Rantville

12 August 2003


Well, this is my introductory post.

In light of my overwhelming need for harmony and concilliation, as well as tolerance and temperance, I would like to start out this way:

American Wedding is the first true harbinger of the downfall of Western Civilization.

Let me start from the beginning.

American Pie is the most overrated, disgusting, odiferous heap of rotting tripe to reach the level of "box office smash" in decades, and yes, I'm including Logan's Run. It is not the explicit scatology that makes it so risible, although I admit that intercourse with pastries and semen jokes do tend to turn me off a movie.

What's truly vomitous is that you should just call the thing Pretty in Pink for Men, or perhaps He's All That.

Consider: Geeky outsider who can't get a date (can't get laid) is accepted by her (his) social circle alone, but secretly dreams of being swept off her feet (getting in the sack with) the improbably attractive popular human. It's every single chick-flick from the 80s made for men. It's Sixteen Candles directed by Beavis and Butthead.

(Come to think of it, the comparison to She's All That is unfair because, first, Rachel Leigh Cooke is significantly more attractive than anything on Pretty in Pink for Men; second, because for all of its warts, Pretty in Pink for Men lacks a choreographed dance scene; third, because Pretty in Pink for Men is not as well-acted as She's All That; and, fourth, perhaps most importantly, there is a small bow to reality in Pretty in Pink for Men, insofar as the geeky outsider ends up with another geeky (if cute) outsider, rather than the most popular human in school.)

But wait: There's more! The acting is abysmal. The scenes are contrived. The dialogue is stilted. It plays like a bunch of college sophomores wrote it after taking their first hits off a rusted bong. The double entendres are forced, and crude (by which I mean both that they are disgusting, and they lack even a pretense of sophistication). And these are the nicest things I can say about it.

And the morons who share my gender ate it up -- proving definitively that men are at least as stupid on the whole as women. It's like Maxim: Used to be a cool, PG-13 skin mag with awesome jokes, a great sense of humor, and weird, off-beat articles. Now it's a PG-13 to R skin mag with about 150 pages of cologne and clothing ads -- in other words, Cosmo for men. And the circulation is doing just fine.

I was in a state of slack-jawed awe when I saw they'd made a sequel. The word "drek" is used too frequently in movie reviews, so let's try some different words for Pretty in Pink for Men: Dross. Offal. Fewmets. Miasma. So bad that I wanted the time viewing it back. Worse than Ishtar. And they made a sequel, which -- from my brief exposure to it -- could be called Pretty in Pink for Men: The College Years.

I yield to no straight man in my admiration for Eugene Levy, but at some point, the joke of "Oh dear God I accidentally found my son performing some sexual act he shouldn't!" wears thin. At least, for those of us with more than a few flickering brain cells, it does. And his is arguably the most impressive acting in the films.

The existence of this, God willing, the final wave of pain and humiliation in this sequence (unless some genius decides that American Parenthood or American Divorce would make KICKASS FILMS!) is as sure a sign of the downfall of our civilization, if not the Eschaton, as my mind can fathom. We are not at the bottom of the barrel; we pulled out our barrel knives, punched a hole through the bottom, and commenced digging.

I have not seen, and will not see, Pretty in a Tux because, first, if I wished to commit suicide, I would do it honorably, with a wakazashi to the heart, and a good friend holding my katana at the ready, rather than, say, nibbling a hole in my sternum; and, second, though I now see that the end is near, I see no reason to yield to the dying of the light.

Should it be shown to me that Jason Biggs and the chick from Buffy die gruesome, miserable deaths, replete with ample pain and blood, and possibly some music from a bad German opera, I may be inclined to view it. Otherwise, I'll pass on the barely-wrapped-in-plot genital and offal jokes in this lifetime, thanks.


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