Alas, I caught it on TCM too late to start taping, but damn- “fat & dowdy” Lynn Redgrave was still a “fine bit’o’something” (ya gotta say it in a smarmy English accent), kinda reminds me how Alysson Hannigan was dowdied down in the early years of BTVS & how Janeane Garofalo was “the ugly duckling” in CATS & DOGS.
I gotta respectfully disagree on this one… I love that movie, but not at any point in it did I find her physically appealing. To me, it is one of the rare movies where the unattractive character is actually unattractive. Charlotte Rampling on the other hand, looked amazing.
Well, the NYC explosion diverted me from watching the rest of GG, but another thought… James Mason’s character - a somewhat more mature version of Humbert Humbert? Still after a daughter-substitute?
By the way, NYC did not explode. One townhouse on the Upper East Side did (sounds like it was a gas leak). Just in case you all thought we were incinerated up here.
Oh, thanks. I was out of town this weekend and thought I might have missed something big.
[Rosanne Rosannadana]
What’s this I hear about Janeane Garofalo’s dog exploding after leaking gas?
[/Rosanne Rosannadana]
There is a ridiculously long history in Hollywood for the “plain” one to be played by women who would be the lead sex object in another film.
The Devil Wears Prada is merely the latest, in which Anne Hathaway, of all people, is the fat dowdy one.
About the only one I agree with is America’s Sweethearts, in which Julia Roberts clearly is the unlovely sister next to Catherine Zeta-Jones. Ironically, the movie is set up so that we’re not supposed to wind up believing it.
The only trend worse than this in Hollywood is having super-hot bimbos play Ph.D.s. on subjects whose jargon they can’t ever pronounce. Any number of examples, from Daryl Hannah in Roxanne to Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough.
I’ve always thought Lynn Redgrave was cute, but her character was made out to be totally un-hip (un-attractive) and she was a bit chubby. I love this movie. And you just GOTTA sing along with the theme song!
I think you mean Emily Litella . . . 
I actually saw the movie for the first time about a month or so ago, after having grown up listening to the theme song on the radio and having an entirely different mental picture of the plot. Redgrave almost reminded me of a younger, less butch but still overweight Rosie O’Donnell. Not physically attractive but cute in a non sexual way. I saw no motivation for Mason’s character to be so taken with her.
And the lyrics to the closing theme!?!?!?! I think I will have to re-watch it just to hear those again.
Yeah…they’re like a little re-cap of the movie or something as I recall. I wasn’t keen on it.
Sarah Jessica Parker as the nerdy one in Square Pegs.
Right, when we all know she’s the homely one.
I haven’t seen the movie, but my impression from the clips I’ve seen is that the boss thinks the Anne Hathaway character is fat and dowdy, not that she actually is supposed to be fat and dowdy. I take it to be a comment on the fashion world that the editor of a Vogue-like magazine would call Anne Hathaway “the smart fat one.”