Since most of my friends are currently gallivanting around the Midwest with their hometown friends and families I am happily stuck at home watching ridiculously stupid movies and some surprisingly good ones too. So here's a movie I hated and a movie I loved both in the same vein of "Guy Flick" featuring straight, white, guys and their attempts at humor.
Blades of Glory
No surprise here, this movie is in the negative range as far as stars go. So why did I expect more, well as a avid Will Ferrell fan and one who laughed through pretty much all of Napolean Dynamite I was excited that this comic duo were involved in a movie together. But this movie is not at all in the same vein as say Anchor Man, or Old School-which have decent story lines amid the pot smoking, cussing, and nudey shots. However, not only is the plot line of Blades of Glory stupid and ridiculous (two guys get in a fight at a men's figure skating championship and are banned from the sport for life, thus, leaving them with the only reasonable solution: to become partners in the pairs figure skating competition), The sad thing is the entire movie relies on homophobic notions to be even remotely funny. The only reason a person could find it funny is that they think it is awkward to see two men in provocative bodily positions with one another. As a person who does not think two men holding hands, embracing, or putting their genitalia in each other's faces is anything to write home about, let alone laugh at I did not think the movie was funny at all and made me question my love for Ferrell as an actor. I mean I don't think he and the other straight white guys (Vince Vaughn, Steve Carrel, Ben Stiller, the Owen Brothers etc...) are as actively racist, homophobic, and sexist as they appear on camera. I think these movies are social commentary on "guy" culture, but at the same time they completely reaffirm everything it means to be male while being complete pigs to their female movie co-stars. In say for example Wedding Crashers-the guys who crash weddings in order to get laid make themselves look very good while making the women they sleep with appear crazy, incompetent, and often not worth their time. It bugs me that in order to get laughs these guys rely on such sexist, racist, and homophobic humor, when the simple stoned/drunk jokes about penis size can suffice quite nicely. Thus we turn to...
Knocked Up
Now much of the same stuff I just wrote about Blades of Glory could be applied to Knocked Up but it steps ahead because at least it has a good plot line, and the guy stops being a complete idiot by the end of the movie giving it that slightly more romanticized notion of guy-ness and "guy" culture. Much in the way that the 40-Year-Old Virgin starts as guys getting stoned and wasted and searching for hot chicks to hook up with and turns into a kind of revealing story about one guy who just hasn't wanted to give it up that easily and is actually searching for not just a hook-up but someone he actually cares about so is Knocked Up.
Basic plot line-Ben(goofball from Canada, not the most good looking, definite huge stoner, doesn't have a job but thinks that he and his friends have struck it rich in developing a website that tells when nude scenes happen in movies) meets Alison (a successful, attractive, woman working at E! ) one night at a bar. The two are an unlikely pair, however, Ben's charming demeanor and smooth lines kind of get Alison interested and eventually the end up dancing and then going back to her place for one-night-standville. A miscommunication keeps Ben from putting on the condom and they have completely unprotected sex, which I find unlikely, but without it the plot would die right then and there. They end up pregnant but instead of just deciding to keep the baby and their separate lives, they try to make a go of it. It of course doesn't work out immediately because they are really different and can't always communicate with one another, but after Ben decides to move out of his house (with his equally disgusting roommates), get a real job at a website developer, and "read the baby books," he is able to help Alison cope with her pregnancy and really just steps up his game like 10 fold! In the end they wind up together with their baby and everything is kind of la la la la la.
I really liked this movie because Ben realizes the errors of his ways in "guyville" and decides to make a change. It also shows that opposite people with opposite personalities can make things work but they have to compromise and communicate. And sometimes when a baby is involved there is more at stake than just a failed relationship. I like this movie because it takes a nonchalant guy who is just busy doin his thing and gives him a real life mini crisis to work through and figure out. It also shows how guys like this can get to the pretty, smart, successful woman who is "never attracted to guys like that" and shows how she deals with that. And there are some really funny scenes too-dancing at the club, Vegas, the bath tub, several to pick from. And they make it in the end which, is the true test of comedy. I give this movie four stars for pure entertainment value without relying solely on degrading humor to make the movie funny!
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