134: Is Hollywood in a Regressive Moment? Plus: ‘Ticket to Paradise,’ reviewed!

Welcome

back to across the movie I will present to by Bulwark Plus. I am your host, Sunny Bunch, Culture Editor of The Bulwark I’ve joined, as always, by a list of Rosenberg of The Washington Post computer suitorin. A recent magazine, Alyssa Peter. How are you today? I’m swell.

I am happy to be talking about movies with friends. First

up in controversies and controversies. Has Hollywood finally gone too far? That’s the question. Some are asking, no, no, not when it comes to the reliance on franchise blockbusters or going all in on streaming. Now, the The New York Times reports that the industry is suddenly getting very nervous about me too aftermath and going overboard on diversity inclusion.

They’ve finally gone too far with all this diversity nonsense. I’m here for that. Look, this is what the the great Brooks Barnes ports anyway. Right? In a in a piece last week, he noted that studio execs in the midst of belt tightening are looking at projects that were rushed into production in the name of diversity and and having some second thoughts.

In part because of the disastrous box office results for bros, which was marketed heavily as the first theatrically released gay rom com, and Easter Sunday, which was marketed as a a huge step forward for the Filipino community. Hollywood execs, all of a sudden, cold feet. Looking at those box office grosses. Meanwhile, Warner Brothers shelfed and then rode off the back row movie that was headed for HBO Max that they spent, like, ninety billion dollars on despite the fact that it was, quote, starring a Latina actress featuring a transgender actress in a supporting role written by a woman produced by women and directed by two Muslim men and quote, No mention, of course, of whether or not it was any good, but we’ll never know, because it got written off for tax rebate. I think one unnamed exec kind of summarized the bread to bard piece when he said that after Me too, the studio’s hired nothing but women and people of color.

They were trying to cover their asses. And he thinks that few of them can actually do the job they were hired for again. That’s his sentiment, not mine. I would never say such a thing. Meanwhile, the automatic death sentence that was imposed on many cused me too transgressors is over.

That that that has been lifted. John Lasseter, Johnny Depp, James Franco, they all have jobs lined up projects in the works. I mean, lacer’s basically the head of an animation studio again. Or you can just look at what what transpired with Bill Murray earlier this month. Right?

First, it was revealed that an accusation of sexual harassment against him led to a project being shut down mid shoot. They they often finish that. There’s no word on whether it’s gonna be finished. Then it was revealed that he paid off the accuser for what was either best case scenario, a joke on terribly awry, worst case scenario, an unwanted forcible advance. And then the month ended with Bill Murray being featured in the trailer for the new Ant Man movie.

It’s really hard to imagine something like this happening two years ago in the midst of the Weinstein inspired backlash against bad Hollywood men. This is all framed as a bad thing. You know, the headline is in perfect time style. Right? After Me too, recognizing a fear Hollywood is regressing.

But maybe a little regression isn’t the worst thing in the world. Audiences aren’t particularly interested in having their entertainment also be the thing that preaches at them about how the world should look. Right? And the post Me Too habit of ritually excommunicating anyone from the fold who has transgressed even slightly was let’s be honest, untenable. It was untenable and workable, and that probably should have been done away with a while ago.

But then I am a middle aged white man So my opinion on this issue is inherently suspect. Is it not Alyssa?

I thought the framing of this piece is really weird. In part because it clutches together two separate movements. The, you know, me too movement, which was about, you know, sexual harassment, rape, and the abuse of power, and the attention to diversity as the Black Lives Matter movement went nationwide in in twenty twenty. And those are both important movements. They’re both, but they’re driven by sort of different imperatives, different set of data.

They have you know, sort of different different demands to a certain extent. And treating that all as a me too thing I think blur some important dynamics. And I think it’s true that both of those things are being reassessed or you know, or being rolled back on some level. But it strikes me that there are a couple of different things going on here. You know, I think on the or sort of on the Me Too side of the ledger, there has been, you know, part of the entire premise of Me Too was that you know, the most grotesque offenders may have been outliers, but they weren’t the only part of the problem.

