Okay, so there are about 5102502592 movies out there wherein some popular guy is dared/bets/whatever to go out with an ugly girl with a lot of heart ™.
Well, she takes off her glasses and lets down her hair, and we all see that it’s okay, she’s not an ugly person, she’s a cute girl that had her hair up and glasses on. So she’s a real person, not one of those unlovable ugly people - false alarm.
Okay, got it.
Usually at some stage of the movie, the girl finds out about the guy’s plot. She gets hurt, and then a genuinely nice guy, who has always cared for her steps in and she decides to be with him. Then the asshole popular guy learns his lesson and dramatically the girl decides to be with him.
Well what the fuck happens to the actual nice guy, who genuinely cares for this girl, finally has his chance to be with her - and he gets fucked because shallow asshole learns his lesson? What did he do to get screwed over so bad? Why the hell have we accepted this as part of a happy ending?
The guy decides “hey, this chick isn’t a worthless piece of shit to discard as part of a game/bet/whatever” AFTER she’s transformed from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan.
What’s the heart-warming lesson there? “Ugly people are to be mocked and avoided, but be careful - some ugly people can be transformed into real, non-ugly people”
And to add on to myself again (I guess I should think these out more)
Usually the guy who gets screwed, the guy who genuinely cared about this girl, cared about her back when she was ugly - he cared for her for her inner beauty, or whatever you want to call it.
And now, instead of being with him, she rejects him for the popular but shallow guy who learned a lesson ™, because he’s cooler, better looking, etc. Essentially, she’s doing exactly to the thing that she supposedly hates to the guy who genuinely cares - rejects him to be with the more popular/cuter/etc. guy. And that’s supposed to be the lesson-learned happy ending. AAHHHHH.
(And yes, I did like Not Another Teen Movie… those were some constructions that needed to be parodied hard.)
You know what’s much, much worse? The 99% of instances of “Hollywood ugly” where there isn’t even the textual need for the character to “clean up well” – but a drop-dead beautiful person is cast as someone that is clearly supposed to be homely as sin, in the context of the story.
It’s not like incomprehensible casting like this was new to Bridget Jones’ Diary, where a character that is defined by her insecurity over her physical shortcomings is played by Rene freaking Zellweger, either.
It was already old when the lovely Barbara bel Geddes did a turn as mousy and insecure Midge, in Vertigo.
Watch her beat herself up for thinking she had a chance with a washed-up detective, when the competition is clearly so beautiful that it’s totally hopeless.
Come on, people! You don’t have to use the glasses-and-hairstyle dodge when you’re contrasting entirely different characters. Argh.
Yeah, they always screw over the poor guy who spent the whole weekend making that “Janey, I’ve Been Desperately Trying To Tell You That I Am Madly In Love With You” mix tape…
I don’t recall how a-holish the desirable guy was, but I immediately thought of Ducky/Jon Cryer in PRETTY IN PINK, and how glad I was to see a better-looking-than-Molly chick coming on to him at the end. We needed a follow-up “in the future” scene to show him & her happy & prosperous, while Molly & Mr Desirable are lanquishing.
Does it help confirm the absurdity of the plot device, or is it just me, that I think a lot of the ugly ducklings look better WHILE they’re in “mousy” mode?
For me, that’s the point of going to the movies–I want to see it turn out the way it’s supposed to. I see plenty of real life injustice. I can get all of that I want to by watching the nightly news–when I watch a movie, I want the fantasy, wherein justice is always served!
Hell, I just watched a couple of early-1930s movies with Loretta Young (as the stunningly goegeous but dull and rather vapid heroine) and “second banana” Winnie Lightner as her “ugly,” goofy, brash pal. Of course, Loretta got all the guys and Winnie got the “ugly” wisecracks.
Truth is, if I were a guy, I’d much prefer funny, wisecracking Winnie (who was only “Hollywood ugly” anyway) to Loretta.
That’s why I’ve always like, “A Walk To Remember.” If I remember correctly, the popular jock fell for the loserish girl, but she didn’t become “hot.” She stayed the way she was, and he still fell in love with her.
That’s exactly the sort of thing that drives me up the wall. The popular jock is able to overcome his superficiality enough to see the ‘inner beauty’ of a character that’s supposedly a plain-looking, socially-disadvantaged person, when in reality she possesses the sort of nearly-unattainable good looks and charm that typically give people pride-of-place in the real world. It’s like the intent of the writer is completely subverted by the casting.
“Oh, no-- we can’t use a real plain-looking person for that role… the audience is supposed to like her!” :smack:
First off, it was Mandy Freaking Moore, who was hotter than all the supposedly other hot females in that movie put together. Secondly, the thing that switched the guy over from being her friend to being gaga for her was a school play where she got to dress as up a sexy bombshell, and boy did it work… the scenes where she was on stage and let her hair fall down as part of how it went were like steamy hot, and the replayed the hair falling down multiple times to hammer it home. Now, granted, she went back to dressing plain and stuff, but the character was poor, had an extremely limited wardrobe and otherwise occupied with serious stuff (I won’t spoil it for anyone who cares) and couldn’t dress like she did in that play all the time.
And as long as we’re talking that movie, if the non-ugly ugly ducking cliche weren’t bad enough, it also protrayed atheists as automatically selfish and shallow, so that somehow by doing the shallow thing and falling for the suddenly hot female he was supposed to become less shallow and Christian. I mean, it was a sweet movie and all if you don’t think about it too much, but it’s pretty small-minded and ridiculous once you flip it over and look underneath.
I’m not sure it’s related to the OP or not, but along the same lines, The Breakfast Club was pretty shallow in that, of the five kids in detention that day, the only one who doesn’t hook up is the smart kid… And what great thing does the smart kid get out of it? Why, great friends, right? Friends who are such good, caring buddies that they convince him to do all their homework for them while they are off playing kissyface.
But to get back to the nice guy who always like the girl losing out to the snobby guy who learns his lesson, sometimes they do try to toss an unrealistic out of nowhere female into the niuce guy’s lap… sometime literally, as in one (I forget which) where some totally drunk chick lands on him and kisses him or something… and the lesson there of course is that nice guys should give up going for nice girls and just bag some drunk chick. That’s also kind of similar to the main guy in Revenge of the Nerds getting with the hot chick for sex by dressing up in costume like the boyfriend and taking advantage of her, but, hey, she’s fine with that because nerds have agile tongues… Yeah, hello… but then it’s basically a wish fulfillment sex comedy, so probably shouldn’t focus on that one too much.
But I think that gets to the main problem here. People being what they are like, and especially teenagers, if these things were corrected in movies it’s likely nobody would watch them.
The Last American Virgin always fucks me up. That is real life, man. Tear your heart out and crap in your gaping, sucking, chesthole reality. That’s the epitome of this genre, that’s the real formula.
But then they considered our freak flags and gave us Garden State, so times they are a changing…
