No one in London talks back to the screen. I miss that.
Yesterday we felt like going to see a movie, only we didn’t feel like seeing anything serious or important, but we also didn’t want to see Hotel for Dogs, so we decided to do what Chris and Tracie and I do all the time in New York: pick a movie you know is going to be horrible and turn it into a drinking game. It’s a pretty surefire way to annoy the people sitting near you in the theater, but it’s also a pretty surefire way to have fun, and anyway, it’s hard to have a lot of sympathy for anyone who earnestly bought a ticket for National Treasure 2. Also we try to sit in the corner.
Usually Chris and Tracie and I pick out the real guaranteed to be ridiculous stinkers, like Valkyrie (drink whenever Hitler is onscreen, drink whenever anyone who’s supposed to be German speaks with a British accent, finish your drink when Tom Cruise does the full heil with his stump) or National Treasure 2 (drink whenever anyone does anything), but the only thing close to that on the marquee was He’s Just Not That Into You. We thought, well, we know it’s going to suck, so we bought a half bottle of rum and a giant coke and giant popcorn and decided to drink whenever:
- anyone waited for a phone to ring
- anyone looked longingly at anyone else
- any girl’s hair was in an artfully messy ponytail or updo
- musical montage or incindental music
- Affleck was onscreen
Finish your drink if anyone behaves like a rational normal human being for even one second.
NO FEAR of that last one happening; Christ was this movie awful. And we were completely unprepared: we drained the giant coke 40 minutes in and had to finish the rest of the bottle of rum on its own like homeless people, which was the only way to make it to the end of the film, which was roughly 80 hours long and made me wish I was dead. You know it’s a bad movie when the only character that you can relate to is Ben Affleck.
There was this one great scene, though, when Jennifer Aniston had to walk a dog down the aisle in a coral satin bridesmaid dress, smirking and hurting, head held high. Man but America sure does like Jennifer Aniston to do our hurting for us, don’t we? Nick said she’s like our Princess Di, which makes sense to me, because America seems to love her best when she’s all fragile and dumped and blonde and brave facing it on a beach somewhere. There was a time about a year ago when we were still in dark days as a nation, no hope or end in sight, when I remember thinking that maybe the one thing that could cure America’s pain was for Jennifer Aniston to give birth to a fat blonde baby. Maaaan wouldn’t that have been some ointment for our national wounds! But God forbid she display any sarcasm; I read some article recently where she namechecked some of Brad and Angelina’s litter when one reporter too many asked her about them, and then you could feel America be like okay whoa whoa WHOA, Aniston, don’t be a freaky stalker who knows Shiloh’s name. Even though everyone else knows Shiloh’s name. In your place, missy. Which is apparently walking a dog down the aisle while crying on the inside. That’s where we like you.
Anyway the best part was at the end, right before the credits started, when Nick went “Awwwww!” really loud and then we burst out laughing but the chorus of every other girl in the theater (there were fifteen men; Nick counted) saying awwwww as well drowned us out.
So basically it’s not just America I’m writing off now.