains of salt.

Since I don't really want to talk about any of that, let's just talk about the things I enjoyed the most, such as Tim Meadows. How can I, a hot-blooded American woman, be expected to resist The Ladies Man in a tank top? Yes, I know his character spends the whole movie unprofessionally hitting on a subordinate, but at least she's age-appropriate? I don't know, I always feel relieved when Tim Meadows is on the screen. He projects a comedic control of the situation, no matter how ludicrous the situation might be. Before watching this, I confided to my brother that I had been putting it off for so long because I was afraid of discovering that I did not like it and causing everyone to be mad at me, and he said "Don't worry, you'll at least like the Tim Meadows parts" because he knows me very well. 

And then there is Amanda Seyfried, whom I most recently saw being absolutely magnificent in The Dropout, being absolutely magnificent here as well! She's so funny in this! The fact that I felt drawn to basically every non-Cady character indicates to me that "staunch inability to care about Lindsay Lohan" might not be something I can overcome at my advanced age. For me, this movie needed at least twice as much Karen. No, eight times as much. Karen should be the main character. This whole thing should be a two-hander miniseries about Karen and Mr. Duvall solving inconsequential mysteries at the school. They have a raccoon frenemy that sometimes gives them trouble but sometimes points them in the right direction. We gotta rebuild this whole thing from the ground up. I just wish someone had consulted me in the first place.

(But it is funny when fictional characters get non-fatally hit by buses, so I will be keeping that gag in my Karen-heavy reboot.)

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "No...I just have a lot of feelings."

Is it under two hours: Yes

In conclusion: Somehow I feel like I currently know exactly as much about this movie as I did before I watched it, like all the non-meme bits have already leaked out my ears. Wednesday = pink. Fetch = no. October = 3rd.

Chef John's Chocolate Energy Bars for weight loss weight gain breakfast from allrecipies

I'm not really looking to add any sick gains right now, but I am a sucker for food in bar form and mysterious things from Sweden, so I approximated some Kälteen Bars and I'm happy I did. Mostly. Delicious chocolate and coconut aside, this is the recipe that finally took down my beloved immersion blender and forced me to admit, after years and years, that some projects do in fact require a food processor. 

Up next: A tribute to an Aussie legend and a bad movie that I love

The Breakfast Club; Sack Lunch

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Director: John Hughes

Had I seen this before: Yes

"Ah, a classic!" said the librarian approvingly as I handed her this DVD case, finally giving me the bibliothecary approval that I crave. And she's not wrong--for starters, the disc she was handing me was from the Criterion Collection, meaning those specific arbiters of taste consider it an important film. And its cultural impact is undeniable--the references, the iconic images, the fact that I had only seen it once before but just thinking about the title of the movie immediately presses the button for Simple Minds on my mental jukebox. There are so many things that I admire about how it's put together, so many really great moments and character details and bits of acting that run the gamut from extremely funny to genuinely moving. All of these achievements are rare, and impressive. And for most of its runtime, I hate watching this movie. I hated watching this movie as a teenager and I hated watching it as a middle-aged person and I would be willing to bet that if for some reason I revisit it in my twilight years I will realize ten minutes in that for my blood pressure's sake I should have just put on Romy and Michele again instead. The thing that makes all of this truly maddening is that if I could surgically remove one (admittedly load-bearing) element, I think this might be a movie that I love?

Like many people, I have a complicated relationship with the work of John Hughes. Here are some John Hughes-penned films that I have a deep affection for, despite their flaws: Mr. Mom, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Home Alone, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I actually re-watched National Lampoon's Vacation for the Southwest Summer series but decided I did not have the energy to defend liking it as much as I do and therefore didn't write a post about it. Clearly, I can locate that energy when I feel like it. Like I said: complicated. You'll notice that aside from (arguably) Ferris Bueller, that list does not include any of the classic "teen" movies of that era. Whether I was too young when they came out or I just don't mesh with that style or I was too put off by the more jarringly offensive elements, I'm not sure at this point, because this is the only one I have re-visited in about 25 years. That is unlikely to change any time soon (unless I convince myself that Pretty in Pink is a crucial entry in whatever hare-brained blog theme I'm attempting).

