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The problem is not that *Knocked Up* is “liberal” because it’s about casual sex and having a baby out of wedlock. The problem is that it is horribly conservative about embracing and enjoying an adult version of sexuality that has moved beyond dorm-room-esque groping.
“You look like my Barbie doll,” a little girl tells Cameron Diaz. Bingo!
Of course, most respected anthropologists and biologists recognize that the New World Vampire, or *vampirus americanus*, differs greatly from the European species, or *vampirus continentalus*, but few films have recognized that the wide-open spaces of the U.S. produce a vastly altered creature than Europe’s dense urban spaces or intimate, if remote, medieval villages. But years before John Carpenter and the team of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez documented the vampires that dwell in the lonely stretches of the Americas, the criminally underappreciated ethnographer Kathryn Bigelow did it — spookily, grimly, hilariously, gloriously — with 1987’s *Near Dark,* in which a coven of nasty bloodsuckers roam the deserted American Southwest.
I mean, who, precisely, said you couldn’t have a zombie romantic comedy? Why can’t the male lead express his undying devotion for his ladylove by bashing dead people in the head with a cricket bat?
Nora Ephron’s delightful film is perhaps the epitome of the modern romantic comedy to which many a movie has aspired and few have even approached in its warmth, naturalness, and genuine spirit of amour.
You know me. You know I hate romantic comedies, mostly. You know I think they tend to be phony, they tend to show off the worst sides of both men and women, and they tend to be neither romantic nor comedic. So you gotta be suspecting that a film billed as ‘the ultimate romantic comedy’ would have me running screaming in opposite direction as if my life depending upon escape.
Oh, great day in the glorious sunshiny Tuscany morning! A movie about a woman that actual women will be able to identify with, one that’s fantastical enough to be diverting and down-to-earth enough to let us recognize ourselves in it.
Romantic comedies aren’t supposed to be about suspense…
May it please the court, the evidence will show that the defendant Elle Woods, in the person of Reese Witherspoon, is not the dumb blonde bunny of which she is accused of being. Further, your honor, the evidence will show that just because the movie my client is associated with is silly doesn’t mean it doesn’t have something smart to say.
If there’s any truth to the saying that cynics are nothing but disappointed optimists, then Shrek is the very embodiment of it, its cheery and confident optimistic heart beating underneath a tough outer layer that’s grim and twisted, one that seems at first to have given up on fantasy.
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