Cream of the Crap: 50 First Dates

 Inspired by XKCD, some thoughts on movies that got less than 50% on Metacritic.

Henry is a pickup artist who built his life around cheap enjoyment with no commitment. His friend Alexa is a genderqueer singer/performer. There’s a scene where Henry is feeling guilty, and he admits to the tourist he’s dating that he ordered them non-alcoholic drinks. If people think they’re drunk, they’ll do things they wouldn’t normally do, whereas if people are actually drunk, they’ll fall asleep. The tourist still wants casual sex and has no time for his emotional issues, so he directs her to Alexa.

Tourist: “Is that a man or a woman?”

Henry: “You’re too drunk to notice, remember?”

I consider that last line something of a life motto.

Cream of the Crap: Shark Tale

 This is not an easy movie to defend. It’s a comedy in which most of the jokes aren’t funny. If you take it seriously, it’s hard to root for Oscar because most of his problems are his own fault. And you can’t just sit back and let the visuals wash over you, because human faces on fish bodies are deep in the uncanny valley.

Lenny is a shark who doesn’t want to eat fish, and the farther the movie progresses, the more blatantly this is treated as a metaphor for being gay. When the whole stack of cards comes tumbling down, this is what Oscar has to say to Lenny’s father:

“What is your problem?! So your son likes kelp, so his best friend is a fish, so he likes to dress like a dolphin! So what?! Everybody loves him, just the way he is. Why can’t you?“

This was revolutionary in 2004, and I think it redeems the movie.

Cream of the Crap: Lakeview Terrace

I don’t know if this movie is good, but I can defend 1/3 of it. Chris is a timid, sensitive guy who’s well aware that other guys expect him to be more macho. He cares a lot about what other people think of him, so there’s a lot of push-pull between “I need to act tough and make them respect me” versus “This just isn’t me.” A lot of little moments seem engineered to make men who aren’t manly think “Yeah, this is exactly how I felt in that situation.”

There are also a lot of scenes that pull out little moments of how Lisa and Abel feel, particularly in regards to sexism and racism. I haven’t experienced the same bigotry they have, so I can’t evaluate whether these scenes are good or bad. If they’re as good as the Chris scenes, then I can say that this is a good movie.