Odds & ends #4: the wedding edition
Queen Victoria’s wedding cake was 8 feet tall & weighed 300 pounds.
My older niece, who is completely unaware of what I do on the internet and certainly will never see this, is getting married this weekend, so this week’s Odds & Ends is dedicated to her. May she and her betrothed have a long and happy life together, blissfully unaware of the existence of Gen X’s dumb thoughts.
Anticipating a real-life wedding got me thinking about two movies I seriously doubt anyone else has given much thought to in the past few years (if ever at all). One is John Hughes’ She’s Having a Baby, a strange title for a movie considering She doesn’t even get pregnant until maybe the last fifteen minutes. A more accurate title for it would be We Just Got Married, but I guess that just didn’t feel as good in the mouth.
ANYWAY, it’s one of Hughes’ forgotten movies, released during the time when he was transitioning from mostly pretty good teen comedies to mostly insufferable family films, but for whatever reason, long before any of its content was relevant to me, I was obsessed with it. I even went out and bought the soundtrack, which introduced me to Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work,” a song that makes for the perfect sociopath test, in that if you don’t at least tear up while listening to it, you might be Patrick Bateman. It’s used to marvelous effect in the movie, wrenching emotions out of the audience with the cool efficiency of a C.I.A. torturer.
The movie itself, while not saying anything particularly new and groundbreaking, is charming, and benefits greatly from having two likable leads in Kevin Bacon as Jake, a callow advertising executive, and Elizabeth McGovern as Kristy, his newlywed wife, who’s perhaps a little more eager to start having kids than he is. The doubts Jake has are not unreasonable, and Hughes’ script is careful to not depict Kristy as a villain getting in the way of his happiness. He’s just kind of self-absorbed, and needs to grow up a little, and he does, when Kristy nearly loses their baby and has to undergo an emergency c-section. It’s not high art, but it’s a refreshing change of pace from the usual “I hate my wife” relationship comedy stinking up American culture.
I’ve also been thinking about a movie that sent me into an unexpected rage, and that’s the alleged “comedy” Serendipity, which only indirectly involves a wedding, whereas She’s Having a Baby opens with one. Serendipity is a romance about two dipshits who meet and instantly fall in love with each other and, rather than end the relationships they’re already in with other people so they can be together, leave things up to “fate,” which in this case is a series of tortured coincidences that will eventually bring them together, because it makes it more meaningful, I guess? I don’t know, man, I’ve seen this thing twice, and while the first time it was merely incoherent, the second it was incoherent and obnoxious.
John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale are the star-crossed lovers in question, kept apart by the fact that they’re already involved with other people. While one is to assume that the audience is supposed to be on Cusack and Beckinsale’s side by default, the script is puzzlingly contradictory in its depiction of their partners. Cusack’s fiancée is a model, which is supposed to mean she’s dumb and self-absorbed, but she actually seems pretty nice, and certainly loves him, whereas he mostly just tolerates her presence. Meanwhile, Beckinsale’s boyfriend is a new age musician, which, that’s it, that’s the joke. But he seems pretty nice too, which leaves the audience confused as to how they’re supposed to feel about these people “getting in the way” of true love.
Serendipity is an incredibly smug movie, focused solely on what these two unlikable assholes want, and their pointless farting around before finally getting together. Perhaps most infuriatingly, it chickens out on depicting the hurt they cause their current partners. Cusack breaks up with his fiancée on their wedding day, and we never even see it, because God forbid the audience not think for one second that this is a great guy who deserves everything he wants. He just looks a little glum, which lasts about two minutes before he and Beckinsale “just by chance” run into each other again, and as Roger Ebert’s negative review says, don’t ask these people how they met, because you will get the most boring story you’ve ever heard.
I don’t know exactly what any of this has to do with weddings, but it’s good glimpse into how my brain works, if nothing else.
The week in Gena
On Kill by Kill, we started our special Halloween event, breaking down Creepshow segment by segment. Our first guest is none other than Stephen Sajdak, co-host of We Hate Movies (my second favorite podcast after my own, obv.), and we’re talking Father’s Day cakes, Ed Harris’s disco face, and reviving the dead with Jim Beam.
I ranked all 30 of the movies in the Criterion Channel’s 80s Horror collection, which took me almost a week, so if you never click on anything I do ever again, at least click on that. Have you folks watched anything from it so far? Let me know in the comments!
The week in links
My favorite movie Boogie Nights turns 25 this month, and William H. Macy answered a bunch of questions about it.
Here’s a great essay about one of my favorite John Carpenter films, which makes the idea of a jar of Satan juice just about the most terrifying thing imaginable.
Just in keeping my half-assed attempt at a theme, I present to you a list of the current most popular wedding reception first dance songs. I know maybe…three of them? On the other hand, at least no one is dancing to “Better Man” or “Every Breath You Take” anymore.
Loretta Lynn passed away, and if you’ve never seen Coal Miner’s Daughter, what are you doing wasting your time reading this thing? You can rent it on Amazon for $3.99, do it right now. While you’re at it, watch this collection of 80s commercials Loretta and her family did for Crisco. They’re like snuggling under a warm blanket. Of saturated fat.
Finally, somehow, R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People is 30 years old, and here’s an excellent write-up about it. I’d be fine if I never heard “Everybody Hurts” again, but “Drive” is still in heavy rotation on my personal playlist, and “Star Me Kitten” is a certified weird track, made that much weirder by William S. Burroughs covering it on an X Files tribute album a couple years later.
Mazel tov, Gabby (and Leah)! You will never see this, but Aunt Gena loves you.
I also went to a nephews wedding this weekend. We are getting to that age I guess.
I am so glad I’m not alone in thinking Serendipity is a bullshit movie.