The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Let it be known: I love my mother.

Let it be known: I do not really like my mother’s tastes in romantic comedies.

After having watched The Backup Plan last night and loving it, my mom decided that we should all watch it on Mother’s day. I think she just thinks the guy in the movie is attractive? He’s okay. Anyway, she thought it very funny, and put it on, and we all then watched it.

This sort of stuff just really makes me wonder about how I view media. I mean, I want characters, you know? I want meaty characters who are motivated by motivations. I want what people do to actually be how people react when put in situations like they are. I want things to work in a way that actually has impact. I love romances when they’re done with these rules, because they tend to be genuine and interesting. Sex and romance is just cool like that.

Every major issue in the movie that the characters had to come up with was almost totally caused by the female lead doing something completely nonsensical and then attempting to rationalize it. It’s just frustrating to watch something when all the tension comes from contrivances that only exist so that the couple can have some problems before they inevitably get together. The movie attempts to rationalize these actions by explaining that she is someone who wants to be self-reliant and who believes that all men will leave you always, and thus leave them first. I could buy this if this was played for laughs, but that part of her character was the realistic part. That was what we were supposed to empathize with as viewers. Then again, this is also a character who admits the only reason she got herself pregnant is so she wouldn’t be alone in the world. She admits this to her best friend, one of a large number of friends she seems to have. So, you know. Totally alone without kids.

The male lead’s major problem in the film was dealing with these random changes of heart, which makes him also pretty one-sided, though sympathetic. We see that he’s worried about having these kids. Like anyone would be. Also, he’s a male in a romantic movie. That’s pretty well all he is. I guess the fact that he’s a goat farmer living in New York City is interesting, but it doesn’t really play into his personality or anything. I probably wouldn’t date him.

All this is interspersed with scenes of this crazy single mother support group that’s funny in a completely over the top ridiculous way. Again, that would be cool, but the world of this movie is fairly down to earth, and thus they really kind of stand out. It almost felt like they were going too far for the joke for most of the movie, which was proven the moment the movie got to this ridiculous scene of a birth party where they’re watching this woman have birth and she’s making crazy animal noises because that’s funny, right, and everything got stupider from there. Thank god for that.

To be fair, the movie did try some things that almost worked. Her dog begging for food was an attempted symbol at how she’s not willing to give anything to anyone and keeps it all for herself, which is kind of fair, I suppose. Except, you know, she shouldn’t feed her dog scraps, so it didn’t occur to me as a symbol until they went OH HAY THIS IS A SYMBOL at the end of the film. There was a parallel between the female lead and her grandmother that would have worked had it not been incredibly heavy-handed. As my mom liked pointing out, the dog was very cute.

But yeah, it was mostly pretty painful to view. I don’t really mind that my mother likes it, though I wish I knew of a good counter she would enjoy. They have to be out there. There have to be good romantic comedies made for women out there in the world. Okay, I guess, like, Stranger than Fiction is, at its core, a romantic comedy, and that’s fairly fantastic. There’s a counter, though I suppose it’s not really aimed at the stereotypical female demographic. Still, they have to exist. They have to.

Afterwards, my general response was that I went back upstairs and watched an episode of Paradise Kiss to remind myself how you write deep, interesting, and complex characters wrapped up in romances. May I never have to watch a movie like The Backup Plan again.