Wednesday, May 4, 2011

AND SHE CAN GO TO HELL WITH IT


DIRECTED BY DAVID FRANKEL
STARRING: MERYL STREEP, ANNE HATHAWAY, EMILY BLUNT, STANLEY TUCCI, ADRIAN GRENIER, TRACIE THOMS, RICH SOMMER, DANIEL SUNJATA, STEPHANIE SZOSTAK and SIMON BAKER

The reason why romantic comedies are still (and would ever be) a sub-genre of ‘filmmaking’ is because they’re bullshit – they’re replications of a non-existent life and exaggerations of those replications that it makes one tear his head trying to trace back. If he wants to, that is. I didn’t have to watch through the lengths of ‘the Devil wears Prada’ to size it as one – in fact, I didn’t have to watch it at all. But I did, and I don’t regret it. Mainly because now I can scoff with more empowerment when someone tries to sell it to me; because I can now assert for a fact that I don’t pay for a shit.

We begin dissecting films at how they’re sometimes a waste of talented cast. But this film is an example of abuse of the same – cold, brutal abuse that the film-viewer is brainwashed enough to be fascinated at every fart that Meryl Streep lets out, call it symphonic or cacophonous. What of every other chick-flick we’ve gone through? Did they require her? Maybe, well – maybe for a 75% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, they did. Maybe for diversity of audience, of reeling in men in their late forties or older, maybe to exclude the exclusivity of such films. And wow, isn’t that a feat? I mean, I should be thanking the director for this, shouldn’t I? For putting men to unendurable torture just because they’d like this ‘Queen of Accents’ do one for them – why not call the phone sex hotline, then? Or wait, maybe they’re doing that already!

Let me not be ashamed of what I say, but I actually like watching romantic comedies for the escape they are. ‘the Confessions of a Shopaholic’? Can you refuse that that film was actually funny? I shall not say the same about the abuse of journalism called ‘How to lose a guy in Ten Days’. ‘the Devil wears Prada’ does not even qualify as ‘watchable’ in my book and that’s a book, mind you. Not a fashion magazine. And what’s its selling point? That the film is actually fighting what it’s standing up for? Whoever said the accessibility of celebrity is enough to stir some sympathy needs to think twice. What happened to “it’s not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you”? This way, we shall flood the libraries with copies of ‘Playboy’ magazine, classify striptease as art and deem child molestation as recreational sport. Let the world go to whores, I say!

I’d follow the newspaper if I wanted to see traitorous cross of leagues – the world’s made of naught but that. So why would I want to watch the same in a movie? So I could pity them? The shards of empathy shall pierce only when they’re actually existent, I’m not foolish enough to imagine. Neither did I get any help – not from the music, not from the clothes, not from all the pomp galore. “I think I can see a lot of myself in you” is possibly the worst movie-quote in this scenario, you don’t throw a phone into a fountain to disconnect a call and arms are not always open for you to snuggle into them whenever you want to. Neither are job recommendations, where completely predictable.

A word to the makers – the next time you want to cast Meryl Streep in a role, don’t. Or well, just go ahead by all means, you know? I mean, I’m the only one who’s protesting.

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