Right? That, like, Harvey Weinstein is an extreme, but it’s not like there’s Harvey Weinstein and then everyone else, you know, behaved perfectly and beautifully. It’s like it’s called me the movement is called me too. Because it’s about a share a widely shared experience for women. And you know me too in Hollywood has you know, I think led to some specific changes, I think, you know, the kinds of non disclosure agreements that silence a lot of women for a really long time.

Have become less acceptable. You know, I think things like, you know, intimacy coordinators onsets, however much people make fun of those, you know. I think that’s actually been valuable for some people, and it’s probably gonna be sort of a long standing practice. But, yes. You know, it was it’s totally bizarre to me, for example, that you know, that story didn’t mention, you know, Warner Brothers and Ezra Miller.

Right? With, you know, this is someone who is being accused of a huge array of troubling behavior in a way that, you know, seems to impage on his ability to be a productive member of a set or, you know, promote a movie sort of on any reasonable level. Like, I have no idea what the press tour for the class is gonna be except that we all know it’s gonna be completely bananas and probably awful. And to not mention that at all, I mean, that’s when seemingly one of the really prominent examples that should be in the mix, just seems strange to me. Now, the movement for more diverse content, more sort of opportunities for people to make content comes out of a very different movement.

Set of circumstances, measurements, that, you know, women are included on that list. I mean, work like Stacey Smiths for i. E. C. Anenberg, you know, have there have been all of these sort of counting projects that have documented how undiverse Hollywood is for a very long time.

But that is not the decision to try and greenlight more work by a wider range of creators, telling a wider a variety of stories, starring quite a variety of people stems from, you know, a very different reckoning and set of circumstances. And you know, I think that this was always one of the potential weaknesses of the movement. Right? There is this assertion that there is a huge market for content of various kinds. I mean, for example, you know, Hispanics and Latinos, go to the movies at some of the highest rates of you know, any demographic group.

And yet they’re wildly underrepresented on television. And so there is this theoretical case that, hey, you know, there are markets here for more shows about Muslims, more movies, you know, more blackmail action leads, whatever. And then some of that content gets made, those shows or those movies get held up as, you know, sort of make or break for the entire concept. And then when they break, everyone has an excuse to walk away. So you have the failures of two different movements that are being cludged together in a strange way, and it strikes me that the piece doesn’t get at this sort of two different sets of dynamics going on there?

Well, I mean, to your point, putting them together, I mean, it did it did feel like we were hitting this kind of intersectional moment. Right? Like this this moment when everything was kinda coming together and you know, people were saying, well, we can’t it’s not enough to just make sure there aren’t harassers. We also have to have rules for women. We have to have women execs, you know.

It’s not just that we need to get rid of Oscar so white and have the have better representation in the academy. You know, we also have to make products for for these people and for for these communities. It did feel like there was a moment where everything was coming together and it also feels like simultaneously like And in part because of the streaming revolution and the kind of splintering of all audiences everywhere, they’re they’re all as blowing up at the same time.

Right. But I but I also think that, you know, something that isn’t mentioned here is there’s just gonna be a huge amount of content contraction. Right? I mean, the numbers on the new Hollywood economy do not particularly add up. And when everyone is, you know, spending seventeen billion dollars a year on content without necessarily a mandate to show a profit because you have to grow the audience, then all sorts of things are gonna get green lit, especially if you think that they will make people stickier as subscribers.

But we are about to be in the middle of a big contraction in the amount of content that gets made in Hollywood. Maybe not immediate, but it’s coming around the mountain. And, you know, the stuff that is going to be easy to cut is by people who, you know, don’t have as big name recognition, where they don’t have a fan based built in. They’re not a big star. And so it’s like it’s nice for Leslie Grace that she got cast as fat girl or whatever that movie was.

