That doesn’t sound so bad then. Actually, it sounds halfway decent. I might now give it a shot if I ever happen upon it on HBO in a couple years.
Considering Jackman has also done the musicals(!) Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The Boys From Oz, I think he was a lost icon even before he showed up in Someone Like You. 
Plus it was a bad remake of the far better Wings of Desire. :mad:
Well Tony wasn’t mean to her but he wasn’t as nice to her as Jack. He didn’t seem to be getting along with her as well as Jack. It just seemed like she chose the wrong guy to me.
Except, of course, that she never knew Jerry (Jack) as a man–only as Daphne. How could she pick “him” when she didn’t know she was really a he? Joe (Tony) wasn’t who he said he was, but at least he didn’t expect her to fall in love with him while he was still in a dress.
Yeah, but Bellamy was usually portrayed as slow or boring or provincial or a mama’s boy, so at least you could argue that, nice though he was, he was still a poor match. Now, though, the also-rans don’t even have those (meager) flaws. They’re too good to be true but wrong only because they’re “nice.”
I gotta say that I disagree with your view. It’s entirely possible that she truly and deeply loved the man she later married and had children with. In fact, there’s at least one strong hint in that direction… “it was the most erotic experience of my life… well, until then”.
Just because she remembers and holds onto her love for Jack doesn’t mean that she was lying to, or not-fully-loving, her husband.
Well I guess I never did spend to much time analyzing the way things went. All that I have left is a sense of dissatisfaction with her choice at the end of the movie of my own making. And so it doesn’t quite fit. Oh well, 50-50.
Adding my agreement for The Wedding Planner and My Best Friend’s Wedding, though with the second one it’s for a different reason.
The Wedding Planner had the female lead (J. Lopez) turning down a very nice (if a bit goofy), very handsome Italian man. He was stable and caring and loyal to a fault. And she turned him down for a man who wasn’t opposed to cheating on his fiance, a very nice woman. Of course, the fiance had to be the one to make the decision to back out of their wedding, or it would’ve made McConaughey’s character look even worse.
In My Best Friend’s Wedding, while I don’t think Julia Roberts’ character should have “won” the man, he shouldn’t have married Cameron Diaz’s character either. They had serious issues about career goals that they weren’t really discussing.
I liked My Best Friend’s Wedding, mostly because of the ending, which I thought was truer to life than most of the plots we’re complaining about here.
That’s as may be, but that’s not really the interpretation the movie is pushing, you have to admit. Especially the ending, it’s all “Eternal Luuuurve”.
To go onto the other side of the fence and applaud a movie that stuck with the original romance I’d like to recognize Forces of Nature with Ben Affleck and Sandra Bullock.
He’s trying to get to his own wedding and has to drive cross-country with stranger Sandra Bullock. They become friends and talk a lot and even get flirtacious and enjoy their road trip. However, at the end he ends up arriving at the wedding and weds the girl he fell in love with while Sandra leaves quietly.
I’m no big admirer of the film, but No, that’s not what the movie is pushing. The ending has less to do with “Eternal Love” then it simply represents a spiritual reunion with all the people who died on the boat. Her life was changed/transformed by the events depicted in the movie; nowhere does that represent a slight of her life/accomplishments afterwards, but it does mean it has some value to her.
Bill Pullman often seems to get cast in these “nice guys never win” roles. I guess he just has the face for it or something. I always remember his small role in Singles as a very nice plastic surgeon who falls for Bridget Fonda and tries to talk her out the boob job she wants to impress her no-good grunge rocker boyfriend Matt Damon. Poor Pullman never has a chance. She rejects him and never gives him a second thought, not even after she breaks up with Damon.
I wasn’t crazy about the movie, but I was quite pleased that they didn’t go with the predictable ending that I’d been dreading throughout the film. What a refreshing change!
A different problem I have with many romantic comedies is sort of the opposite of the OP – the convention of making the to-be-jilted lover unfaithful first so we won’t feel sorry for them when they’re tossed aside in favor of the other romantic lead. In a movie like The Wedding Singer I think it would be enough to show that Drew Barrymore’s fiance was stupid and jerkish without adding that he was running around on her and planning to continue to do so even after their marriage. Or in Titanic, was it really necessary to make Billy Zane a cartoonish villain rather than simply an arrogant Mr. Wrong?
It’s also pretty stupid with the jilted lovers of both romantic leads wind up falling for each other. I mean, I know a romantic comedy has to have a happy ending, but if they’re going to make not one but two broken relationships an essential part of the story then I think it’s both pandering and lazy to tie things up that neatly.
Pretty in Pink is an offender. Really, she should have gone with Ducky. Andrew McCarthy was a jerk.
Yeah, but as you may or may not know, that was the original ending.
There are two different accounts of why it was changed. One version says the test audiences didn’t like it. :rolleyes: The other says that Hughes had second thoughts and decided that was the “wrong message”: if Andie and Blane didn’t end up together, that meant class barriers can’t or shouldn’t be crossed. GMAFB. So we were given a “better” message than if we’d seen Andie choose the person who had never let her down? :smack:
(Psst: Lamia, that was Matt Dillon.
I hate that too. It drives me crazy. I also despise movies where the lover has been won on the basis of a lie (Maid in Manhattan, if I remember correctly)and after some suitable penitence of the part of the liar, everything’s happy lovey-dovey again and they get together. Barf.
I think the especially creepy thing about Pretty in Pink is that, throughout the film, we see what a sad and broken man Andie’s dad is…all because he was rejected by the only woman he ever loved! What a sad fate for poor Duckie.
:o
It always ticks me off when people mix up similar-sounding celebrity names like that, and here I’ve gone and done it myself! :smack: I can’t even claim that it was past my bedtime when I wrote that.
He had a chance in Mr.Wrong! Ellen was all into him til he proved to be nutty.
Wasn’t he in a Sandra Bullock movie where she prefered the guy in the coma?
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days - Ugh!! They both consistantly lie to one another, and yet we’re supposed to believe that within a week they’ve fallen in love, even after they learn about the mutual lies?
I also hated Sweet Home Alabama - By the end of the movie I hoped the two guys would end up with each other. That would’ve been better than Reese Witherspoon getting either one. I absolutely despised the way she treated everyone in the movie.
StG