This weekend brings us a chick-flick motherlode. Well, actually there are just two, 27 Dresses and Mad Money, but that’s more than usual, and they're both directed by women. I suppose you could also count the limited release of Starting Out in the Evening—a divine portrait of the artist as an old man that doubles as a requiem for the dying art of literary fiction (stuff read primarily by women). But it’s just a superb film, period. For the boys, meanwhile, there’s the vertigo-inducing Cloverfield. For my views on it—freshly jaundiced by the effects of shakycam nausea—advance to the next blog: Cloverfield: POV till you Puke! As for the rest . . .
27 Dresses In a recent Vanity Fair cover profile, Katherine Heigl had the nerve to knock Knocked Up as “a little sexist,” observing that “it paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as goofy, fun-loving guys.” True enough. But the movie’s success raised her fee from $300,000 to $6 million—Heigl’s reported paycheck for 27 Dresses.
And whatever you think about Knocked Up, at least it was honest in its sexism. 27 Dresses offers a full-course banquet of toxic female stereotypes behind the veil of a movie that panders to a female audience. This formulaic romantic comedy was made by women—director Anne Fletcher (Step Up) and writer Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada)—yet it offers some of the most demeaning portrayals of women I’ve seen in some time. The heroine, played by Heigl, is a perpetual bridesmaid who’s addicted to other people’s weddings with an obsessive zeal that makes Seth Rogen’s porn habit in Knocked Up look like a harmless hobby. Hence the title: she’s got a closet full of dresses for each of the weddings that she’s facilitated as a quasi-professional bridesmaid. Heigl is a fine actress and an extremely likeable screen presence. But her character, Jane, is the only remotely sympathetic woman in the movie. Jane’s best friend and colleague, Casey (Judy Greer), is a craven, promiscuous cynic. Her sister, Tess (Malin Akerman) is a lying, opportunistic slut. And the plot hinges on a blonde-versus-blonde bout of sibling rivalry that descends into a cat fight.
Here’s the set-up. Jane is secretly in love with her vegan, environmentalist boss (Ed Burns), who becomes inexplicably smitten by Jane’s coarse, party-girl sister. As the bimbo and the boss take the express lane to the altar, Jane is drummed into service as her sister’s mortified maid-of-honour. Jane, meanwhile, is pursued with terrier-like persistence by a drop-dead cute newspaper journalist (James Marsden). Unaware that this guy, under a pseudonym, writes the wedding articles that she so adores in the New York Journal (a fictional New York Times, Jane remains strangely immune to her suitor's wit and charm—until the third act sets them up for a drunken jukebox sing-a-long to Benny and the Jets with joyfully mangled lyrics. Which is how people fall in love in romantic comedies.
This deeply conventional movie is riddled with false notes and ludicrous plot turns. What makes it bearable, and even enjoyable at times, is watching Heigl and Marsden. These are two actors we want to spend time with. We’re impatient for their scenes together, feeling a frustration that goes beyond the delayed gratification of the plot. And you have to admire them for keeping their chemistry credible, given the idiocy of the script they’re stuck with. Since Shakespeare, romantic comedies typically end with nuptials. 27 Dresses is no exception. But the entire movie plays like one big fat Hollywood wedding from beginning to end—starchy, insincere, overdressed and ill-conceived.
Which doesn’t mean it won’t be a hit, no matter what the critics think. Even I have to admit that, while I didn’t like 27 Dresses, against my better judgment, I warmed to it. That, I guess, is the definition of a guilty pleasure. And for guys who get dragged to this movie by wives or girlfriends, believe me, there are worse fates. (Men, drag a date to Cloverfield at your peril.) Besides, Heigl is worth the price of admission. And seeing her on Letterman the other night, this smart bombshell with the devastating laugh did everything but admit to Dave that 27 Dresses is an embarrassment and that she’s worthy of better things.
Mad Money It’s hard to be as charitable to this schematic caper flick, which stars Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah in a comedy that could be subtitled Two Married White Ditzes and a Single Black Momma. Keaton plays Bridget, the Martha Stewart-ish wife of a downsized executive (Ted Danson). Desperate for cash, she gets a job as a janitor in the Federal Reserve Bank, where bales of worn-out currency are routinely shredded. Bridget hatches a plan to routinely siphon off cash so no one notices, and recruits two co-workers—a hard-headed mom (Latifah) and a stoned trailer-park flake (Holmes).
