Movies I Watch with My Wife

Unless you're a complete bozo jerk or maybe lucky enough to have a significant other who shares each and every one of your tastes, you've likely taken one for the team and checked out a flick for that special person in your life. My wife's a saint in this respect (our first date to the cinema was Alexandre Aja's High Tension). As such, I try to not hesitate to see movies with her that I might never watch alone.

So, if you're looking for a romantic or lighter movie to watch with your better half, I'll give you my take on three we've watched recently. 

I would normally give my left leg to keep clear of a movie like The Nanny Diaries. The frosty sugar that coats these tween flicks usually gives me a stomach ache before the opening credits set to a Gwen Stefani tune are finished. This one was directed by the same director team (Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini) that brought out the perfect adaptation for American Splendor though, so I was on board and expecting good things. 

The film's essential endeavor, to serve as a cinematic anthropological study of mothers and the soulless society of rich New Yorkers, unfortunately succumbs twice too many times to the fantasy airbrushed lives these films are always too eager to indoctrinate teenagers with. The way in which the film treats working class people as the tough, honest type and juxtaposes that stereotype with the skewering of the neglectful parents of the bratty rich trust fund babies acts as an early roadblock of any idea of the honesty (or humanity) that American Splendor ran with so splendidly. These kinds of things keep that anthropological study voiceover as a cute joke rather than any kind of meaningful stylistic device.

That said, the film does manage to engage the audience, primarily through its (cartoonish) depiction of the privileged super rich, and the healthy outrage of the whole thing might let me give the film as a whole a pass in hopes that it will keep one teenager from tuning into Real Housewives of New York City or such related trash. Part of what makes the film so successful isn't the patsy-watsy casting of It girl Scarlett Johansson but the fantastic bitch played by Laura Linney and her underused but suitably loathsome husband by Paul Giamatti. The couple works to the film's ultimate advantage, giving us good reason to hate them consistently throughout.

Linney really steals the show from everyone though. She plays the role with more enthusiasm and straight up brutality than Meryl Streep could, despite any number of Oscar recommendations. The screenplay gets it all wrong with positing sympathy with her in the end. Throughout the entire film, the upper class moms are privilege incarnate, people too uninvolved to take part in any aspect of their children's lives. With the men, it's almost expected, and you get a sense that their neglect can almost be excused because they're not idle necessarily. The film's quick denouement and off screen redemption for the mother leads to quite an unsatisfying conclusion. The divide between the character's worst atrocity and her subsequent offscreen reconciliation is so short and blunt that it overturns the dynamic of the entire film.

As adaptors, screenwriters, and directors, Berman and Pulcini need the blame placed on them for the film's problems. After the mesmerizingly well-blended directorial strategies found in American Splendor, it's disappointing to see the slick, shiny New York city we knew and abhorred in Devil Wears Prada or How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. However, the nice romance B-plot is the worst atrocity to the audience. Perhaps more indicative of the film's willingness to buy into typical genre fantasy than the rooftop date scene is the hunk himself. A Harvard grad who isn't into material things, considers going into a liberal arts profession, yet keeps an apartment in the same building as the horrific X family, he's everything we should want our super cute protagonist to end up with. In short, she (and we) get to have our cake and eat it too.

If The Nanny Diaries keeps its social criticism and typical genre trappings as its chief illusions, Juno's primary smoke screen is its audience's own perception of how offbeat it can be. As if to emphasize this point, my wife's friend asked during the opening credits if it was an independent film or something.

That "indie factor" is the key fantasy just like it was in Garden State. The hip irony, the offbeat product references (Slurpees, race car beds, and hamburger phones here), emo tunes, and overt references to cool tastes (Bad Brains poster, overt references to The Stooges and Dario Argento) all are present and accounted for. A lot of friends said that the film's first fifteen minutes were an unbearable exercise in feigned wisecat dialogue. I'm personally surprised none of them realized that the whole film's like that.

As if that didn't have you racing for the exit, the most annoying facet of the picture is that its central premise, the accidental pregnancy narrative, ends up as a functional B plot to the film's fairly typical "looking for love" storyline. Seriously, keep track of the drama of the pregnancy, which all but evaporates after the film's first act. Namely, this plotline basically serves the same purpose as the poverty and deadbeat dad moments in Pretty in Pink. 

