So we went to the drive-in last night...
Sep. 14th, 2009 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
agilebritBecause "District 9" (which we really wanted to see) was playing with "The Ugly Truth."
I highly, highly recommend "District 9." Seriously, I'm probably the last person on my flist to see it, but if you haven't yet, you should go. Those of you who have, we can talk about it in comments.
That was the Good.
Now, "The Ugly Truth" has Gerard Butler in it. So, no Bad there, right?
Except his character is a misogynistic frat boy who thinks with his dick. This guy has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. At least not in the first half hour of the movie, which is when we gave up and came home.
And see, this is a basic storytelling thing. If you're writing a RomCom and you want your audience to root for the leads to get together, then you need to show in the first five to seven minutes that the Misogynist Jerk actually has a Heart of Gold. There are ways of doing this. The kid we saw could have been his rather than his sister's, and he could have been left with a broken heart by a Cruel Bitch. He could have had a lover who died and so he's hardened himself so that he'll never hurt that much ever again. Etc, etc.
But you have to show us that. EARLY. Otherwise, he's just a creep, and why should we care about him? Why should we want the Hapless Heroine to get involved with someone like that? Maybe he's redeemed later, but we didn't care enough to stick around through the suck and the rampant man-hating the writers were exhibiting to find out. Good god, they even dressed him in a monkey suit. *shakes head*
The other thing I hated about this was it foments the myth that "women like jerks." No. No, we don't.
And the Hugh Jackman movie "Someone Like You" failed the other way. His character was supposed to be a jerk, everyone in the movie thought he was a jerk--but they never actually showed him being a jerk. I spent that one going "why is everyone hating on this guy, he's really pretty nice?"
Writing FAIL. If they'd tossed me a sliver of a bone, we might have stayed. I wanted to like this movie. I tried to like this movie. But the male lead sucked, and so I couldn't. "The Ugly Truth" is ugly, indeed.
I highly, highly recommend "District 9." Seriously, I'm probably the last person on my flist to see it, but if you haven't yet, you should go. Those of you who have, we can talk about it in comments.
That was the Good.
Now, "The Ugly Truth" has Gerard Butler in it. So, no Bad there, right?
Except his character is a misogynistic frat boy who thinks with his dick. This guy has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. At least not in the first half hour of the movie, which is when we gave up and came home.
And see, this is a basic storytelling thing. If you're writing a RomCom and you want your audience to root for the leads to get together, then you need to show in the first five to seven minutes that the Misogynist Jerk actually has a Heart of Gold. There are ways of doing this. The kid we saw could have been his rather than his sister's, and he could have been left with a broken heart by a Cruel Bitch. He could have had a lover who died and so he's hardened himself so that he'll never hurt that much ever again. Etc, etc.
But you have to show us that. EARLY. Otherwise, he's just a creep, and why should we care about him? Why should we want the Hapless Heroine to get involved with someone like that? Maybe he's redeemed later, but we didn't care enough to stick around through the suck and the rampant man-hating the writers were exhibiting to find out. Good god, they even dressed him in a monkey suit. *shakes head*
The other thing I hated about this was it foments the myth that "women like jerks." No. No, we don't.
And the Hugh Jackman movie "Someone Like You" failed the other way. His character was supposed to be a jerk, everyone in the movie thought he was a jerk--but they never actually showed him being a jerk. I spent that one going "why is everyone hating on this guy, he's really pretty nice?"
Writing FAIL. If they'd tossed me a sliver of a bone, we might have stayed. I wanted to like this movie. I tried to like this movie. But the male lead sucked, and so I couldn't. "The Ugly Truth" is ugly, indeed.