But, like, there isn’t, you know, a a

tell unless it was really excited about it.

So excited. But there’s not like a legionary of Leslie Greystands. We’re gonna storm David Zaslats. How like, make him release the Leslie Grace cut. Like, that’s that’s not gonna be a thing that happens.

And, you know, in a world where even, you know, at JJ Abrams project is getting cut because it’s expensive. There’s just gonna be a lot of cutbacks. It’s gonna start with a lot of the stuff that has smaller audiences or, you know, less powerful creators And, you know, for a piece like that to not mention the economics is just really strange. Right? I mean, yeah, Johnny Depp wins this lawsuit against Amber Heard.

That is definitely a seminal and really upsetting moment for the Me Too movement. But also Johnny Depp is a huge star. He has started in a lot of reliable IP and that’s what studios are gonna feel more comfortable putting out. These days. So I think that, you know, yeah, this is a story about movements splattering out as movements often do.

Like, I been through a few cycles with the Hollywood University movement over the ten years that I’ve been doing this and, you know, that things wax and wane. But also, you know, having completely blown up their entire economic model, of course, the industry, you know, when faced with bad headwinds is going to cut stuff. And of course, that is gonna fall on the stuff that feels marginal to the core business even if it’s politically Well,

Peter

isn’t you’re you’re student of the streaming business environment and the the economics of streaming. Wasn’t the promise of streaming always supposed to be, look, every niche is gonna have a home. We’re gonna we’re gonna have stuff for everyone over all these different channels, you know, Netflix in particular, like, that was always their thing we’re gonna have all these time. But, like, everyone was kinda like, wait. We just we need to we need to attract fifteen different two million person groups for our service and then won’t be set.

Netflix in particular was pretty explicit about the fact that they wanted to replace the old network TV model. But the old network TV model, you know, was was that you would have three shows that aired every night that would and each of them would attempt to kind of appeal to everyone in America. That’s a little bit of an exaggeration. But the idea was for each one of those shows to have as massive appeal as possible, you know, at at at any given prime time hour or half hour of of of network television. Netflix wanted to appeal everyone in America, not by producing one thing, but by producing as many things as possible, and then making sure that every single little niche was served.

And In some ways, they have done I don’t know exactly that, but they have they have made to like a a surprisingly impressive attempt doing that. You know, we don’t we talk about Netflix, their business prospects, and we occasionally talk about their shows. But there’s just a huge huge amount of stuff that Netflix produces every year that nobody notices, that no like, that doesn’t get any sort certainly, maybe not nobody. But that doesn’t get any kind of critical attention, any kind of press, and in some ways isn’t designed to because they’re just they’re they’re putting it out there and hoping that it reaches the intended target audience. I I think that some of that maybe even a lot of that is actually going to continue.

So, Alyssa is totally right that we’re gonna see a contraction in content spend. Stuff that would have gotten made will not be made and there’s sort of it’s gonna the cuts are gonna come, I think, at two ends. They’re gonna be really big ambitious creator project, you know, altruistic things, you know, that just cost way too much money, like the the Irishman will not be made. Basically. The Irishman too, let’s say.

Right? Which I know we’re all very excited about the Irishman expanded universe. And then the other thing that’s not gonna have made, it’s are your sort of small projects by upstart creators who don’t have a track record and who can’t prove that, like, I make money or I have made money. Right? It’s gonna be sort of this stuff that kinda consistently makes money on a reasonable budget.

That’s gonna continue to be made. So a lot of superhero movies, a lot of horror and, you know, probably there will be another big star rom com that comes out after, you know, given what we’ve seen with the tickets to Paradise and and and the box office there. That sort of thing. So the the really big swings and the kind of novel small stuff is what’s gonna get hurt there. But that’s just a function of economics.