If this were a real heist movie, rather than a larcenous version of girls-go-shopping, the screenwriters might have paid more attention to detail. But the plot is a shambles, just an excuse to let the actors push their performances into giddy overdrive. Keaton does her usual over-amped late-career number as the desperate neurotic. Latifah is typecast as the stoical heavy. And Katie Holmes? Well, like a woman who’s just been let out of the house, she dances around the workplace, shutting out the world with her iPod earbuds, and does her damnest to pretend she’s a girl who just wants to have fun. Which probably beats the hell out of life with Tom.
Starting Out in the Evening Saving the best for last, this is a wonderful film—one of the most delicate, honest and intelligent movies ever made about what it means to love writing, and to love a writer. Usually movies about writers are hopelessly inauthentic, which is odd considering they all originate with writers. Maybe it’s the self-loathing. Writers in movies are usually tormented romantics or cynical rip-off artists. Take 27 Dresses. It involves a writer, a journalist who betrays his subject in a newsroom scene that’s utterly preposterous. How could a writer even write that writer?
Starting Out in the Evening is on another plane altogether. It’s a witty, elegiac drama about a faded literary lion named Leonard (Frank Langella) whose books are out of print, and who is struggling to complete one last novel when one last woman enters his life. Leonard’s soul, and his forgotten libido, meet their final test when a young academic vixen named Heather (Lauren Ambrose) waltzes into his life. Professing to be an ardent fan of his writing, she persuades him to co-operate with a treatise she’s writing about his work, and his life. Completing this triangular chamber piece is Leonard’s protective daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor), who’s counting down a different kind of biological clock: she has reunited with an old flame (Adrian Lester) even though he cannot bring himself to give her what she wants—a child.
This is not your typical May-September romance. More like March-November car wreck—a taut, seductive drama that unfolds as a heart-stopping tango between cruelty and pathos. Langella, who’s best known for playing Dracula, gives a swan-song performance that, if there’s any justice, could get him a dark-horse Oscar nomination—the one that went to Peter O’Toole for Venus last year. But this film is neither as carefree nor as sentimental as Venus. Ultimately what matters most to Leonard, and to the writers who created him, is not love or sex or literary repute, but writing itself. The movie is based on a novel by Brian Morton, which I haven’t read. Whether or not the movie captures the book, I have no idea. But it certainly nails the business of writing: the dread of not doing it and the undying desire to do it well.
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What Women Want: '27 Dresses', 'Mad Money', 'Starting Out in the Evening'
Brian D. Johnson | January 18, 2008 | 00:08:38 | Permalink
brian.johnson@macleans.rogers.com
As for the rest . . .
27 Dresses
In a recent Vanity Fair cover profile, Katherine Heigl had the nerve to knock Knocked Up as “a little sexist,” observing that “it paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as goofy, fun-loving guys.” True enough. But the movie’s success raised her fee from $300,000 to $6 million—Heigl’s reported paycheck for 27 Dresses.
And whatever you think about Knocked Up, at least it was honest in its sexism. 27 Dresses offers a full-course banquet of toxic female stereotypes behind the veil of a movie that panders to a female audience. This formulaic romantic comedy was made by women—director Anne Fletcher (Step Up) and writer Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada)—yet it offers some of the most demeaning portrayals of women I’ve seen in some time.
The heroine, played by Heigl, is a perpetual bridesmaid who’s addicted to other people’s weddings with an obsessive zeal that makes Seth Rogen’s porn habit in Knocked Up look like a harmless hobby. Hence the title: she’s got a closet full of dresses for each of the weddings that she’s facilitated as a quasi-professional bridesmaid.
Heigl is a fine actress and an extremely likeable screen presence. But her character, Jane, is the only remotely sympathetic woman in the movie. Jane’s best friend and colleague, Casey (Judy Greer), is a craven, promiscuous cynic. Her sister, Tess (Malin Akerman) is a lying, opportunistic slut. And the plot hinges on a blonde-versus-blonde bout of sibling rivalry that descends into a cat fight.
Here’s the set-up. Jane is secretly in love with her vegan, environmentalist boss (Ed Burns), who becomes inexplicably smitten by Jane’s coarse, party-girl sister. As the bimbo and the boss take the express lane to the altar, Jane is drummed into service as her sister’s mortified maid-of-honour. Jane, meanwhile, is pursued with terrier-like persistence by a drop-dead cute newspaper journalist (James Marsden). Unaware that this guy, under a pseudonym, writes the wedding articles that she so adores in the New York Journal (a fictional New York Times, Jane remains strangely immune to her suitor's wit and charm—until the third act sets them up for a drunken jukebox sing-a-long to Benny and the Jets with joyfully mangled lyrics. Which is how people fall in love in romantic comedies.
