Chaos Attraction

Cheesy Girl Movies and Driving Home

2013-08-18, 11:28 a.m.

I didn't do a whole lot on Sunday there--sat around watching movies. I saw Stick It and the two Legally Blonde movies. Some brief reviews, spoileration will occur:

Stick It: How come I never heard of this movie? I have to give it whopping points for the ending, big time. It is the wish fulfillment moment of every girl who ever grew up watching gymnastics and getting fucking steamed over the judges. One character does a spectacular vault and then gets a 9.5 (rather than a 10) "because her bra strap showed." You know, while she's running and flying through the air, she totally has time to worry about that. Also, we've all seen their leotards, which are cut so high that it is really difficult to show a bra strap! The coach is all, "The judge just said that because she wanted to dock her because I'm her coach." Which is probably true, and the "bra strap rule" is supposedly an outdated one. So the "rebel" main character Haley, followed by the rest of her teammates, start deliberately scratching in competition, yanking out their bra straps (which takes some doing!), strutting, and generally being rude, flashy showoffs. The girls in the competition quickly decide that they'll pick which girl will actually do her routine and then the rest of them will scratch, so that "we have control of the competition." At one point a substitute is brought in on bar and she actually competes, which throws the chosen girl off a bit. But it's kind of delightful anyway when the second girl goes, because she insists on doing her routine to *gasp* music with lyrics in it! And she still gets second for it, hah. But by the time Haley does her floor routine, the substitute girl decides to join in the bra-strap scratching as well. Everyone gets a medal! The judges look miserably unhappy! And somehow Haley, the instigator of the whole thing, gets offered a bunch of college scholarships out of nowhere! Happy ending!!!!!

Okay, so that will never happen in real life, and in real life they'd probably all get booted out of gymnastics forever, and I doubt college gymnastic program want rebel girls either IRL. But I found it to be deeply satisfying anyway, you know?

Legally Blonde: I've really never had any interest in watching either of these, which Mom loves, but we have season theater tickets and Legally Blonde: The Musical is in September. So I figured I'd better stomach it and watch it since Mom just bought herself the DVD's. I found LB1 to pretty much be "Cher Horowitz Goes To Law School." Which I would have loved to have seen, btw. But this movie would have been a lot better if Amy Heckerling had written it.

Look, I love the idea of a bubbly blonde character with fairly shallow personal interests being secretly quite smart and kickass about it. And the movie does make a point that even though Elle is hot and sent in a video to the admissions committee (all old white men) showing how hot she is, she does have a 4.0 GPA and tons of extracurriculars and would be allowed into Harvard Law. But....the movie wants to be all, "Look, Elle's knowledge of fashion and hair makes her smart!" and...I don't know. I think the best example of them actually doing this was early on, when Elle is shopping for a dress and the saleswomen (clearly brought in from Pretty Woman 2: The Ripoffening) rip a sale tag off a dress and then bring it to Elle and claim it "just came in." Elle, a fashion merchandising major, asks them nitpicking questions about the fabric, then points out she saw it in a magazine a year ago and spotted that sale tag when she came in, thanks. THAT was a pretty smart move to me.

However, the rest of the movie puts Elle working on the legal case of a fellow sorority sister who supposedly murdered her husband. Elle asked Brooke what her alibi was, and the answer is "I was getting liposuction, but I'd rather go to jail for murder than ruin my reputation as an exercise guru, so don't tell anyone this." Brooke, I'm pretty sure that being a murderer would also ruin your reputation, so your priorities are pretty fucked here. Anyway, Elle keeps the secret, and everyone pats her on the back for keeping the client's trust. I think in real life, her professor and everyone else involved would be harassing her big time to give up the alibi!

The movie also makes a big deal of Elle figuring out that the pool boy who claims to be having an affair with Brooke is gay. Let me tell you that this fellow (a) wears a sequinned thong as his work uniform and (b) wears a disco bling shirt to court. You did not need him to make a crack about Elle's shoes being last season for ANYONE WATCHING THIS to figure out this might be a possibility. Also, nobody yells at him for perjuring himself, which might be an awesome idea in a movie about the law.

And finally, Elle figures out who the murderer is because the murderer (who seriously has Roseanne Roseannadanna hair) claims to have gotten a perm and then immediately gone home to take a shower, and you're not supposed to wet your perm for 24 hours. I felt like we needed the equivalent of Mona Lisa Vito to come in and establish that one. And nobody mentions that if Brooke had JUST gotten liposuction, wouldn't she be, oh...in the hospital, or on painkillers, or have bandages, or something proving this when the cops arrested her?

I like that they wanted to make a movie about a smart dumb blonde, but honestly, those examples were just shooting fish in a barrel. Too dumb, too obvious. Grrrr.

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde: Even worse on the dumb. On the one hand, I think Elle going into politics so that she can campaign against animal testing is exactly something she might do. On the other hand, leading her into this because she hired a PI to find her dog Bruiser's long-lost mother (oh, come on, even Sherlock Holmes might have a problem with that one) and the the mother is being used for animal testing is incredibly ridiculous. There's a lot of incredibly ridiculous in this. There's a "snap cup" that catches on, even in Congress or something and there was a cut scene in which they're all singing about it.. And an amazingly strange dance done in the halls of Congress by the really-suspiciously-old interns to "Atomic Dog." (Do the dog catcher, dog catcher...do the dog catcher... with appropriate dirty leg gestures.) And Elle's sorority sister friends show up to help her dressed in some of the nastiest hootchiewear (also from Pretty Woman 2: The Ripoffening) ever that made me think, "That didn't even make me laugh, I just thought they looked like idiots." Take a lesson from Jennifer Coolidge, who still can be funny without looking like she was just out on Hollywood Boulevard. Oh yeah, and Elle does the same beautiy-parlor smarts thing again when her senator boss claims to have been getting a facial and then Elle is all, "Why would you schedule something within the 24 hours after you got a facial?" I spent a lot of this movie thinking, "Dear god, this is DUMB." Sigh. I dunno. Reese Witherspoon works it for all she's got, but I wish the writing was better. Gah.


Oddly enough, Mom started hustling me out the door and nagging around 3:30, because she decided to go over to her friend's house. She started nitpicking over how she didn't want me to stick the Fastrak to the car ("Um, I'd rather have both hands on the wheel than be trying to hold it up, thanks") and all this crap and driving me nuts....and then calling me about 5 minutes after she left, when she knew I was driving. I answered the phone long enough to yell at her to not call me while driving, and then hung up. I'm not ashamed. I'm freaking busy trying to figure this out, thanks!

I did manage to get home successfully. I used to be worried about driving home, but a measly three freeway changes (approximately, sometimes there were "oh, crap, I'm supposed to be on the left hand side" moments, but nothing too bad) was nothing compared There was a lot of traffic on 580 and I was worried about getting into the right lane in time to switch, but I eventually made it. It's such a pain to want to be driving in the far right lane, but it feels like you CAN'T because at any moment in time, it might suddenly turn into an 'exit only" lane that you can't get back out of due to traffic....ugh, that's nervewracking. But I managed it. And my Fastrak worked, so yay for that. I enjoyed the stretch between the bridge and getting onto 80 best, it was nice and quiet. I then went to the grocery store all on my own without having to rent a car, yay.

And then I came home and figured out that the tire I just filled with air on Friday was...already deflating. That's right, I can't go a week without a problem cropping up. Sigh.

I then grabbed some alcohol and drank by the pool.


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