That’s what right. Like, when you’re when when business is tight well, frankly, when household finances are tight, what you cut out are, like, like the little tiny weird things that are experiments and the really big ambitious things that you’re also not totally sure are gonna work and you you you sort of pare down to your core business. I do think I, Elizabeth, made a really good point that this piece is kind of oddly conceived and smashed together two different movements, sort of the diverse casting movement plus the the reckoning with sexual assault, you know, off camera. But it’s also just Like, the this piece is just sort of an extended winge in some ways and, like, sort of a like, It’s just a bunch of people who are disappointed that Hollywood is not a nonprofit dedicated to social change. And I wanna be clear, nonprofits dedicated to social change are awesome.

I work for one, but we that’s our that’s what we tell people who give us money. Like, we have a mission and we’re gonna pursue it even if we don’t make money. And Hollywood, their business is to make films that people will see and then make more money off the tickets they sell and other stuff they sell, then it costs to make the movies and advertise them. So when you have all these sort of novel projects, like a lot of which are just sort of like diversity bucks, checking exercises that I think frankly set back the diversity in casting and, you know, diversity in creator’s movement just by virtue of being not very good and looking like obvious sort of diversity, you know, diversity box checking exercises. When you have that sort of thing, like, that stuff is not going to survive for very long even in a pretty good economy because ultimately the numbers are gonna it’s like the the numbers won’t be there.

In when you head into a what looks like a recession or at least strong economic headwinds, which every big business is preparing for right now, then that stuff is gonna get cut because again, it’s not a cause. It’s not a mission driven nonprofit. It’s not Hollywood like to think that they’re there to change the world, they’re there, in fact, to buy ever larger houses in Beverly Hills for their executives.

Yeah. And I mean, I I think that you know, all of these things are as folks, you know, sometimes say in the industry, they’re all execution dependent. So, like, the woman king is good. It’s it’s good. It’s a solid movie.

It’s a solid action that appeals to an underserved audience. They they are gonna make their money back on that one. They’re not gonna it’s not gonna be an enormous. It’s not gonna be a black panther style hit. Right?

But on

that chip, just since you bring up late black panther, one thing that we should add to this is that some of the the casting decisions made during this period are going to have long tail effects because they are part of big IPs that are gonna extend for the next decade or so. And so, obviously, Chadwick Boseman very, very sadly. It’s not gonna be around to be Black Panther, but like Marvel realized, oh my goodness, we can make Black Panther and we can have a cast of largely black actors. Right? And, like, do really and, like, that’s and do really well with that.

And, like, Marvel is going to keep, like, Marvel’s gonna keep that thing going. Even past the death of its star. Like, there is going to be like a like a long tail of of those casting decisions when they are made around big IP fees, I think. And if those movies basically work in audiences came out to them, then it’s not like Hollywood’s never gonna cast another minority or or like their or, you know, those roles aren’t gonna continue to exist. I I think there have been lessons that, you know, Hollywood has learned that some of those things actually do quite obviously make a lot of money.

Well

and Black Panther is a good example in that it is a both and it’s like a both pitch. Right? It’s not an or pitch. It’s not like Please go see this movie because it’s socially significant and it’s a good thing to do. It’s like, Black Power and also fights and superheroes and, like, hyper technological alfredination and CGI budget.

It’s

a Marvel movie. It’s like but it’s also but it’s also better than eternals. Right? And Charles is another Marvel movie that was kind of pitched as like, look at this super diverse cast of characters that we’ve got here, and that movie was not good. It was not and it was weird how much they leaned into the

the the marketing of you should see this movie because of the diverse cast. It’s always a bad sign.

Like, it’s

possible that Hollywood is bad at its messaging or like, I think one of the mess one of the lessons that Hollywood took from the reckoning sort of after George Floyd and from the sort of casting questions that were part of me too. Was that what people want is to be sold that their consumption is important. Right? And I think for the most part that is not true, people wanna be sold that their consumption is going to be fun. And, you know, some of this stuff failed because Hollywood marketed it as vegetables.

