My favourite author Kurt Vonnegut was fond of saying that all his arguments with his wife boiled down to her being 'Not Enough People'. All couples could do with some backup in the form of friends and extended families, but we're not all lucky enough to have it. The ones that don't are likely to spend a lot longer kicking each other in the arse during the course of their relationship than the ones that do.
And like couples in real life, couples in films need backup too, especially ones that are in romantic comedies. If ever a type of film needed a supporting cast, the romantic comedy is it. And that's because it's pretty boring to spend an hour and a half watching someone else's relationship implode before being slowly put back together again. It's nearly always the same. First they fall in love, then they have a load of problems due to their total incompatibility, then they gradually find a way of living together without punching each other really hard in the face, blah blah blah, the end. It's dull. Films are supposed to be escapism. If I wanted to watch two people arguing for an hour and a half about nothing in particular I could just set up a webcam in my own house.
So anyway, I'm writing this because last night Ruth and I watched the Five Year Engagement, which had Emily Blunt and some bloke in. The title is stupid and misleading, because the whole film hinges on a couple's decision not to get married because they have to move to Michigan. This makes no sense whatsoever. People move around all the time these days. Half the people I know don't live near where they grew up, and where their families are. Some of them don't even live in the same country as where they grew up.
But that's the thing about weddings. Usually you get time off work to go to them, especially when they're your own, and you can go home to get married, or your family can come to you. There's about a billion internal flights a day in the US, I'd be amazed if it's impossible to fly from San Francisco to Michigan relatively easily. So why didn't they just take a couple of weeks off, and get married anyway? He gave up his job and moved to Michigan with her, and they were living together, so they were virtually married anyway. And she was a student with 8 weeks off every summer, that would have been the perfect opportunity to fit a wedding in. All her family were English anyway, so she would probably have wanted to get married in England anyway. Where they lived in the US was irrelevant.
Leaving aside this stupid fact, the film was a lot of fun to watch. And that was largely because of the supporting cast. There were some sick and twisted psychology students, a Welsh professor played by Rhys Ifans who was involved in a particularly funny chase, there was a heated argument between Elmo and the Cookie Monster, a bit of mime, somebody getting shot with a crossbow, some blokes going hunting, growing beards, knitting woolly jumpers, and drinking out of a woolly mammoth's hollowed out foot. In fact, many of the best bits of the film had nothing to do with the central relationship at all.
So for me, it was a bit like Four Weddings and a Funeral, in that it was the interaction of the wider cast of characters that made the movie. Imagine if Four Weddings had only had the vacuous Andie Macdowell character prancing around fancying herself and Hugh Grant bumbling and stumbling over his words for 90 minutes. It would have been death.
Similarly, I was once chained to a chair and made to watch 'Failure to Launch' with Matthew McConnohee (I can't spell it properly, I give up) and Sarah Jessica Parker. What a terrible film! I probably would have had more fun reading a paint chart for 90 minutes. But it was worth watching this particular dung heap for an hour and a half purely because of Zooey Deschanel, who played Sarah Jessica Parker's quirky room-mate. She saved the movie.
And I've found myself, that it's not just in the movies, but in real life, when it's a good idea to have a good group of friends in the picture. Because even the biggest stars sometimes need a bit of help.
And like couples in real life, couples in films need backup too, especially ones that are in romantic comedies. If ever a type of film needed a supporting cast, the romantic comedy is it. And that's because it's pretty boring to spend an hour and a half watching someone else's relationship implode before being slowly put back together again. It's nearly always the same. First they fall in love, then they have a load of problems due to their total incompatibility, then they gradually find a way of living together without punching each other really hard in the face, blah blah blah, the end. It's dull. Films are supposed to be escapism. If I wanted to watch two people arguing for an hour and a half about nothing in particular I could just set up a webcam in my own house.
So anyway, I'm writing this because last night Ruth and I watched the Five Year Engagement, which had Emily Blunt and some bloke in. The title is stupid and misleading, because the whole film hinges on a couple's decision not to get married because they have to move to Michigan. This makes no sense whatsoever. People move around all the time these days. Half the people I know don't live near where they grew up, and where their families are. Some of them don't even live in the same country as where they grew up.
But that's the thing about weddings. Usually you get time off work to go to them, especially when they're your own, and you can go home to get married, or your family can come to you. There's about a billion internal flights a day in the US, I'd be amazed if it's impossible to fly from San Francisco to Michigan relatively easily. So why didn't they just take a couple of weeks off, and get married anyway? He gave up his job and moved to Michigan with her, and they were living together, so they were virtually married anyway. And she was a student with 8 weeks off every summer, that would have been the perfect opportunity to fit a wedding in. All her family were English anyway, so she would probably have wanted to get married in England anyway. Where they lived in the US was irrelevant.
Leaving aside this stupid fact, the film was a lot of fun to watch. And that was largely because of the supporting cast. There were some sick and twisted psychology students, a Welsh professor played by Rhys Ifans who was involved in a particularly funny chase, there was a heated argument between Elmo and the Cookie Monster, a bit of mime, somebody getting shot with a crossbow, some blokes going hunting, growing beards, knitting woolly jumpers, and drinking out of a woolly mammoth's hollowed out foot. In fact, many of the best bits of the film had nothing to do with the central relationship at all.
So for me, it was a bit like Four Weddings and a Funeral, in that it was the interaction of the wider cast of characters that made the movie. Imagine if Four Weddings had only had the vacuous Andie Macdowell character prancing around fancying herself and Hugh Grant bumbling and stumbling over his words for 90 minutes. It would have been death.
Similarly, I was once chained to a chair and made to watch 'Failure to Launch' with Matthew McConnohee (I can't spell it properly, I give up) and Sarah Jessica Parker. What a terrible film! I probably would have had more fun reading a paint chart for 90 minutes. But it was worth watching this particular dung heap for an hour and a half purely because of Zooey Deschanel, who played Sarah Jessica Parker's quirky room-mate. She saved the movie.
And I've found myself, that it's not just in the movies, but in real life, when it's a good idea to have a good group of friends in the picture. Because even the biggest stars sometimes need a bit of help.
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