The new 'chick flick':
Even though there are none of the
stereotypical explosions, violence or
sex, What Women Want is a guy
movie. It is the fantastical story of
Mel Gibson as Nick Marshall, a
chauvinistic ad executive who loses
a big promotion to a newcomer,
Darcy McGuire, played by Helen
Hunt. Brought in to expand the
firm's accounts into the female
market, Darcy's ball-breaking
reputation precedes her. Of course,
the swaggering butt-pincher resents
being passed over, and sets out to
prove he's the better man for the job.
Through an electrocution in his
bathroom, Nick wakes up the next
morning to find he can hear women's
thoughts. This, he figures, is just the
way to undermine Darcy and take the
promotion that is rightfully his.
He begins to spend a lot of time
with her so he can gain her trust and
ultimately use it against her. He
steals her ideas while convincing her
he's doing her a favor. His charm
starts to appeal to her and suddenly
the tough ad exec is swooning. But
Nick becomes a little smitten himself.
In learning her thoughts, he starts to
learn about her, for the first time
really paying attention to the needs
of someone other than himself. He
also pays more attention to the other
women in his life—his teenage
daughter who, as a testament to his
unique parenting style, still calls him
Nick.
What started out as a blow to his
ego, because he could finally hear
what women really thought of him,
escalates into a lesson in humanity as
lie realizes what women really think
of themselves. Nick's transformation
from scoundrel to prince is supposed
to make the audience swoon too, but
it hardly seems satisfying. Nick is
not a likable guy. Even when the
sensitivity training starts, the
Horses suffers from unstable
by Deanna Symoski
a&e editor
An epic is a sweeping landscape, a
tumultuous era, and a passionate story.
Well, two out of three ain't bad, unless
it's All The Pretty Horses, and then it's
just plain awful. The remake of Connac
McCarthy's acclaimed 1992 novel of
the same name butchers the plot,
mangles the imagery and destroys the
characters so much that the only
question left is "why?"
The story focuses on John Grady
Cole, played by Matt Damon, and
Henry Thomas as Lacey Rawlins.
When Cole's ranch is sold, the two
friends escape the Texas turmoil of
1949 and embark on an adventure south
of the border, hoping to sign on at a rich,
Mexican ranch. The horseback journey
is riddled with rough weather, but the
true disturbance is Jimmy Blevins,
played by Lucas Black. The troubled
runaway, gripping his horse and gun,
hooks up with the travelers as they head
across the Rio Grande.
It is the pinnacle event on the other
side of the river that sets the story into
motion, however. Blevins' horse is
spooked off during a thunderstorm and
captured by a ranch owner in Mexico.
When he tries to retrieve what is
rightfully his, the group is separated and
Movies
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Jan. 19
*Release Date: 1/23
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_J._
Leoni and Nicolas Cage in The Family Man
(Bottom).
audience can't forget that he is
ultimately still deceiving these
women. Sincerity is lost in a
character so concerned with personal
gain that even the great
metamorphosis isn't enough to
salvage him.
While humorous, presumably
because women can hear their own
thoughts reflected on screen (the it :v
Jimny 'cause it's true thing), the film
also manages, though inadvertently,
to touch on the obvious dissonance
of women's roles. Darcy isn't the
beast everyone thinks she is, although
the two friends continue on to find work
in their newfound Heaven.
The boys are picked up by a wealthy
rancher with a love of horses. Cole's
own expertise hastens his journey into
the good life, and gives him the
opportunity to meet A lejandra, the
owner's beautiful daughter played by
Penelope Cruz. The two fall in love,
but are forbidden to be together, so
when word of an American boy's
capture for murder makes its way to the
ranch, Cole and Rawlins are
immediately fingered as accomplices
and sent to prison.
Now who wouldn't want to see this
movie'? Certainly I would, but
unfortunately this is not the movie I
saw. The movie I saw was the fast-food
version of the sweepinv, McCarthy tale.
Why Billy Bob Thornton chose to
disillusion a perfectly willing audience
with strange, even Tarantino-esque,
shots of horses implies something about
the sketchiness of the plot. Obviously
those were his artsy portrayals of scenes
in McCarthy's book, although they add
nothing to an already uncertain piece
of filmmaking. The symbolism of the
horse lays somewhere in the title and
at the end, but so much story is
abandoned that what is left only
contributes to mass confusion.
