PunkKittyDiddy

"I Don't Know How She Does It"

I'm not seeing this damn movie. After beholding the nincompoopery of the trailer, it got stuck in my craw and has been jackhammering around in there like the Tasmanian Devil on crack.  Why?  

The title pisses me off.

While I realize the title is likely meant to be coy and purely rhetorical, it falls sooooo short of the mark, it's ridiculous.   A box of rocks could figure out how she does it.  The trailer drops more clunky, minivan-and-farm-silo-sized clues than an F-5 tornado.

Clue #1:  Some of Sarah Jessica Parker's trademark banter is lobbed at (wait for it......) a nanny.  Let's mull over that one a bit.  Nanny?  Nanny.  Not ringing any bells so far.  Nanny.  Naaaaaanny.  Ohhhhhhhhh.  Nanny.  Right.  They must mean "nanny" in the "person who takes care of your kids for you" sense of the word.  (Not to be confused with the "female goat" connotation.)  

Indeed, Sarah Jessica Parker's character can comfortably afford one of those nanny types.

Were this the extent of it, there would already be sufficient evidence to allow for a title change to, Hey, I Think I MIGHT Know How She Does It.

Clue #2:  In this flick, Sarah Jessica Parker is married to Greg Kinnear.  Now, Greg isn't playing a sensitive, doting and earnest wife murderer as he did in The Gift (2000).  Noooooo siree.  It appears that he's merely playing a sensitive, doting and earnest husband.  One who'll do the bulk of the parenting and still gaze adoringly at her even though she's too tired to put out.

With this sort of ludicrousness in hand, I could make a strong case for retitling the movie, Are You SURE You Can't Figure Out How She Does It?!?!

Clue #3:  Sarah Jessica Parker's big-time, career-making client is played by Pierce Brosnan - a suave yet wholly understanding mogul who says things to her like, "It's OK to miss your kids."  He appears to be seconds away from offering her a foot massage.

Really?  That's it?  That's the big-time, career-making client with whom she must curry favor?  Not Will Farrell's Mugatu from Zoolander?  Not Kevin Spacey or Colin Ferrell from Horrible Bosses? Not Meryl Streep from The Devil Wears Prada?  Not even Dabney Coleman from 9 to 5?

At this point in the trailer, I made a mental note to refer to the movie henceforth as, If You REALLY Can't Figure Out How She Does It, You're A Drooling Half-Wit.

To the film's hapless heroine, I can only taunt:  Call me when you grow some lady-balls and have a real obstacle to complain about.

 

Adventures in Netflixing: "Nine"

 Daniel Day-Lewis is only one of a handful of actors who could even attempt to convince me that being surrounded by a bevy of beautiful, smart, passionate and/or talented women who adore him is every bit as torturous as being stricken with cerebral palsy, or being falsely imprisoned for an IRA bombing he didn't commit, or being tried and hanged for witchcraft in Salem. 

And yet........what a silly, silly premise.

Disliked Nine for that and a whole host of other reasons.

Next?

The Pre-K Cinema Critic: "Predator" (1987)

I feel one of my parental obligations is to provide my child with a solid foundation in culture and the arts.  Immersion in classic cinema is an important part of this curriculum.

Cue Predator (1987), which was showing on Spike the other night.  It was edited for television anyway, plus for a nearly-four-year-old, she is already sporting a serious sci fi/supernatural genre preference.  (Gee, I don't know where she gets that from...)

At any rate, she didn't think much of this movie.  More specifically, she didn't think much of the characters.  And it wasn't a "You call this a character arc?" or an "I don't find his stoicism in the face of mortal danger to be believable" development-related complaint.  She didn't even take issue with the typically terse, action-movie-appropriate Ahhhnuld-esque dialogue.  Rather, she felt the characters were too wimpy, and she completely lost interest during the scene where Ahhhhnuld and his gang of fellow commandos were crawling G.I. Joe style on their bellies through the jungle undergrowth toward the enemy camp.  She watched this segment with a fair amount of incredulity, and could barely contain her disgust.

"They're crawling," she pointed out.  "Like babies."

I never really considered it from that perspective before, but yeah - I guess they were.

(And yes, her anti-baby smear campaign continues....)

Paranormal Parenting Poll

To my fellow sci fi and horror fans: put on your thinking caps!  I'm writing up an article about how various stages of childhood are portrayed in both sci fi and horror (and on both the small screen and big screen), and I need help coming up with particularly iconic and memorable examples.

For pregnancy and birth (real or metaphorical), I've thought of the obvious examples.  "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."  "Alien."  "Village of the Damned."  "Demon Seed."  Even cylon re-birth in "Battlestar Galactica."  Let's not forget the "Home" episode of "The X-Files" (though I'd like to forget it).

Where actual babies are concerned, off the top of my head, I've come up with, "Rosemary's Baby," "The Brood," "Basket Case," "It's Alive," "Grace," and "Dawn of the Dead."  (No, the ugly unseen baby from that 'Seinfeld' episode doesn't count.)

Toddlers?  I'm blanking here.  Maybe because my daily life is so consumed with tending to one of these, her fictional counterparts seem unremarkable in comparison.  All I can think of is Chuckie from "Child's Play."  (And that's only because he's toddler-sized.  I do get that it's a doll inhabited by the spirit of an adult psycho killer.)  There's gotta be more examples in this grouping?

Now, there's a bazillion examples of creepy kids.  "The Omen."  "The Bad Seed."  Danny and those Grady twins from "The Shining."  "Children of the Corn."  "The Exorcist."  The banjo-playing boy from "Deliverance."  (The latter is not horror, you say?  Is TOO, I counter!)  So I don't need much help rounding out that particular developmental phase. 

What about scary teenagers?  (And I mean scary in the supernatural sense, not scary in their usual way.)  I can think of "Carrie," "The Lost Boys," "The Craft" and "Ginger Snaps."  Could maybe even make an argument for Luke rebelling against Darth Vader as a sort of delayed teenage rebellion thing. 

Can y'all help me round out the list?  You can respond here at Typepad, or on Facebook.

Thanks!