I will begin with the movie that I love: I'm a sucker for a well-done bottle episode, and this is the Hughes version of that. If you squint slightly and suddenly the movie could be a play? I'm in. Everyone being confined to one space means it's probably a movie comprised of characters talking to each other and nothing else--no special effects, no confusing time jumps or travel inconsistencies. No car chases. This particular empty high school is a wonderful set. It truly evokes the very specific feeling of being inside a school during off-hours. It also makes the stakes clear and simple when the detained students have to make it through the hallways and back to the library before they're caught, for example. Some of the best moments of the movie are when the characters are just quietly existing inside the beautiful two-story library where they are imprisoned for the day--Emilio Estevez playing with the strings of his hoodie, Ally Sheedy adding dandruff snow to her artwork, Anthony Michael Hall creating a walrus tusk with his pen.

Some of the chemistry amongst the cast works really well. Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, the only two actual teenagers in this movie (we will absolutely be returning to this issue) seem like 16-year-olds. The fact that she is a believable 10th grader is what saves the Claire character from being completely unbearable--she's sort of awful but she's also really young and sheltered and just generally clueless about what life is like for people who aren't her. This is, I think, both realistic--especially for the mid-80s--and not unforgivable in someone that age. Anthony Michael Hall, playing Brian the brain, is my overall MVP here. He's funny and sympathetic but also has a little bit of a backbone when he needs to. He's so deep in his own head, overwhelmed by an academic issue that seems minor to the point of being amusing from the outside, but is all-consuming to him in a way that adolescent problems often are. The fact that he looks like a kid makes everything land harder than it otherwise would. Also, if the movie trivia is correct that he ad libbed his response to the question "What do you need a fake ID for?" with "So I can vote," I mean...amazing. Perfect. When Claire and Brian talk to each other, despite being from different social circles, there is a natural teenage cadence that connects them and feels authentic.

So, the 23-year-olds. I know that casting 20-somethings as high schoolers is a sacred cinematic tradition, and this movie is certainly not unique in that regard. I get it--they have less acne, there aren't laws about how much time they have to spend in school, you don't have to deal with their parents. I do think having an entire cast of 20-somethings would be less discordant than having some high schoolers and some full grown adults, especially when the entire point of the movie is the interpersonal dynamics amongst them. Now, to be clear, I like the two 23-year-olds in question. Ally Sheedy, with her heavy eyeliner and her hair in her face, can pretty convincingly pass as, say, a senior. I used to think that her character was a little too quirky to be a real person, but now I have a daughter who is very quiet and spends a lot of time drawing and quite often responds to questions with...just...noises instead of words. She does not currently have dandruff or carry around a go-bag for attention, but...we'll see how high school goes. Emilio Estevez does not exactly look like a teenager, but he does have a bit of a baby-faced vulnerability and the fact that he seems to be the shortest cast member--including the girls--helps a bit. His energy sometimes tips a little toward "sympathetic teacher's assistant" when he talks to the younger kids, but that can mostly be attributed to his status as a star athlete, if you're feeling generous. When his and Sheedy's characters end up making goo goo eyes at each other, it's a slight stretch from a realistic high school social order perspective, but it absolutely makes sense visually--why shouldn't these two cutie 23-year-olds want to kiss each other? Nothing could be more inevitable.

And in the adult realm, Paul Gleason is terrific as the teacher-as-petty-dictator, all empty bad-cop bluster and private exhaustion. He's not exactly a realistic character, but he is a perfect movie character, and a good embodiment of what it feels like as a teenager to be under the authority of some random jerk. "Oh no," I thought for a moment, "am I older than the teacher?" and...not quite, but we're getting very close. I am older than the janitor, though. By quite a bit. Carl is in the prime of his life!

Anyway, that's all of the cast. And I'm done talking about this movie! Pretty great flick.

Sigh. Okay...fine. For me? Judd Nelson as John Bender is a problem. John Bender as written is a problem. Judd Nelson playing him exacerbates it. My personal temperament makes it nearly unbearable to sit through any of his scenes. That's an issue because he is arguably the main character of the film.