The big moments you'd count on in a film like this, especially the debate over whether to abort the fetus or not, are handled with kid gloves and summed up with a moment of Dolby surround sound. Bigger moral debates like if Michael Cera is actually the hottest man on the planet to alienated youth everywhere take much more precedence and attention.

Similarly, the gabbing about genre flicks and punk music service the build-up of the relationship between Juno and Jason Bateman's character. Sure, it's cool that they showed some clips from what I'm sure Diablo Cody thinks is an obscure flick, but why make Juno and her friends such big fans of punk when the soundtrack's full of nothing but flaccid acoustic numbers and Sonic Youth covering The Carpenters?

In the end, Juno's a fantasy, an artifice. The stuff that rings true isn't the underage pregnancy but the loneliness and the longing. The hip dialogue, useless voiceover, orange Tic Tacs, Michael Cera -- will the next generation venerate this stuff like I do Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club?

Still though, there is some heart in the thing, mostly in the love narrative. Toss in some great lines by J.K. Simmons, and you have a solid date movie. It's just a shame that you might have to retch every time some poser waxes hip about H.G. Lewis.

If the running theme of the last two movies has been the employment of fantasy as the allure, Peyton Reed's Down with Love throws any pretension of realism aside and goes for the fantasy not only as allure but as central concept. Frankly, the film's better than the above for it. It's fairly typical for a romantic comedy to have its characters in lofty, otherworld gigs (fashion designer in Sweet Home Alabama, magazine writers in How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, etc.). The film seems to recognize the idea that a creative (easy) job seems like an ideal fantasy, so what does it do? It makes its protagonists two successful writers who seemingly never work and instead craft public images for themselves.

Sure, but that's done in a lot of flicks, right? Down with Love sets itself apart by placing that dynamic within a lalaworld of the early 60's that's somewhere between that era's sitcoms and The Cell. Placing itself within a strictly cinematic past, the film then moves on to actually commenting on the social change rampant in the period as well. More so than the hyper stylized sets, colors, outfits, dialogue, etc., the film's attempt to pay attention to how social mores (at birth but especially contemporary) are shaped even while they're played out.

That the film integrates its politics into its humor makes me able to forgive the constant barrage of occasionally weak double entendres (this is a PG-13 romcom, after all). However, when that humor arises out of the movie's gender role inversion (an exaggerated masquerade, of course), it seems more genuine and, dare I say, a bit fresher than a similar gag in your Kate Hudson or Reese Witherspoon run throughs. 

Granted, this retro setting and take on the material begs the question of how revisionist this past ends up, but the fact of the matter is that the film makes no pretense of realism (or even smarts) but relies mostly on its charms. In that way, it remains punchy and entertaining in a shallow way but also manages to give something else to chew on. That it actually follows its protagonists through the negotiation of gender roles after feminism within such an odd retrocontemporary environment only leaves more to ponder.

In this context, casting itself makes a comment. Ewan McGregor may be a teen heartthrob, but I'm not sure if his pretty boy simplicity would have flown in comparison to guys like Sinatra or even Grant. His placement in the role reflects on the progression in ideas of gender even as it models itself after antiquated types. To a lesser extent, the same could likely be said for Renée Zellweger, most famous for her roles in the Bridget Jones films, which, nauseating as they may be, earn points for their faith in nonconventional female forms. Although I'm not sure how associated she may with that type, her placement in the fiery gender role showcases her character's role as an originator of some feminist thought that would eventually allow such depictions at the same time as it engages the prior (and, really, current) requirements. 

The mixture of political questioning and gender roles, past and present, at work here belies the general entertainment value of the entire film, which, as a madcap comedy, generally works. The characterizations never get beyond face level, but they work in the lens of the outrageous interpretation of story through older and new cinema. All of these elements, in conjunction, gave me at least one very pleasurable movie experience that I can say my wife enjoyed as much as me. She'll remember it next time I drag her out to a gore flick.