Kudos to my friend Skye. She is my most moviegoing friend, and she has now seen all TEN Oscar Best Picture Nominees! And she still made time to see two other movies with me in the past couple weeks.
Here’s my little Table O’ Comparison between Just Go With It and Blue Valentine. Two movies designed for completely different audiences… but I think it’s fair to say we enjoyed both.
| Just Go With It
|
Blue Valentine |
| Principal actors I tend to enjoy (Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston) | Principal actors I tend to enjoy (Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling – who, you may remember, is on my list) |
| 19% on the Tomatometer | 88% on the Tomatometer |
| 77% Audience “liked it” rating | 80% Audience “liked it” rating |
| Moments that made me chuckle | Moments that made me chuckle |
| Moments that made me groan with cheesiness | Moments that made me wince with reality |
| Sweet but formulaic father-figure/child moments | Sweet and very natural father/child moments |
| Sweet but formulaic romance, with conventional arguments thrown in | Sweet and original romance, with all-too-real relationship frustration thrown in |
| Winsome child actors whose characters also act (with fake accents!) | Winsome child actor who probably is not really acting at all, just being her cute self |
| Goofy supporting characters | Upsetting supporting characters |
| Stunningly gorgeous Hawaiian scenery | Stunningly awful “futuristic” hotel room |
| Mild references to sex taking place | Actual sex taking place |
| Eye candy in the form of bikini-clad females (holy cow, Jennifer looks amazing) | Eye candy in the form of nudity (including Michelle’s nipples) |
| Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman “hula” dancing | Michelle Williams tap dancing |
| Adam Sandler and Dave Matthews not singing at all | Ryan Gosling singing and playing the… was it a ukulele? |
| Preposterous resuscitation of a sheep | Non-resuscitation of a dog |
| Some screamingly contrived scenes | Some way-too-authentic (and even improvised) scenes |
| Predictable, wrapped-up, happy ending | Unraveled, uncertain, unhappy ending |
| Sincere performances I enjoyed | Sincere performances I enjoyed |
| To sum up: A silly, fun movie that we did not find 19%-worthy-terrible – after all, you don’t go to an Adam Sandler flick for great cinema, you go for pure, goofball escapism. And you get it. | To sum up: A genuine, rather depressing movie full of moments that make you fidget, they’re so uncomfortably real. Deeply layered characters I found myself pondering afterwards. |
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Aren’t you impressed with our cinematic flexibility? We are proud to be non-picky and mostly non-critical. It means we have more fun.
***
Well, you know me – low standards. That being said I did enjoy these movies. The only problem is that someone decided that Ryan Gosling should not look like his fine self for more than half the movie!
Well… he looked sorta like himself. Shoulda lost the glasses though.