First, the me of it: I am a pathologically conflict-avoidant person, and I don't tend to enjoy watching people argue or be mean to each other. I've never been enamored of some of the more popular reality television franchises just because I strongly dislike yelling. That said, I'm not a child and I understand that interpersonal conflict is not only an important facet of the human experience, it is also necessary, in many cases, to create great art. I saw some comparisons of this movie to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, an excellent and wildly uncomfortable film that I have seen multiple times. I think the difference, from my perspective, is that watching WAoVW? is like watching a horror movie--holding your breath, wondering with both terror and perverse delight what these fascinatingly unhinged people (and, crucially, equally unhinged people) will do next, feeling a rush of relief when you are released at last from Hell's After-Dinner Party. Whereas most of the discussion around The Breakfast Club indicates that I, the audience member, am meant to find all this cruelty and misery and misogyny deeply relatable. Just teen thingz! I....really don't.

Second, the Bender of it: I understand the idea behind the Bender character. This is a hurt-people-hurt-people situation. He lashes out at everyone, but it's just a front to hide how broken and scared he is. His parents are abusive, he is without the financial means of his peers, he picks on Claire the most viciously because he's trying to get out ahead of her rejecting him, he's not being an asshole he's just being "honest," he voted for Trump because of economic anxiety, etc. And cycles of abuse are a real thing and this is a sort of person who exists in the world, but I find 90% of the time he is on screen excruciating. Because he's not just flippant and insulting--he's so disgustingly, unrelentingly vile to Claire specifically that it starts to become a question of whether John Hughes considered this a realistic version of playground taunting and I find it incredibly hard to take. Almost everything he says to her is either a sexual insult or a sexual threat, or something about her body in some way. One of his more nonsensical tirades is telling her that Claire is a "fat girl's name" and that eventually she's "gonna squeeze out a few puppies" and be overweight. Sir...what? (Apparently there was a cut scene where the janitor predicts where the students will all be in 30 years and says the jock will be married to a flight attendant "who will become fat after having kids" so I guess this was something Hughes was really hung up on? Yikes???) To be fair, the actual most nonsensical thing he calls her is "fuckin' Rapunzel," which is not particularly offensive, but...her hair is like one centimeter past her ears, my guy! You're just saying nonsense words!

Third, the Judd Nelson of it: I don't believe there is a version of this character that doesn't bother me, but I do believe that if the originally-cast John Cusack had played it I would have found him slightly more palatable in context. When this was filmed, Judd Nelson was 25 years old and looked 30. He's tall and hulking, thick neck and flaring nostrils, towering over the other cast members. He's physically intimidating on top of being extremely aggro. As a teenager I found him terrifying. As an adult I find him tiresome and still terrifying. He's nine years older than Molly Ringwald and only three years younger than the actor playing Carl the janitor. John Cusack, on the other hand, was 18 at the time of filming, two years older than Molly Ringwald, actually high-school-aged, tall but lanky. This was the Sixteen Candles, Better Off Dead era--he definitely looked like a teenager, and maybe even younger than his actual age. I think he would read more as "oh, this guy is just a dickhead" and less as "why is this escaped convict inside a high school, I'm worried he is going to brutalize someone." As it stands, all I can see when I watch this movie is a 25-year-old man explicitly threatening to rape a 16-year-old girl and sticking his face in her crotch against her will. 

And then the happy ending where she decides she's into that! 

I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's hard for me to come up with a character decision in any film that I relate to less than Claire kissing Bender at the end of this movie. It's baffling. It makes me feel genuinely queasy. It ruins the nice 23-year-old kisses. It ruins Brian's letter to the teacher. It ruins the "hey hey hey hey oooooh whoaaaa." It ruins the fist pump. It makes me hate watching this movie that I almost love.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Hey, I like all that black shit."

Is it under two hours: Yes

In conclusion: Based on the statistics regarding the distribution of disciplinary action against students in public schools, it seems very unlikely that 100% of students in detention on any given day would be white, but I guess this is an "adjusting for other factors" sort of sociological fable.