This deeply conventional movie is riddled with false notes and ludicrous plot turns. What makes it bearable, and even enjoyable at times, is watching Heigl and Marsden. These are two actors we want to spend time with. We’re impatient for their scenes together, feeling a frustration that goes beyond the delayed gratification of the plot. And you have to admire them for keeping their chemistry credible, given the idiocy of the script they’re stuck with.
Since Shakespeare, romantic comedies typically end with nuptials. 27 Dresses is no exception. But the entire movie plays like one big fat Hollywood wedding from beginning to end—starchy, insincere, overdressed and ill-conceived.
Which doesn’t mean it won’t be a hit, no matter what the critics think. Even I have to admit that, while I didn’t like 27 Dresses, against my better judgment, I warmed to it. That, I guess, is the definition of a guilty pleasure. And for guys who get dragged to this movie by wives or girlfriends, believe me, there are worse fates. (Men, drag a date to Cloverfield at your peril.) Besides, Heigl is worth the price of admission. And seeing her on Letterman the other night, this smart bombshell with the devastating laugh did everything but admit to Dave that 27 Dresses is an embarrassment and that she’s worthy of better things.
Mad Money
It’s hard to be as charitable to this schematic caper flick, which stars Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah in a comedy that could be subtitled Two Married White Ditzes and a Single Black Momma. Keaton plays Bridget, the Martha Stewart-ish wife of a downsized executive (Ted Danson). Desperate for cash, she gets a job as a janitor in the Federal Reserve Bank, where bales of worn-out currency are routinely shredded. Bridget hatches a plan to routinely siphon off cash so no one notices, and recruits two co-workers—a hard-headed mom (Latifah) and a stoned trailer-park flake (Holmes).
If this were a real heist movie, rather than a larcenous version of girls-go-shopping, the screenwriters might have paid more attention to detail. But the plot is a shambles, just an excuse to let the actors push their performances into giddy overdrive. Keaton does her usual over-amped late-career number as the desperate neurotic. Latifah is typecast as the stoical heavy. And Katie Holmes? Well, like a woman who’s just been let out of the house, she dances around the workplace, shutting out the world with her iPod earbuds, and does her damnest to pretend she’s a girl who just wants to have fun. Which probably beats the hell out of life with Tom.
Starting Out in the Evening
Saving the best for last, this is a wonderful film—one of the most delicate, honest and intelligent movies ever made about what it means to love writing, and to love a writer. Usually movies about writers are hopelessly inauthentic, which is odd considering they all originate with writers. Maybe it’s the self-loathing. Writers in movies are usually tormented romantics or cynical rip-off artists. Take 27 Dresses. It involves a writer, a journalist who betrays his subject in a newsroom scene that’s utterly preposterous. How could a writer even write that writer?
Starting Out in the Evening is on another plane altogether. It’s a witty, elegiac drama about a faded literary lion named Leonard (Frank Langella) whose books are out of print, and who is struggling to complete one last novel when one last woman enters his life. Leonard’s soul, and his forgotten libido, meet their final test when a young academic vixen named Heather (Lauren Ambrose) waltzes into his life. Professing to be an ardent fan of his writing, she persuades him to co-operate with a treatise she’s writing about his work, and his life. Completing this triangular chamber piece is Leonard’s protective daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor), who’s counting down a different kind of biological clock: she has reunited with an old flame (Adrian Lester) even though he cannot bring himself to give her what she wants—a child.
This is not your typical May-September romance. More like March-November car wreck—a taut, seductive drama that unfolds as a heart-stopping tango between cruelty and pathos. Langella, who’s best known for playing Dracula, gives a swan-song performance that, if there’s any justice, could get him a dark-horse Oscar nomination—the one that went to Peter O’Toole for Venus last year. But this film is neither as carefree nor as sentimental as Venus. Ultimately what matters most to Leonard, and to the writers who created him, is not love or sex or literary repute, but writing itself. The movie is based on a novel by Brian Morton, which I haven’t read. Whether or not the movie captures the book, I have no idea. But it certainly nails the business of writing: the dread of not doing it and the undying desire to do it well.
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