In fact nothing about the film serves
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What men want and what
women will settle for
that reputation gets her
the job. In fact, she
reveals the side of her
that is searching for the
illusive balance
between love and work,
and that vulnerability
ultimately gets her
fired. In a subtle way,
the film suggests that
what women want has
to be one or the other.
The "Nicks" of the
world won't let them be
both.
And this is the guy
Darcy falls for, the guy
who sabotaged her
confidence then steals
her job. It is here the
whole movie takes on
an air of
condescension.
But all this
pandering to and
stroking of the male
ego does serve a
purpose. What Women
Want is just one of a
new breed of films that
looks like a chic flick,
but ultimately caters to
men. In the same way
that The Family Man
and Bounce takes the successful
man's man and shows him the
wonder of domestic life, What
Ifinnen Want takes the macho hot shot
and shows him the wonder of love.
It is all about reformation (perhaps a
woman's fantasy), that illustrates to
men all they could be missing without
the glow of compromise. Now they,
too, are struggling for a balance.
Mel Gibson, usually charming and
a little mischievous, looks old here.
Perhaps not physically, so much as
the way creepy men in a bar look old
on a Saturday night. His machismo
to move the plot—not the shallow
characters, and certainly not the
dialogue, used sparsely and taken
conspicuously right off McCarthy's
page. Instead, the look is employed to
take the place of essential
communication, at least between Cole
and Alejandra. Beyond a few pieces of
pointless banter, the two spend most of
the film looking at each other. She is
supposed to be exotic and dangerous;
he is supposed to be loyal and
honorable, but together they are nothing
more than silhouettes of McCarthy's
originals. Even their passionate love
is a mystery, since the audience is given
no grounds on which to base it. The
film here, as it does in many places, tells
the story rather than shows it. We don't
know why he loves her, or what's more,
why he risks his life to be with her. We
just know that he does, and that's not
enough.
The love story contends with the
most
,superficial relationship, but
indeed all the relationships under
Thornton's misdirection become
nothing more than absent background.
Cole and Lacey, best friends for years,
speak like forced acquaintances at hest
and seem to recede in the face of danger
not into their friendship, but into
themselves. Alejandra and her father,
allegedly very close, lack any bond at
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by Deanna Symoski
and good ol' boy mentality are so
extreme that one forgets he is a suave
actor and starts to think of him as the
friend of your grandfather who
smokes stogies and refers to women
as "broads." My utter disdain for
Nick simply shows, however, the
infinite ability of Gibson. To make
himself so reprehensible and
ultimately unattractive, illustrates his
subtle mastery of the twinkle in his
eye.
Helen Hunt is appropriately cast as
the no-nonsense business woman
who struggles for the marriage of love
and work. For most of the film, she
is savvy with just enough self-doubt
to make her real. Both admirable and
believable, she weaves Darcy into the
icon of working women. If only the
story had ended there. Through no
fault of her own, Hunt is forced to
make a metomorphosis of her own at
the end of the film—she goes from
strong and sensible to weak and way
too forgiving. By the end, women
like Darcy and what they really want
is for her to tell this loser to hit the
road. However, Hollywood still
thinks the only satisfying ending is
the one that employs happily ever
after, so what we end up with is a
hypocritical romance that sort of lets
women down and gives men the idea
Darcy's better for it.
The romance here is an insincere
remake of Bogey and Bacall with the
smokescreen of a Sinatra soundtrack.
If director Nancy Meyers really knew
what women want, she'd understand
that it wasn't a film about a ruthless
ladykiller who can lie, cheat and steal
his way to the top and still get the girl
he clobbered to get there. Like the
story itself, the film appears to
celebrate women, but all the while
dismisses them in an attempt to lure
men. In this day and age, that is just
plain insulting.
direction
all. She , says she broke her father's
heart by being with Cole, but the
audience is never given the opportunity
to see why she cares. There is no drive
for passion or despair, or for any
emotion in between.
In fact, the whole film is exactly
that—emotionless. Except for an
optimistic performance from Damon,
who to be fair, is given the most
opportunity for range in this
compressed film, the acting is as lifeless
as the script. Combined, these
detriments make for an all around
disappointing film, about which I can
find no compliments. Not even the
music was satisfying, as a frenetic
mariachi blend served only to further
frustrate an already hostile crowd.