And some of it, you know, we talked about Billy I can hear going like way overboard in selling the sort of historical significance of prose instead of, you know, the fact that and we could talk we’ll talk about this in the bonus episode week. Like, it functions in a lot of ways like a nora ephron, like highly location and subcultural specific romantic a comedy and that it’s like, it’s fun and it’s kinda hot. And, you know, that is a mistake. And you know, some of this is failing because of larger social stuff, whatever. Some of it’s failing because an industry that has not been good at telling a range of stories historically.

It does not have the built in muscle memory to sell those stories effectively. It is kind of

funny that Billy Eichner ended up doing the kind of annoying thing that his characters play in the movie is is constantly, like, maybe you shouldn’t be annoying like that. Yeah.

Well, I mean, that’s his I mean, Billy Eicher himself is not should not be under counted as a problem with the marketing of that movie just like because his whole persona is, like, I’m the super annoying guy. Come watch me for two hours. Like, I don’t know. But, like, we’re again, we’re gonna talk more about bros. In the in the bonus episode.

But it does feel you know, I had I had Scott Mezzlow on my other podcast. We’ll work out as Hollywood talking about his book about romcoms. And one of the things that he talks about in in his book, he writes about it in his book is the the the way that the Judd Apotel machine kind of pitched forty year old version and knocked up less as romcoms and more as like hangout comedy. Like, these are because I and I when I was reading that, I started nodding along because I remember thinking myself categorically in my head, like, alright, forty year old Virgin, this is more like a movie like old school or something like that. And if bros had been pitched more that way instead of like, hey, important.

Come see this important movie for the importance. I think it might have had a better chance. But, you know, It’s it’s a hindsight twenty twenty, all that. Alright. We’re running on here.

What what so what do we think? Is it a controversy or a controversy that Hollywood seems to be taking its collective foot off the gas pedal on the issues of adversity and sexual harassment, Alyssa.

This may surprise everyone. Maybe I think it’s not traditional because Hollywood was always gonna revert to the mean. Peter.

I basically agree with Alyssa. I I mean, the underlying issues are obviously controversial. Right? Like, the, like, the Me Too stuff was, you know, sort of built centered around very real genuinely controversial issues. What’s happening now does not strike me as obviously controversial?

Yeah. It it feels like an controversy for all the reasons you guys mentioned. But, like, you know, there there was some definite overreach and a correction was inevitable, I think, is a is a is the most careful way I can put that. So that is how I will put it. Alright.

Make sure to tune into this week’s bonus episode. As I said, we’re gonna be discussing the romantic comedy bros. It’s the end of rom com week here at across the movie aisle. It’s gonna be following our episode on ticket to Paradise. Speaking of which, On

to the

main event, ticket to Paradise, a movie in which Julia Roberts and George Clooney basically played Julia Roberts and George Clooney as they jet off to a fabulous island destination and act charming around one another and smile big for the camera and make us all feel warm and comfortable, and safe and they give us a few laughs and a few tears and they send us some after a hundred five minutes with a gag reel on the way out the door, the end. I loved it.

More or less.

I mean, I it was fine. As I wrote in my review of the movie, taken to Paradise is very aggressively not reinventing the Cromcom wheel here. Right? It’s it’s a movie about people who were once in love, Conan Roberts, who have been forced for fifteen years or so when the movie begins. And whether they will follow them up again as they can talk to series of misadventures in the hopes of getting their daughter played by Caitlin Deaver.

It’s back out of her forthcoming marriage to a seaweed farmer she met just weeks before. All of this plays out against the back up a Bali where the hijings feel, even more important thanks to the very pretty setting. This movie feels like a replacement level mid nineties or early odds Romcom. Right? It’s got two huge stars.

They’re reminding us just how effortless it is for them to be really cool on screen, how the trans like their big smiles and their soft stares and their distant distant thousand yard stares as they contemplate the nature of their relationships and existence itself. Right? To the rest of us out in the real world. But that in and of itself is a bit of an oddity because they just don’t they literally don’t make movies like this anymore really. I mean, it’s it’s hard to find a comp, a good theatrical release comp in the last two or three years.

