More proof that Hollywood hates women:
Ugh. Is there some new Photoshop filter called Skeevify that they used on Matthew McConaughey, or has he always been this vile and I’ve finally reached a tipping point in (just barely) tolerating it?
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past? Really?
Celebrity photographer Connor Mead loves freedom, fun and women… in that order. A committed bachelor who thinks nothing of breaking up with multiple women on a conference call, Connor’s mockery of romance proves a real buzz-kill for his kid brother, Paul, and a houseful of well wishers on the eve of Paul’s wedding. Just when it looks like Connor may single-handedly ruin the wedding, he is visited by the ghosts of his former jilted girlfriends, who take him on a revealing and hilarious odyssey through his failed relationships–past, present and future. Together they attempt to find out what turned Connor into such an insensitive jerk and whether there is still hope for him to find true love…or if he really is the lost cause everyone thinks he is.
See, cuz guys are just lovable, scampish rogues until women ruin them by whipping them into shape. No, don’t tell me that that’s not the subtext of this, because if it weren’t, the poster would make McConaughey look like Darth Vader or Freddy Krueger, and not like what Hollywood thinks women find attractive in men. He’s not the villain of this piece — he’s the hero.
I think I’m going to have myself cryogenically frozen until the world smartens up.
He pretty clearly looks like even more of a prick than usual, and I am sure that is intentional.
Also, this looks below-par even for these kind of movies. Here’s hoping it bombs!
But come on, MaryAnn, let’s not pretend this isn’t just as offensive to men as it is to women.
I have no problem with McConaughey when he’s not in these noxious manchild roles; I liked him in A Time To Kill, Contact, and Sahara, for example.
Put it another way: in any movie he’s in that I would actually want to watch, he’s been fine.
Um, we’ll miss you….
Ugh. Yeah, joey made the same point I was going to make. This is hideous, and Hollywood is awful to women. But it’s god damned offensive to men as well, as are most of these awful romantic comedies. They’re not so much offensive to men or to women as they are offensive to humanity as a whole.
Also, please don’t freeze yourself, what will the rest of us do without you here to snark about these things for us?
I am with you on this one, to bad the studios are throwing money at projects like this…
I have to admit, I have little interest in watching movies about jerks getting to have sex with lots of women until finally women turn him into a nice guy, but for me the subtext is that I’ve wasted my life being a nice guy in the first place. I should have pretended to be a jerk so I could enjoy my twenties and then pretended to let a woman improve me so I’d become a nice guy.
“The ghosts of his former jilted girlfriends”? Huh? So he is some sort of serial killer who routinely offs every woman he rejects, while they return the favour by haunting him and turning him into a better man? That’s what the info seems to imply, at least. Curiouser and curiouser.
Oh, cme on yall. This is an obvious take on Dickens’ “Christmas Carol”, and when has there ever been a bad movie with this premise?
What? No, never heard of “An American Carol” …
Yes, I have not only heard of “A Christmas Carol”, but I have suffered trough innumerable ‘versions’ of the premise in both film and tv. And invariably (with a few exceptions) they have been trite and horriblly executed.
I am sorry to see Jennifer Garner here – she was so wonderful in the massively underrated “Catch and Release” – a movie so funny and touching that I was able to enjoy it while sitting in a hospital bed.
So, that’s why I didn’t like “Catch and Release”. I wasn’t sitting in a hospital bed.:)
So, that’s why I didn’t like “Catch and Release”. I wasn’t sitting in a hospital bed.:)
Heh.
As for Catch and Release, wasn’t this one of those movies where the guy who is an out-and-out jerk ends up with the female lead and the guy who isn’t such a jerk–not Kevin Smith, the other guy–gets passed over. For that matter, I always thought that “relationship” between Smith and Juliette Lewis’s masseuse character to be quite odd.
But then my best friend is a RMT and I’m sure she’d find certain aspects of that film especially unrealistic…if not offensive.
I think it’s sad that women actually WANT to see this movie. That’s why they keep making crap like this: it makes money.
Shhhhhhhineeey! (and not in that Firefly way)
OMG! OMG! I wonder which one it is?!
I think it’s sad that women actually WANT to see this movie. That’s why they keep making crap like this: it makes money.
Excellent point that people rarely mention. Many of Hollywood’s screenwriters write female characters really badly, but women in droves continue to support these films and further their careers.
In the analysis of last weekend, Box Office Mojo reported that for He’s Just Not That Into You‘s $27.8 million weekend, 80 percent of the audience was female.
Not very surprising. Perhaps they thought it was a self-help film?
The question becomes, what are these women getting out of these films? They obviously get some kind of joy from it. I hate bringing it up again, but it’s a bit like Twilight. For the Life of me, I can’t figure out why people enjoy that tripe, but millions have found some kind of emotional connection to the story. It reminds them of their own life or their own fantasies in some way.
In terms of this girl’s life, I agree with The Wombats: “If this is a Rom-Com, kill the director.”
I exactly understand your point of view, MaryAnn…
Remember me of American Gigolo, with Richard Gere.
He was the hooker, but women seems all like whores!
And by the way I can’t stand neither Matthew nor JenBen, so I don’t have any problem in skipping this one ^_-
As I just saw this Flight of the Conchords clip I thought I’d share.
Don’t clips like this render such films unnecessary, and all in a couple of minutes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU8utjD_vZg
kusanagi: it’s worse than that. When I saw the poster, I thought it was Richard Gere (plus a facelift).
I think that films like this are offensive to anyone who thinks with (his|her) brain rather than (her|his) gonads. I can understand why Hollywood might think that all social interaction is solely predicated on the sort of reproductive urges and power-struggles that you’d see in a pack of particularly dim monkeys; I’ve been to Los Angeles. But I think it’s a shame that they try to force this vision of the world onto everyone else, and that other people let them.
Yes, I agree that these movies are as insulting to men as they are to women. But the men are nevertheless depicted in a positive light — these movies think they’re celebrating men, no matter how wrongheaded that attitude may be. The disdain for women, however, is barely disguised.
And in the larger scheme of Hollywood movies, men are afforded the full range of expression as humans in a way that women are not. There are good, bad, and mediocre movies about men doing and feeling just about everything the people can do and feel, but the same is not true of women. There are very few studios movies about women — good, bad, or mediocre — about women doing or feeling much beyond a few very narrow roles as mother/wife/caretaker, or as victim.
Of course you can pick out examples of movies here and there that break out of that confinement, but you cannot say it’s a regular thing the way it is about movies that focus on men.
Imagine if 95 percent of movie roles for men were about them as soldiers. That would be preposterous.
This reminds me of the generic action team composition, most obviously to my mind in TV shows of the 1980s – there’s usually the Hero (white guy), the Black Guy, the Old Guy, the Geek, and… the Girl. It’s not so much that she has no personality – after all, none of the characters has any personality – it’s that being female is considered to be a distinctive character trait.
Quit yo jibba jabba Firedrake! Ain’t no woman on my team you crazy fool!
P.S. I ain’t gettin’ on no plane.
Hee. Well, they did have me on quite a lot of morphine….
Nah, I still like that movie. And legal opiates.