Cap'n Crunch and Pixy Stix Sandwich from The Twisted Mind of Ally Sheedy

I lean pretty heavily on IMDb trivia sometimes because it would be financially irresponsible to pay a researcher for these non-monetized blog posts and who knows how accurate any of it is, but I'm very willing to believe that the Cap'n Crunch sandwich that Allison compiles from her lunch sack was Ally Sheedy's contribution to her character because I'm not in the mood to give John Hughes any more credit than he deserves today. Pixy Stix are weirdly hard to find where I am, maybe tubes of loose flavored sugar are no longer in fashion? So I went with the next closest thing, which was a pineapple-flavored Crush drink mix. "Feels like a food crime," noted the 13-year-old. "Feels great."

Up next: Get in loser, it's another generational touchstone (not my generation, I have no generation)

Billy Madison; Soup and Snack Packs

Billy Madison (1995)

Director: Tamra Davis

Had I seen this before: Yes

I recently watched The 400 Blows, François Truffaut's 1959 semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film, widely considered to be among the most masterful works ever to ever emerge from the nation of France. It's a quietly devastating portrait of a young man struggling in cold, uncaring circumstances in mid-century Paris. It is also, relevantly, about what school can and--more poignantly--can not provide to such children. I spent a long time afterward thinking about cycles of parental neglect and indifference and how difficult it can be to overcome one's own traumas in order to address the emotional needs of those dependent on you, as well as the brutal injustice of the carceral state, particularly with regard to juvenile offenders. Anyway, I just...wanted you to know that.

I also very much wanted the librarian to know that as I silently handed her the empty DVD case for the 1995 Adam Sandler vehicle Billy Madison so that she could retrieve the disc for me from behind the circulation desk. This is because I desperately want all librarians to think that I am an intelligent person with sophisticated taste, and not an individual whose brain, upon selecting "Back to School" as the next blog theme, immediately and fully against my will filled in the following lyrics:

Back to school, back to school

To prove to Dad that I'm not a fool

I got my lunch packed up

My boots tied tight

I hope I don't get in a fight

Back to school, back to school...

William Madison is not a hero for our times. He is the purest distillation of the failson. His entire being radiates societal privilege and dynastic decay. He is rich, white, and so abrasively straight that we are first introduced to him yelling maniacally through a drunken haze about it being "nudie magazine day." If you are a woman but have the audacity to not be young, hot, and blonde, he will view you as a grotesquerie. If you are a service worker just trying to get through your day he will almost certainly make it harder. His favorite word and general concept is "shit." He brings inexplicable chaos to every interaction. He drinks so heavily that he has intense, recurring hallucinations involving a giant penguin. The invisible penguin is his nemesis.

Through some combination of stupidity and laziness (ratio unclear), we are to understand that in his youth, Mr. Madison failed to complete a single grade of school on his own merits. Rather, his wealthy father paid for his scholastic "achievements" every step of the way. Now, with that same father considering the future of his company and legacy, he looks upon his progeny and despairs. The solution? Using the same money and power that maneuvered him through the public education system in the first place, arrange to put this man-child back into academic circulation so that he can attempt to pass grades 1-12 and prove that he is worthy of inheriting a multi-million dollar business with 61,000 employees, despite having never done anything in his 27 years that was not in service of his own most puerile desires.

I must reiterate at this point that Billy is the protagonist of this film.

This is something I understood and accepted with little to no friction at age 14, in the winter of my freshman year of high school. Is this because I felt intuitively that Sandler was simply the next step in a line stretching back though The Three Stooges and (more generously) The Marx Brothers and beyond--a tradition of bringing anarchic silliness to ruffle the feathers of the stuffy, the formal, the snobbish? Is it because my unformed adolescent brain was pleased to see an SNL star let loose on a big screen budget, no different from Wayne's World a couple of years earlier? Is it because this is simply what mainstream comedy looked like in the mid-90s and in my hunger for the form I found and cherished the small parts of it that worked and accepted that all the rest was a necessary nuisance, or more insidiously, an accurate reflection of the American social order? (Sidebar: I have a theory that the stereotype of men finding women "mysterious" or "unpredictable" stems from the fact that they are not inundated throughout their lives with books, movies, television, and visual arts created by and bearing the perspective of women, whereas in my own life I feel that men have been explaining themselves to me, loudly and interminably, at every level, from the idiotic to the sublime, since birth, and therefore I do not find them particularly enigmatic. Enjoying movies has often meant finding a way to relate to ridiculous, often sexist male characters.) I suspect it was some swirling, messy combination of all of these factors.