Why Damon signed on to this
probably had something to do with the
potential of the film. Why the script
('as so poorly written may have been
due to time constraints and a
misunderstanding of the material. Why
Billy Bob Thornton chose to dismantle
a perfectly decent idea with enigmatic
styling, well maybe he thought he was
adding something. But of all the
questions I'm left asking about this
travesty of an adaptation, the one that I
keep asking is why didn't any of them
notice. The rest of us certainly did.
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To Go
by Erin McCarty
The Dating
Reality TV makes mockery of
love...and humanity
It started with on-line voyeurism, that delightful little trend that allowed
starving college students to make their fortune by allowing the peeping
toms of the world to view their every move over the Internet. An under
ground movement of sorts, voyeurism never really took off until it had hit the
television. With the resurgence in the popularity of game shows, a door was
opened for the emergence of reality television. Every good story needs con
flict because it's downright boring without it. Solution? Introduce an objec
tive and place obstacles in the way of that objective. What makes it interest
ing is how the volunteer guinea pigs react to their unusual situation.
This past summer, the world held its breath to find out which of the sixteen
Survivors would live up to that title. "Voted off the island" became a part of
the cultural vernacular as the Highlander mantra of "in the end, there can only
be one" became ever more crucial to the dynamics of the show. And that one,
it turned out, wormed his way to the one million through careful trickery and
manipulation. The ridiculous games that were played in order to gain immu
nity had absolutely nothing to do with real survival, and the very notion that
each player was trying to do away with the others belies the very manner by
which people in such situations do survive: cooperation. As for what would
happen to a lone person in such a situation, just take a look at Castaway to see
what hard work and ingenuity would be required simply to stay alive. I sus
pect that Kelly Wigglesworth and Rudy Boesch are the only two who would
last long on their own.
As absurd as Survivor was, the best is yet to come. Survivor 11, which
begins to air January 28, is set in the Australian outback. Once again there
will be sixteen people split up into two teams and battling for the big prize,
facing natural hardships as well as those set forth by the game. The Mole
involves ten people, all of whom are supposed to work together to perform
difficult and often dangerous tasks. The trouble here is that one of the ten is a
"mole" who will attempt to sabotage each operation. Which contestants will
remain for the next installment is determined by a quiz made up of questions
pertaining to the mole; the player with the lowest score is out.
Add finally, the one that puts them all to shame. Temptation Island, Fox's
heavily advertised addition to the genre, follows four couples who claim to be
committed. Fox sets out to prove them wrong by separating them and sur
rounding them with gorgeous members of the opposite sex. Not only do the
contestants have to deal with the presence of these tempters and temptresses
for two weeks, they are actually required to date them. These dates are, of
course, captured on film, and the other half of the couple may then choose to
view the tape as a proof of fidelity or lack thereof.
Haven't we learned anything from Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? Love
is not a game. To trivialize it by offering a husband as a game show prize or
by splitting up couples and encouraging them to be unfaithful borders on the
obscene. When watching budding couples destroy their love by fooling around
with voluptuous women and hunky men is the supreme entertainment avail
able on television, I don't think that speaks too highly of the networks or of us
as the viewers.
Reality television is telling its viewers to throw caution to the wind and do
whatever feels right or whatever is required to get ahead in life, not taking
into consideration who we hurt in the process. As a commercial for Survivor
II so aptly states, you've got to play to win and don't let your conscience get
in the way. Great message we're getting here, isn't it?
Will reality television last? Frankly, I doubt it. Most of the people I know
who tuned into Survivor with mild interest now have no interest in checking
out the new offerings. They found that the episodes were largely boring, and
when the contestants were doing something interesting, it wasn't anything
that represented real life. No one in civilized society would dine on fried rat;
no one marooned on an island would derive any benefit from standing for
hours with his hand on a statue. Either way, it doesn't work.
But most important, a society in which people structure their lives around
stabbing one another in the back would never survive. Thankfully for us, this
is not the reality we face in our society, and I can't imagine that such a situa
tion would be anyone's fantasy. The state of being I see when I look at the
presented reality in reality television is a nightmare.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 2001
Game: