Crazy, Stupid, Love
Oct. 28th, 2011 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseI went with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
forodwaith to a movie the other night. Crazy, Stupid, Love.
I have mixed feelings on Romantic comedies, which this is billed as. The majority of them seem to depend more on cliches about how romances should go than on actual human behaviour, many of them depend on at least some humiliation comedy, someone lying to their SO, someone planning to get married to someone else who turns out to have huge misgivings, and other combinations of Too Stupid to Live and/or basic failure to communicate.
Bits of that crop up in this one, but most of the time, the tension comes from the moment the characters tell each other the truth. Most of the motivations, even the idiotic 13-year-old's, are at least true to some real people (The 13-year-old is very 13. Ditto the 17-year-old). Events do line up with a bit too convenient timing when it comes to the big disaster before the possible reconciliation, so that everyone is in the right place at the right time, but the character reasons for getting there are at least plausible, even if the timing isn't.
I'm not even going to try to summarize the plot, since there are at least 5 significant relationships and/or crushes that would need to be mentioned, with characters ranging from the possibly-divorcing parents to the kids. One major plot twist needed more foreshadowing than it got (It got one throwaway line, and even that is debateable), but I can't see easy ways to do it without breaking.
Where it failed for me is at the very end.forodwaith correctly identified the dad's closing speech -- aka the Big Romantic Gesture that makes everything all right -- as the sole major case of movie behaviour that real people don't do.
It's also highly problematic in at least one respect: The 13-year-old's behaviour to this point has been stalkerish, persisting after being told no by his crush, and only saved from criminal by his age and relative innocence; he genuinely doesn't mean harm. His dad's wonderful, inspiring speech about soul mates to his wife also inspires the son to keep trying with his crush, after all -- and when he makes his public declaration, everyone Cheers him. Way to reward potentially future criminal behaviour.
But I also, later, pinned down another basic issue with the speech, which, had it occurred to the scriptwriter, would have allowed the dad to make the speech that would sway his wife without also encouraging his son in this particular pursuit.
See, the movie assumes the existence of soul mates. Or at least, of people who firmly believe they've found their soul mate, and for whom no other person will do.
And the dad's point is that once you find your soul mate, you don't stop trying to get together with them, even when reality intervenes, even when it isn't sure it will work out.
However, and I think this is significant, and too often missed. If you take soul mates as existing (I don't, but let's stick with the movie): then when you meet your soul mate, wouldn't they know it too?
The possibly divorcing parents each recognize the other as someone they love and have loved for a long time; though I don't think the mom uses the words "soul mate", the emotion is reciprocal. The 13-year-old's crush does NOT. She wants nothing of him but for him to stop. (There's an extra skeevy bit at the end of the movie that I think is meant to read as her being nicer and more sympathetic about his feelings, even though she still doesn't reciprocate, but it does so in a way that makes me want to scrub it out of my brain).
If the female in a pair of soul mates is actually an equal partner, she should, in fact, have her full say as to whether or not they are soul mates (And two of the adult relationships are based on the assumption that the woman does have a say in what's going on). If she doesn't think they are soul mates at least as strongly as he does, then they are NOT. That simple.
And it's not like, even with possible soul mates, there aren't enough things in the world that could make the relationship difficult. Societal disapproval. Clashing cultures. The wear and tear of time. Inability to talk through a problem. Internal issues from personal history. One can recognize that one loves another person deeply, wildly, one can believe this is the person one is destined to be with, and they can believe it right back, and the couple still find getting there a difficult path. It's not like there's any lack of roadblocks even after the other person says "yes". But them saying "no" is proof one is barking up the wrong tree.*
The dad's speech could have reflected that, could have acknowledged his wife's reciprocation of feeling, could have noted that lack in his son's crush as a hint it wasn't, yet, the real thing, but that the real thing is out there, waiting. And he'll know it when the girl is just as dazzled, just as determined to face down all the issues the world puts between them.
_____________
* and this is about the part where they want to date you, or even like you. We all know, or should, what it means to be saying no when it's at the more intimate stages, and what it becomes if you ignore it.
forodwaith to a movie the other night. Crazy, Stupid, Love.I have mixed feelings on Romantic comedies, which this is billed as. The majority of them seem to depend more on cliches about how romances should go than on actual human behaviour, many of them depend on at least some humiliation comedy, someone lying to their SO, someone planning to get married to someone else who turns out to have huge misgivings, and other combinations of Too Stupid to Live and/or basic failure to communicate.
Bits of that crop up in this one, but most of the time, the tension comes from the moment the characters tell each other the truth. Most of the motivations, even the idiotic 13-year-old's, are at least true to some real people (The 13-year-old is very 13. Ditto the 17-year-old). Events do line up with a bit too convenient timing when it comes to the big disaster before the possible reconciliation, so that everyone is in the right place at the right time, but the character reasons for getting there are at least plausible, even if the timing isn't.
I'm not even going to try to summarize the plot, since there are at least 5 significant relationships and/or crushes that would need to be mentioned, with characters ranging from the possibly-divorcing parents to the kids. One major plot twist needed more foreshadowing than it got (It got one throwaway line, and even that is debateable), but I can't see easy ways to do it without breaking.
Where it failed for me is at the very end.
forodwaith correctly identified the dad's closing speech -- aka the Big Romantic Gesture that makes everything all right -- as the sole major case of movie behaviour that real people don't do. It's also highly problematic in at least one respect: The 13-year-old's behaviour to this point has been stalkerish, persisting after being told no by his crush, and only saved from criminal by his age and relative innocence; he genuinely doesn't mean harm. His dad's wonderful, inspiring speech about soul mates to his wife also inspires the son to keep trying with his crush, after all -- and when he makes his public declaration, everyone Cheers him. Way to reward potentially future criminal behaviour.
But I also, later, pinned down another basic issue with the speech, which, had it occurred to the scriptwriter, would have allowed the dad to make the speech that would sway his wife without also encouraging his son in this particular pursuit.
See, the movie assumes the existence of soul mates. Or at least, of people who firmly believe they've found their soul mate, and for whom no other person will do.
And the dad's point is that once you find your soul mate, you don't stop trying to get together with them, even when reality intervenes, even when it isn't sure it will work out.
However, and I think this is significant, and too often missed. If you take soul mates as existing (I don't, but let's stick with the movie): then when you meet your soul mate, wouldn't they know it too?
The possibly divorcing parents each recognize the other as someone they love and have loved for a long time; though I don't think the mom uses the words "soul mate", the emotion is reciprocal. The 13-year-old's crush does NOT. She wants nothing of him but for him to stop. (There's an extra skeevy bit at the end of the movie that I think is meant to read as her being nicer and more sympathetic about his feelings, even though she still doesn't reciprocate, but it does so in a way that makes me want to scrub it out of my brain).
If the female in a pair of soul mates is actually an equal partner, she should, in fact, have her full say as to whether or not they are soul mates (And two of the adult relationships are based on the assumption that the woman does have a say in what's going on). If she doesn't think they are soul mates at least as strongly as he does, then they are NOT. That simple.
And it's not like, even with possible soul mates, there aren't enough things in the world that could make the relationship difficult. Societal disapproval. Clashing cultures. The wear and tear of time. Inability to talk through a problem. Internal issues from personal history. One can recognize that one loves another person deeply, wildly, one can believe this is the person one is destined to be with, and they can believe it right back, and the couple still find getting there a difficult path. It's not like there's any lack of roadblocks even after the other person says "yes". But them saying "no" is proof one is barking up the wrong tree.*
The dad's speech could have reflected that, could have acknowledged his wife's reciprocation of feeling, could have noted that lack in his son's crush as a hint it wasn't, yet, the real thing, but that the real thing is out there, waiting. And he'll know it when the girl is just as dazzled, just as determined to face down all the issues the world puts between them.
_____________
* and this is about the part where they want to date you, or even like you. We all know, or should, what it means to be saying no when it's at the more intimate stages, and what it becomes if you ignore it.