The difficultly I encounter now is that this deeply amenable teen still lives somewhere inside of me and although I sternly forbid her from finding it hilarious when Adam Sandler whips dodgeballs as hard as he can at small children, she ignores me. "Please," I beg her, turning her attention to the part on the IMDb trivia page where it says the editor had to cut away quickly after each hit so that he didn't show the children crying, "what's wrong with you?" And she stops laughing out loud but I can tell she's doing the thing where you're trying to keep it together in church or something, all pursed lips and eyes down.

Friends, bloggers, internetpeople: I come to examine Sandler, not to praise him. I am not standing before you this day to defend the Happy Madison enterprise...much. I will say that a lot of people seem to enjoy working with Adam Sandler on project after project and I have never caught wind of any disquieting rumors about him--a low bar! Absolutely. Is my inner 14-year-old far too eager to be charmed by the fact that he's been married to the same woman for a long time and recently credited her as Great Looking Flight Attendant in one of his movies? Definitely! But in these dark times, sometimes doofiness with a distinct absence of malice is a comfort, even when the trappings of the era are a problem. For me, there is a kind of rambunctious warmth that emanates from Sandler that saves a lot of scenes in this appallingly-premised movie from being wholly unwatchable. There's a strong "heeeeey I'm just goofing with ya" good-naturedness keeping even the stupidest gags from tasting completely sour.

It did seem worth asking a current 13-year-old whether the experience of watching this was, on the whole, pleasant or unpleasant. Mine shrugged and said "It didn't hurt my soul or anything but some parts poked it a little." And then immediately launched into the movie's most lasting legacy, the academic decathlon judge's response to Billy's longform answer on the Industrial Revolution. Because...that part is still funny.

Line I repeated quietly to myself spent all of ninth grade saying back and forth with my friends: "Stop looking at me, swan."

Is it under two hours: Yes, good grief, imagine if it wasn't

In conclusion: Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. 

French Onion Soup from Serious Eats and Chocolate Pudding from The Kitchn

"Billy, eat your soup. It's good soup." In the film, Billy loudly slurps what looks to be one of many courses, a clear consommé of some type, as his father's business partners look on in confusion and dismay. But I am not in a place right now to be making an elaborate, multi-course meal in service of a movie in which it is clearly and unnecessarily established that the villain's testicles are weird-looking. So for me, the soup is the meal, and I put extra stuff in it.

I was only planning to make soup, but then my husband, no doubt infected by this cinematic menace, asked "Why won't you just give me a Snack Pack??" And then yelled a lot of gibberish. And made up a song about sunscreen? Very unlike Dan. Anyway, you generally don't have to push me too hard to make pudding.

Up next: A generational touchstone (not my generation, I have no generation)

Summer 2022 Box Office Roundup

I do not like spending money on myself due to what I'm sure are a rich cornucopia of psychological issues, but I do occasionally splurge on something that is strictly for my own enjoyment, and my Regal Unlimited Pass is one of those things because I love going to the movies so much. No offense to "interacting with other humans," but one of my top priorities post-strict-lockdown was putting my butt back in a theater. My Fitbit frequently records my movie-going hours as "sleep," such are my levels of relaxation. Probably worth pointing out that this affection for the general experience of movie-going does tend to dampen my critical faculties a bit, and I'm inclined to cut theater movies more slack than I do movies that I watch in my own boring house. (This is especially true when I manage to get a completely empty theater and therefore an inadvertent private screening--a few months ago I was the only person on earth to see a movie called The Cursed, and at one point worked myself up to a state of genuine teariness by thinking about how amazing it was that so many people worked so hard on building sets and designing costumes and such just for me. This was a so-so movie about werewolves and Romani curses.) The point being--take all my theater movie reviews with a grain of popcorn salt.