They they definitely don’t make them on the big screen. And even on streaming where most of the romcoms have kind of migrated to in in the last few years, we’ve mostly seen a younger generation of actors and actresses who I like, I’m no knock on them, but they do not have the Christmas of Clooney and Roberts. It is pleasing just to look at them. And that’s not nothing. But isn’t enough?

I mean, Peter, I I went exceptionally easy on this movie in my review because I frankly don’t think too much of the genre in general. It doesn’t it doesn’t do anything for me I don’t I don’t put a lot of stock in, like, when it when it works and when it doesn’t. I I I don’t quite understand it. Is what I’m saying, I think. And it succeeded for me from my POB because I’m not looking for anything great here.

I’m just looking for something kind of pleasant. Is this just the soft bigotry of my own low expectations working its way into my work? Sony,

I think if your question is, are you the problem? The answer is always yes. Well, I mean,

that’s a given. That’s a given.

So I I did not despise this movie, but I it’s not good. It’s just tepid and empty and shallow and it suffers from what I think is the biggest problem that plagues a lot of kind of populist romcoms going back decades now. Which is that it’s not just about beautiful people in beautiful locations, it’s about beautiful non specific people in beautiful locations. And they don’t there’s nothing to them. Right?

And so there’s this phrase that screenwriters sometimes use about finding the universal in the specific. This movie attempts to find the universal in the nothing. Like, the only real things we know about George Clooney and Julie Roberts, who are, as you pointed out, like, not even playing characters. They’re just playing the avatars of of of Hollywood glow that both of them resent because they’re not playing anything. The only thing we know about them is that, like, she’s works in the art field and he’s an architect or something like that.

And this never is relevant to any other proceedings. It’s, like, not anything. You know, they don’t talk about it any sort of specific way. Work is not, like, really interrupting them. They’re not, like, They have no problems.

They have no personalities. And they have no personalities because this movie does not it’s like has like, does this romcom thing that I really hate of depriving them of personalities because if to give them anything specific would be to ground them in a real world that might turn off the type of viewer who loves this sort of frothy fantasy. And I do not. There’s a really telling moment that I think reveals that this movie just does not have any kind of specific theory of love and connection and attachment, which is I think a big problem for a romcom though it is a common one. But to the the plot is that George Clooney and Julie Roberts go to Bauley to, like, stop their daughter from getting married to a guy from Bali.

And there’s a little scene after one of the conversations that Church that Church Queenie’s had with the fiance about, like, how marriages break up and they don’t last. And the the daughter and her fiance are sitting, you know, in a mixed mixed of tropical paradise. And he’s like, well, you know, how how is our relationship gonna last through all the hard times. And she looks around in her responses, I’m sitting here in the most beautiful place in the world and all I can look at is you. Literally, it’s not anything about the person.

It’s just He’s hot. He’s hotter, I guess, than the plants.

Like, that’s

it. It’s he’s he’s hotter than a pretty sunset. And that’s what’s gonna keep them going. When they’re seventy two and, like, and and in firm and, like, that’s I don’t I don’t see

the issue I mean, I this is why I my biggest problem, frankly, is that I didn’t believe that Julia Roberts and George Clooney would ever break up. They’re too they’re too pretty. Not to get

along forever. Right. Right. So the compare this to a movie like licorice pizza, and I have said before that I think PT Anderson is the only Hollywood filmmaker who who understands love because the whole thing about every single romantic relation ship that PTA Anderson has ever given us whether it’s in phantom thread or punch trunk glove or licorice pizza is that they are irreducible. They’re not relatable in any like, it’s just a bunch of completely weird and random things that are incredibly specific to the person and the place and the context.

