The romantic men of film
This rant is dedicated to all the women who manage to cattle prod their dude into a movie theater, force him to pay $20 for two tickets, another $50 on a small popcorn, candy and diet soda, and sit their will he twitches his way through any number of Hollywood romances that plague the theaters of this great nation every single year.
I was gonna entitle this “Movie men and how the rest of us will never live up to the things they say to women when they have nearly destroyed the relationship through their idiocy and insensitivity”. As you can see, this is way too long of a title, heck, it’s a couple prepositions away from becoming a run on sentence. It’s a known fact that women swoon to the lines uttered by desperate men while trying to salvage their silver screen relationships. It’s also a know fact that in the movies men always seem to know exactly what to say, and when to say it, no matter how much they just screwed up. The reality is, if I had a team of Writers, two Producers, an Executive Producer, a Director, a Gaffer, my own personal assistant, custom catering and just the right lighting while having a disagreement or dealing with a potentially explosive situation with my wife I would always come away looking like the stud muffin I have seen so many times in fictional stories on the screen. Let’s look at three of these situations that bug me the most, and then weigh the circumstances to reality.
Dirty Dancing, Patrick Swayze “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
Patrick’s character, who cares what his name was, is a low rent dance virtuoso who works at a mountain country club for extremely wealthy patrons. He is also known through subtle dialogue as a man-whore who gives both vertical and horizontal dance lessons to the male patron’s wives in his private sessions. Then along comes Baby, the eldest daughter of a pretentious, elitist, Doctor who, like any responsible father, doesn’t like Patrick's scumbag character and wants better for his princess of a daughter. Through a series of events, like Patrick’s dance partner getting impregnated by one of the more "respectable" waiter’s (Doctor Dad obviously blames Patrick, because we all know that he is really the one responsible), Patrick and a then semi-attractive Jennifer Grey learning the dangerously erotic Mambo (up to and including a dangerous over the head hold that Jennifer is scared to perform until the very end when she shows up in a twirly dress and dancing shoes to the final dinner), some smooching scenes in the rain, and Patrick getting fired, we come to the movies climactic end scene. Dad’s pissed, understandably, and his eldest daughter happens to be sitting in the corner chair of their small round table. Patrick walks in, laser sights Jennifer and walks over to her, looks Doctor Dad in the eye and says “Nobody puts Baby in the corner”, grabs her by the hand and escorts her to the dance floor to get jiggy with it. At this moment during the films theatrical release every woman in the theatre got moist eyes and covered their mouths in romantic exasperation and every Dad of a daughter in the theatre went “Uhhhh….. What the hell did he just say?” You see, I have a daughter, and I’d like to explain the reality of how the events would have actually gone down after that sentence. Now, as a Dad, whether I was right or wrong, Patrick would have turned to walk away and been jacked in the back of the head by the leather sap I keep in my back pocket for occasions just like this. Then Patrick would have been the recipient of a serious beat down up to and including a verbal slashing of four letter words explaining to him how my daughter was in fact not going to be having one last dance with him. You see there would be no dance renaissance, the wealthy owner of the mountain country club resort would not realize that he too in fact needed to change with the times, there'd be no big dance party and massive coming together of rich and poor in a smiling orgy of love and acceptance. No, there would be a broken shell of a mangled man and an enraged Father with bloody fists. Patrick would certainly not be having the time of his life.
You’ve Got Mail, Tom Hanks “Don’t cry Shopgirl, don’t cry.”
Alright… where to begin. Joe Fox is the son/grandson of the owners of Fox Books, a Barnes and Nobel like monster sized (and let’s not forget corporate and heartless) bookstore. The corporation, in a meddling scheme to be more profitable, moves into a massive, vacant space in New York’s upper west side right around the corner from a small, local, mom and pop type book store called “The Shop Around the Corner” (this is in fact a clever tip of the hat to the title of the movie which You’ve Got Mail is a remaking of). Kathleen Kelly (aka "Shopgirl"), played by Meg Ryan, is the daughter of the lady who started the quaint little shop and through the course of the movie we see how the big evil corporation slowly chokes the life out of her business with big discounts, delicious cappuccino and horrible customer service. As a result of her struggle against free market corporate capitalism she begins to hate Fox Books, Joe Fox, and anything to do with the big box store, while at the same time falling in love with Joe through his alter ego “NY152”, his AOL chat room stalker identity. Joe figures out who “Shopgirl” is, realizes that he is in love with her, however is smart enough to know that she will never love him in return until he proves that he is actually not a heartless corporate bastard but a loving, tender, witty person... despite destroying her mother’s legacy and taking away the only way to make a living she has ever known. Inevitably, and predictably, The Shop Around the Corner goes under, and Kathleen finally decides to meet the mysterious, clever, always with the right thing to say “NY152” in the park. When the meeting occurs, Joe gives that classic smile only Tom Hanks can deliver, and she begins to sob, for secretly she loves Mr. Fox, though really she hates him. “Don’t cry Shopgirl, don’t cry” is the words he uses to sooth her shredded heart as he gently wipes the tears from her eyes and he holds her oh so tenderly. So now for a dose of real life reality and what she would have most likely done if she was a true New Yorker; “YOU'RE NY152?!?! You manipulative, lying, dirty son of a bitch! You ruined my life!!! You destroyed my livelihood, perverted all the great memories of my dead mother, left me a potential pauper and tore apart the fabric of the upper west side community! On top of all that you broke my heart!” Insert a well placed kick to the balls, fade to credits.
Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise “You complete me!”
This is actually a pretty good line. I mean seriously, I could see this being something a dude might actually think of in the heat of the moment after realizing he will never win the argument and is ready to just move on to the make-up sex. The real issue (besides the actor that delivered it) was that Dorthy (Renee Zellweger) stood there and let him actually get to the line in the first place. Any guy knows, the emotional plee for her that we see Jerry go through would have exhausted the brain pan of any real man. The next three weeks would have been spent in bed with an ice pack on his forehead watching a marathon of the all 267 episodes of Married With Children so that the sage advice and philosophies of Mr. Al Bundy could soak into his pores and get him back into the mode of what manhood is all about. She stood there and let him do it, in front of all her sneering girlfriends, and then has the stones to tell him afterwards “You had me at hello.” Translation; “Yeah, thanks for that, I didn’t really need to hear it. I heard on the news conference tonight that you secured an 11.2 million dollar contract for your client, of which you get 10%. Don’t worry sweetie, we’re cool, I was planning on calling you after tonight’s man bashing session with my girlfriends anyway.” The only thing that would have made this scene better is if Jerry was making his plea to an alien, and then followed up with “You complete me, and I want you to have L. Ron Hubbards baby! Can we plant the sperm directly in your alien uterus?!”
Official ITD Rant Rating: zero eunuchs out of five