Top Gun: Maverick

I'm glad that I came to this unstoppable box office freight train fighter jet several weeks after it was released, because it means I had already been exposed to the fan theory that Maverick actually dies at the beginning and everything else that happens is just the last seconds of his brain trying to address all the unresolved personal relationships in his life through being a badass at flying. I'm not saying this is what the filmmakers actually intended, but I am telling you that watching the movie through that lens causes it to make absolutely perfect sense. Like--it's impossible for me to consider it any other way now. I just physically nodded to myself thinking back over some of the developments and whether or not they line up with that approach. Also--the funniest, most accurate bit of this movie was when the texting between Maverick and Iceman pops up on screen--full, properly punctuated sentences with periods, because they are old.

Minions: The Rise of Gru

I'm not sure how one reviews Minions, generally speaking. They are neither good nor bad. They are just shapes that do funny things. Now that it's been a few weeks since I saw this I don't remember anything that happens in it. I recall that I enjoyed the soundtrack and had a general feeling of passing the time in a not-unpleasant way. My adolescent wore a suit jacket for the occasion.

Elvis

The top Letterboxd reveiw for this film is "Congrats to Baz Luhrmann for making the world's first two and a half hour movie trailer," and that's probably the best way to sum it up. I was a real Baz-head as a teenager, so I have a little bit of a built-in defense system for some of his more preposterous bullshit, but I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend this one across the board. Like everyone else, I thought Austin Butler was good. There was a point at which I very much wished I were watching a movie about Little Richard instead. Yes Tom Hanks sounds like Goldmember and no that's not what Colonel Tom Parker actually sounded like, so that was certainly a choice on someone's part but it's hard to say whose. I'm not even saying I'm mad at it, I'm just relating some facts for you. It's at least 45 minutes too long. It can't settle down long enough to actually tell its story. I enjoyed it.

Nope

I did not find this movie especially scary overall, mostly because it's not in the category of things that really get to me, but there is a fake-out scare about halfway in that truly had me going. There's so much happening in this movie visually and thematically that trying to untangle it in hindsight is a little bit of a mess, but actually experiencing it in the theater and just being on the ride was very fun. I thought the movie did a good job of introducing who the characters were and why we should care about them, and that's generally the most important thing when you are going to watch them go up against a big dangerous something-or-other. I think I was a little too old to have been familiar with Keke Palmer's child acting credits, and only really became aware of her when she said sorry to this man, which frankly was enough of a contribution to culture for any one person already. But now I am absolutely on that Keke train, let me tell you. A star. The structure of this movie had strong Jaws vibes, which is always going to win me over. My review of Nope is: yep! (No one has done that yet right? Wait, sorry, I'm hearing...I'm hearing everyone has done that. Okay.)

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

This movie is Paddington for old people. Whether that is a warning or a recommendation is in the eye of the beholder, oui?

The Bob's Burgers Movie

This one is for fans of the television show, which I have been for many years, although I've been inconsistent about keeping up with it. One thing I noticed is that now that both of my children are within the age range of the Belcher children, the jokes about Bob and Linda's parenting land much harder with me. At one point Linda yells to the children in their various rooms that it's lights out soon, and then, without getting up or looking in on any of them says to herself "We're good parents." The me of ten years ago who had an inescapable 90-minute bedtime ritual with a toddler would probably have been less amused by that! Anyway, Kevin Kline provides the voice of Bob's landlord Mr. Fischoeder, making this his third appearance here. Gunning for that Five Timer's Club. Good luck Kev.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

I don't want to overhype this movie but I think it should probably win the Oscar for Best Picture. I laughed, I cried. Some of the bits tickled me so much I laughed an embarrassing amount. Hiding my face behind my hands, silent tears, the whole nine yards. AND: because she had a small role in Everything Everywhere All at Once and like two lines in The Bob's Burgers Movie, this is also Jenny Slate's third entry in the movie series! She's here for your throne, Kline!!

Up next: We're headed back to school because I'm ready to start pretending that this summer will end eventually