And that’s what makes his movies and his relationships so rich and so real on screen. And this movie has absolutely no theory of how people to get together or why. And it just doesn’t have anything to say about love. Now, you can make a movie that is that has some of those elements and that is still quite popular as long as the bits and the scenes are really quite funny. And so I will I will end with my, like, my my theory of romantic comedies, which is that we only need one.

And it’s when Harry met Sally. When Harry met Sally is so perfect and so great in every line, in every shot, in every scene, it’s it’s truly wonderful and it’s what every other romantic comedy since has wanted and tried to be, which you know, upper middle class people who don’t really have that serious problems. They live in a city and like they’re pretty well off and they have fun jobs and good friends they eat out. It’s like kinda, you know, it’s a bit thicker and, like, that’s and they’re and they’re clever, but, like, they, you know, they there’s every single scene in that movie works perfectly. It’s it’s truly a delight and it shows that this genre can be elevated and affected.

And ticket to Paradise doesn’t have a single memorable scene, much less a half dozen of them. Yeah.

Well, I guess what Peter’s saying, Alyssa, is that we should retire the romantic comedy forever. I’m fine with that. Are you? Is that is that a dead genre? Should we get rid of them?

Where

we’re taping this on Halloween, we should use a wedgie board, we should conjure up the ghost of Nora Efron, and we should ask her to tell us how we can repent for our sins as a people, so we can deserve her second coming. Now, this movie made me sort of actively irritated because the three key actors in it, George Claudine, Julia Roberts, and Caitlin Bieber, who I think is wonderful. Like, not in this but I just in general, I love seeing her on screen. I think she is terrific. I don’t know if any of you if either of you watched unbelievable, the Netflix series this mini series adapted from a big pro holocca story.

We watched

it for the show. We did

watch it for the show. I’m sorry, guys. You know, I It’s

been a while.

It’s been a while. I had a baby. There’s been a lot of stuff going on. But so all three of them are Like, this is an excellent way to measure how good the three of them are as actors because the material that they’re being fed is absolute garbage. And yet you still want to watch them anyway.

Right? Like, I Peter, I would push back on you and say that the one memorable scene in the movie is George Clooney sitting at the bar and telling his daughter’s college roommate about, you know, building the lake house for his wife. I

agree it’s the best scene in the movie. It’s still a it’s actually a bad monologue though. It’s not well written. It’s a

bad monologue, but it’s, like, the gap between what the material is and what Clooney does with it, like, you know, it’s like a winds up of replacement stat in

acting.

Right? It’s like, what would George what can George Clooney do with this relative to what everyone else could do with this? In the same way, let’s, like, what can Julia Roberts do with, like, a moment where she has called on to look like roofing that relative to what everyone else in Hollywood can do. Like, you know, how

limbit

odd can Caitlin Dover get relative to everyone else in Hollywood? And so in that sense, it is a nice measure of what these particular actors are capable of, but it’s such garbage material. And Peter is absolutely right that this movie never convinces you that any of its couples should be together at all. Right? I mean, like, you know, George Cloonie is entirely correct that her daughter is going to get bored with being a bolognese seaweed farmer like exporting stuff to Whole Foods unless, like, she uses her law degree to, like, formulate a business plan and have them, like, go big as, like, ethical, seaweed marketers or something.

Right? But, like, Lily is not a person. She’s a collection of characteristics. And so there’s nothing to suggest that she’s not looking forward to being a lawyer, that she’s like burned out, that she only did this because it’s what her parents wanted. And like you said, Peter, you know, there is nothing to suggest that she has found some, like, part of her personality in Bali, rather than that she’s found a hot guy.

And, you know, the bickering between, you know, Georgia and David is so acrimonies and, like, kind of substantiously unpleasant that it doesn’t make sense that they would get back together. Right? Like, the movie makes a very credible case that they never should have been together in the first place because it is actively unpleasant to watch them be like pick at each other in the first couple of means. You have no sense of what brought them together in the first place. It’s just aggressively unpleasant.

