Enter SLP, a romdramedy (tm!) starring the usually bland Bradley Cooper, the usually amazing Jennifer Lawrence, the increasingly surprising Robert DeNiro, and the not-in-enough-movies Chris Tucker. On paper, could be a drama dealing with mental illness and depression, but sadly billed and filmed as a romantic comedy in which crazy people happen to feature. There are good performances in the movie, with Cooper finally actually acting. Ms. Lawrence is so very talented that it’s easy to brush off the creepy yawning age gap between her and her male lead (there’s FIFTEEN years between the two and it really really shows – can you believe they’ll be pairing up again?). And the rest of cast really sells whatever little they’re given (including a great, almost cameo, role for Chris Tucker – put him in more movies!) So, I guess, it’s a 3 out of 5 stars kind of movie.
Spoilers below
As usual, though, this is a happy ending movie. You can see how it’s going to all end up from minute five. And while the performances were good, it’s pretty hard to mess up a romcom. How the heck did this make it into the top nine? It makes no sense to me. There should have been a twist – it’s all a delusion, he’s imagining his friends, or one of them gets locked up. This wrapped-up-with-a-bow plot just seemed… well, boring. So, I totally don’t agree that anyone should have been nominated for anything related to SLP. As a result, I’m saying it will go home empty-handed.
2 comments:
Victorian literature is the literature against which all are judged. . .how many times do I have to tell you this? Who are you reading, Joyce? Good luck with that. If so, then gimme a Stephen King.
You can keep harping on VicLit being anything but drivel, I am uninterested in this incorrect assumption. And I do NOT hold it as the standard by which all literature is judged; there are too many others that are so ingrained in our psyche we don't even recognise them any more (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Marlowe, Donne, Faulkner, Murdoch, Ellison, Hemingway, Waugh, Greene, even Woolf!... and then there are my personal favourites: contemporary Canlit and other English PoCoLit). VicLit is what the British want us to believe is the end-all-be-all of Literature, because it's their last form of colonising culture. I find the Brontes to be hypersensitive shut-ins with questionable male characters; Dickens, a man paid by the word, could have used an editor; and dear sweet Austen, while witty, is/was predictable ...just like a RomCom (which is why the two are inexorably twinned in my brain). (Sadly, she lived the realistic version of a clever Victorian woman, all her fantasies of romance and love having died with her).
And while I'm not a fan of horror, Mr. King is possibly singularly responsible for what little male literacy scores we DO retain, so we should give him that credit.
You can keep your drivel - I'll keep exploring the brave new world that exists outside the incestuous world of Victorian-era British English fiction.
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