Okay, so the real reason I made this blog is because if I do not sit down to think and write about these films I will feel as if I have wasted hours of my life staring at pretty people kissing in the rain. I have already watched three this week and now I am forcing myself to write about the most recent, Something Borrowed. (So this could be rough and messy and just an excuse to go and watch more girls give non-committal men pep talks).
This movie centered on the friendship between Darcy (Kate Hudson) and Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin). I always feel dismayed when movies set up female friendships to fail: Rachel sleeps with Darcy's fiance, but only because she's been secretly in love with him since law school and he also had feelings for her. Darcy is then doomed to be characterized by selfish and arrogant and ultimately disloyal (she admits cheating on her future husband who looks exactly like Tom Cruise, but was probably cheaper). None of this feels genuine or real or natural - just the manipulative creation of a villain. I hate it when the villain is the female friend. It is like a warning to women: do not trust your own kind. And those words that people always use about female friends (I cringed when they came up in my women's studies class when I was a freshman) like "catty." The movie has a somewhat happy ending with a half-hearted promise of a reunion of the two friends after all the secrets and affairs, but what the film really does is push the two women to men. So sad. During the final confrontation I really thought that Darcy was going to accuse Rachel of being in love with her. Soul mates = best friends kind of thing, but no.
Then there is Claire! Poor Claire! John Krasinski's character (Ethan) sleeps with her "but is not in love with her," then avoids her, then lies to her by telling her he is gay so that she will stop flirting with him. The worst of it though is that at the end of Darcy's bachelorette party she gets the brush-off while Darcy and Rachel have a sleep over. Claire is rejected by men and women alike. I think this is because she broke a rule: she went after the guy. Claire constantly came onto Ethan using cheesy pick-up lines and not so subtle innuendos; she acted actually a lot like Marcus, the "shark" who charms women by telling them about the time he made leg splints for a tiny chipmunk and carried it around in a baby bjorn; she acted like a man. Ladies, don't ever take the initiative. Wait around for decades while the man you love gets engaged to your best friend, stay strong, and maybe eventually he will decide to kiss you after he finds out that you had a crush on him in law school.
Well, that seems like enough right? Time for another!