And if you compare this to a very different romantic comedy with an equally ludicrous scenario. I feel like you can see the difference between them really clearly. They’re and the movie I wanna talk about is the nineteen ninety five romantic comedy while you were sleeping. Have either of you seen this movie?

The Sandra Bullock Bill Coleman on?

Yes. It is a ludicrous movie. Sandra Bullock is a Chicago, like, token taker on the Chicago L. She has developed a crush on this passenger who comes through her trend style every day. He gets pushed onto the tracks and, like, is unconscious.

She saves his life. She sort of accidentally blurts out that she’s his fiance. And then gets taken for such by his, like, wacky extended family while he’s in a coma and has to try and, like, pull this off all of all in love with his brother who’s played by Bill Plumbent. The movie is full of character detail. You know, you learn a lot more about, like, Lucy as a person who sort of hopes and dreams were thwarted when she got when she was orphaned.

You, you know, she has this relationship with her supervisor. You see her being, you know, getting brought into this family and that feeling like a real gap in her life. You find out that the guy that she’s been fantasizing about is just a complete jackass on all sorts of levels.

And, you know,

you see the characters at work. You see them in family settings. It’s incredibly specific and talky. And it’s absurd, but because it’s about actual human beings and because the actual human being at the center of the story, learn something and changes over time. You believe everything that happens in it even though it’s ridiculous.

And ticket to Paris, Dice is also a ridiculous movie, but it doesn’t care care about its characters as people at all. And as such, it is totally unconvincing even given the range of acting talent that it brings out. I find this whole rant

to be outrageous. George Clooney learns a great deal. He learns that all two people need is to be kind of attractive and be together. Right? He decides he decides his Trojan horse metaphor is terrible.

It doesn’t make any sense. You know, it’s all of this everything no. I the scene that you highlight, the him at the bar is fantastic because it’s literally just George Clooney saying nonsense while holding a glass and the camera pushes in on him kind of at an angle. And he looks wistfully off in the direction that’s, like, just over the camera. And it’s, like, oh, that’s what

stardom is.

That this scene — Yes. This scene is what being a movie star is and they’re mostly dead. You’d there are very few people left alive who could pull that sequence off. And George Clooney is one of them. So I’m gonna be sad when he passes from this plane of existence because there’s there’s no replacing him.

And similarly, some of the other castings pretty blank and bad, just in particular, the the French airline pilot who’s supposed to be French Army Hammer? Who’s supposed to be the Julie Roberts’ bow. Right? And he there’s a bunch of, like,

pretty

badly executed physical comedy. And I was just thinking since we saw the La City earlier this year that, like, how much better chaining Tatum would have pulled off the exact same role, the same direction, like the same movie. I’m not asking for, like, changes except Chaining Tatum plays a hot idiot goofball who, like, kind of is is weirdly physically awkward for being an incredible specimen. It would have the only problem is, it would have imbalanced the romantics prospect to the movie because Channing Tatum would have been too compelling. Well, in

that case, you would have had to have Channing Tatum get together with the roommate. Who Klutty is talking to — Right. — Barcelona — Yeah. — which is what I kind of thought was gonna happen. Anyway, I just assumed that they would give this guy a soft landing being being like here is the attractive roommate.

Go The attractive partner together. But they

didn’t even

bother with that. This movie is real this movie is really very misunderstandristic. If you think about it. It’s just mean to all the men in a No. I don’t care for that.

No. I I thought it was I’m I I I don’t know, man. I I again, I have very low expectations on this sort of thing. So it worked for me. But let’s let’s put it to the rest of the panel.

What do we think? Thumbs up or thumb’s down? I’ll take it to Paradise, Alyssa.

Thumbs down. Peter. Thumbs down

if you want to see this kind of movie, go watch the Bullock Channing Codem one, which I didn’t love, but it’s much better. Thumbs up,

it’s fine. It’s you people have your your expectations are too high for this nonsense. It’s it’s fine. It’s fine. Alright.

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