lindaluzy

For this grandma there are a couple of movie genres that I wouldn’t pay to see:  those for adolescents chock full of cheap laughs over gas and defecation, whose future leaders of the free world couldn’t be vetted past the first temptation for free fellatio, and whose producers insist on reducing everyone’s daughters to mindless, shameless bimbos all about their own T & A.

Actually Grandma waits past all the press high tides until the movie hits the Encore channel.   So, hallelujah!  Didn’t pay for this movie either.

What Happens in Las Vegas with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher is maybe a little more grown up.  The mindless bimbo has hooked up with an eligible provider, and the future free world leader is still freeloading off his old man.

That is until mindless bimbo gets dumped and freeloading free world leader gets kicked to the curb.

How do they answer their first real life dilemma? 

Vegas, baby!  Woo, woo!

Predictably both meet up in Vegas, both get blitzed in Vegas, and both get married in Vegas:  to each other.  Awake and struggling for sobriety their relationship (if you can call it that) finds solid yet loud agreement that they’d made a mistake and would undo it tout suite!  Can this marriage be saved?  Well,  … its Vegas, baby … 

It could have ended nicely with an equally impromptu annulment except for the inevitable quarter (hers) that hits the jackpot (his — ~er, maybe).  Three Million Freakin’ Dollars saves this marriage, at least until it can get to divorce court.

Divorce Court draws the comic and bitter sage political pundit Dennis Miller who waxes not so eloquently on his own long imposed, presumably Viagra supported marriage, and  imposes a political science experiment on these human subjects on the premise that they hadn’t really tried to even ‘be’ married, tangentially throwing in the timely political argument that it wasn’t gays ruining marriage in this country, but ne’er do wells like them.

So the hapless couple are stuck.  The money is frozen until they show satisfactory progress to the court that they had tried.  Bimbo has to move into Freeloader’s pad, sharing one bathroom (actually two, if you count the kitchen sink), and otherwise co-exist in a naval war zone that is ever constantly trying to get the other ship to run aground and forfeit the cash booty.

Marriage counseling with Queen Latifah wasn’t much more than a flimsy frame for a couple of opportunistic scenes:  the slapstick race and chase scene as each bounty hunter tries to get the other to miss their mandatory sessions and lose,  and Bimbo’s exposee of a bruised Freeloader’s  flinching, cowering affect had been staged by his homies to bounce Bimbo into a fault divorce and gain him the entire 3 million reparation fund.

Well, it could have been a longer story, and it could’ve been more thoughtfully written, but then it wouldn’t be a comedy, and that’s all we want in this economy — a cheap laugh.  This time at the expense of marriage.  What cheapens the whole social science experiment even worse is that it ends implying Happily Ever After.  Really!  <snort>

I’m old fashioned, honey.  I would argue that there is some sense in Arranged Marriages.  Four or more grey haired old crones doing their old fashioned eHarmony scan of candidates and prearrangement of terms for future civil unions.  Makes better sense than having hormone. fear, drug and media saturated teens make big impact decisions that’ll affect their children and grandchildren for years.  Sexual highs only sustain a marriage through, what, the first week, at best the first year if you’re lying.  Though this movie is right when it teaches that marriage is hard work and commitment, but it lies, lies, lies when it implies there’s a quick comedic fix.  Gross disservice!

The week I saw What Happens in Las Vegas was also the week Oprah featured the long liveds of Loma Linda and Sardinia.  The secret of good living and marriages is sobriety, ritual, service.  What a stark comparison to the social experiment that takes two self indulgent post adolescents into a quick fix that bestows a knock off of the Sardinian Happily Ever After  marriage.

I agree with Dennis Miller — gays are not ruining marriage.  But his movie didn’t do much to promote saving marriages.    And I’m going tangential, too:  Personally, I don’t think the state should be in the marriage business at all.  I’m with Obama, just keep it simple and have the state license Civil Unions, leave the varietal religions to respectively sanction as marriages which are qualified according to the tenets of their beliefs.   Civil Unions between same sex couples wouldn’t need validation in the Islamic Mosque or Catholic Cathedral.  End of arguments.

Civil Unions are legal agreements about rights, responsibilities, and protections the law can secure and enforce for the parties, that could include financial and legal issues involving probate, health directives and adoption.  Marriage, on the other hand, in the context of various religious and culture sociologies,  was the vehicle that drove the society forward — bred, schooled, raised and trained the inheritors of the kingdom.  Marriage in our society no longer does that.  Sure we bred you, but we delegated the schooling, raising and training of you to the godless mercenary interests that make money and movies.    We spend little more than a few hours a week with you, and most of that has little impact against the influences you are defenselessly immersed in. 

This new society, this collective, that raises its children and promotes its homogenized values in movies like this, hasn’t thought it through.  We have movies being made to satisfy guilt, glands, and glitter.  But are they responsibly telling the true story?  Do they have the responsibility of teaching?  If they don’t who does?

If we ever really wanted to save marriage, we’d own that the responsibility is ours, and face it head on.

Stupid silly movie.  Save your money.  Wait for it on rerun Saturdays.

We take a lot of what Hollywood dishes without questioning quality or purpose even.  Entertainment after all is just that, entertainment.   Without practical purpose.  But what is playtime?  Children and playtime is the way they practice future roles and problem solving skills.  Playtime has purpose and practicality.  But the only time we question movies is when it plummets below certain community standards, and then the defendants trot out some part of the offending movie’s socially redeeming value.

I charge you, in open court of public opinion, Hollywood, that this is a Vapid Movie.  Tell us what socially redeeming practical purpose and value it has.  What is it teaching?  How is it empowering and role modeling for progeny ways to make better lives and communities?

 Personally I didn’t see much more than a continuance of the tradition of gratifying the immediate needs for money and disassociated responsibilities, keeping our progeny in perpetual child like states.

Our modern culture has borne criticism for being irresponsible, but the culture is you, Hollywood.  Mums and dads at work, you are raising the kids.  What’s your character stimulus plan to save the world?  Can’t be this movie.

Try again.

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