I'm not entirely sure how to start this article. I want to
say I ‘watched’ a ‘movie’ yesterday, but it’s coming through the tips of my
fingers as I ‘suffered through’ the ‘worst piece of cinematic garbage that has
even been created since the beginning of man.’ Actually, neither would
be entirely true, as my mother and I walked out about 48 minutes into it. I had
to wake her to ask her if she wanted to leave. I think her sleeping was a
possum-like defense in reaction to the abuse this movie dispensed under the thinly-veiled guise of a
Women’s Lib statement.
This stink pot opens to a montage of fabulously expensive
shoes walking down the streets of Manhattan ,
marching to the “I'm beautiful AND smart’ anthem they picked for the
soundtrack. Music fades and camera closes in on one particular pair of shoes.
These shoes belong to a character Sylvie,
played by Annette Bening. I loved Annette Bening, one of my favorite
actresses. Then she opened her mouth and spouted the most shallow and pedantic
dialogue. She stormed her pretentious ass into Sak’s Fifth Avenue , handed her dust mop dog to
the receptionist and sat down for her 2 o'clock manicure. As if her incredibly
narcissistic body language wasn’t enough, she unnecessarily informs the
manicurist that she "wasn’t interested" in anything she had to say.
That is, until, by the greatest coincidence any multi-million populated city
has ever seen, the manicurist tells her (unprovoked, mind you) that his friend
‘the spritzer girl’ is having an affair with a married man. A famous married
man. She thinks “I always forget his name, Steven……”
“Haines?!?!” Bening just guesses out of the blue.
“Yeah, you know him?” replies the manicurist.
Bening’s character knows him alright. It’s her best friend’s
husband. Oh, the humanity.
Her best friend, Mary (played by Meg Ryan), whom she does
not tell about the affair, is confusingly
some 70 years younger than her, so I can only assume when they say ‘old college buddies’, they mean
that either Mary was in an accelerated program for elementary school students heading straight to college or that
Annette Bening was her professor. I mean, c’mon; Annette Bening played John Cusack’s Mom back when Harry was
meeting Sally. I don’t care how taut they’ve pulled your face, you're fucking
old.
Then we meet
Sylvie’s polar opposite sister, the free-spirited Edie, played by Debra
Messing. Isn’t she fun and precocious in her crazy hats and flowing dresses and
17 children swinging like pendulums from her teat? Spoiler alert! She pregnant
again! To which her friends reply “uh, again?” I can only assume that was congratulatory. If a friend tells you
with a smile that they are pregnant, smile back. If they are crying while waiting in line for Planned
Parenthood, then you may offer condolences.
Just to shake things up, we’ve got a black friend played by
Jada Pinkett Smith. Not only is she black, she’s a lesbian. She’s also not a daytime
person; the night life makes her cranky which she tells us every five minutes
when she’s not talking about her “new book”.
“You lucky you even got me out of bed much less out of the
house!” (New book!) Why is the sun so bright? (New book!) “I party like a
rockstar!” (New book!) “Did I mention I'm writing a new book?”
Then there’s the mistress. Mary (Ryan) goes for a manicure
at Sak’s, and who is her manicurist? The same one Sylvie had. And the
manicurist’s material hasn’t changed because in a matter of minutes (days after
her best friend found out, mind you), Mary is made privy to the affair between
her husband of 13 years and the perfume spritzer girl. Right in the same store!
She handles it incredibly well, even when she ends up in the same dressing room
as the whore who’s sleeping with her husband. “Men aren’t stolen if they go
willingly”. Um, if those words were uttered to me by some bitch sleeping with
my husband wearing a $600 skank suit that my husband was paying for, well let’s
just say I wouldn’t have scrunched my face and left. I would’ve scrunched her
face into the 3-way mirror.
So at this point, I left. I woke my mother and we walked
out. First time I’ve ever walked out of a movie in my life. The dialogue
reminded me of something I wrote for an English project in the 7th
grade. It was called Predictable. Or was it called Stereotypical?
Not sure, I try not to remember such useless, trite rubbish. I’ve heard better
dialogue in porn.
