Ah, Valentine’s Day. A day for your girlfriend to force you to buy her shit because otherwise you don’t “love her enough.” And if buying roses, stuffed animals and Valentine’s Day cards that are so saccharine they give you diabetes just by looking at them weren’t emasculating enough, there’s still the dreaded romantic comedy. And these next three films are so bad, viewing them is classified by the Geneva Convention as “cruel and unusual punishment.” I would rather be waterboarded while my balls get electrocuted than watch these movies again:
“Good Luck Chuck”:
You only need to hear two words to understand the pain that is this movie: Dane. Cook. I’d rather get ear-fucked by the spiked dildo from “Se7en” than listen to his stand-up again. Pictures of starving children in Africa are funnier than Dane Cook. But even worse is the plot of the film itself. It concerns a guy who, after a girl has a one-night stand with him, she finds her true love. Once he finds a girl he likes, he “comically” avoids having sex with her so she won’t leave him and find true love. Ho. ly. Shit. That is such a stupid concept, I think I’ve lost at least 10 IQ points typing it out. So what do we have here in terms of romance? Jessica Alba (the romantic interest) and Dane Cook have so little chemistry that when they kiss it looks like they’re Luke and Leia, only less sexy. And the comedy? Unless fucking fat chicks that make Jabba the Hutt look like Heidi Klum is your idea of funny, then you’ll be fine missing this one. For the rest of us (with a high school education), you’re better off watching a snuff film, because at least then it’d less psychologically scarring. HILARIOUS! If you’re a mentally-challenged four-year-old.
“Gigli”:
Ah, the infamous “Gigli.” The box office bomb that rivals the likes of “Ishtar,” “Hudson Hawk” and “The Adventures of Pluto Nash.” Does it live up to its reputation? Yes, yes it does. And then some. Describing this film is like describing my ex-girlfriend: schizophrenic, violent, doesn’t know what it means to be a lesbian, and has humping retards inside of it. Let me explain. The film is about a low-level mob thug, the titular Gigli (Affleck) who kidnaps a mentally-challenged teen obsessed with sex and “making his penis sneeze” (actual quote) with the help of a lesbian hit-woman played by Jennifer Lopez. Over the course they learn to come together … and yes, Gigli hooks up with Lopez in a way that takes sexual politics back at least 30 years (girls are only lesbian until they meet the right guy, obviously). Not only that, but this film is violent. It’s not just rated R because you have to see Ben Affleck’s face for two hours (at least, that’s not the only reason). There are cut-off fingers, bludgeoning, bloody deaths — this film has a more severe personality disorder than Norman Bates. And at least Norman Bates treated women with some respect.
“Hottie & the Nottie”:
Yes. This happened. Paris Hilton starred in a movie in which she’s the “hot,” “virtuous” friend who won’t date or have sex with the main character unless he gets her “nottie” (read: “comically” ugly) friend a date. Notice all those sarcastic quotation marks? That’s because everything in this movie is full of irony. For one thing, calling Paris Hilton hot is like calling John Goodman anorexic or Bill O’Reilly pleasant. She looks like a Barbie doll that got melted by a vengeful younger brother with a magnifying glass before being thrown face-first into a garbage disposal. And virtuous? Look, I know this is a movie and real life doesn’t come into it, but an actress has to be believable, and Hilton is about as believable as Fox News claiming it’s “Fair and Balanced.” Then there is the “nottie” — a term that is trying so hard to be clever that it ends up coming off exactly like its star, completely vapid — where most of the “comedy” (there I go again) comes from. It’s just endless scenes of how she has yellow teeth, uncut nails, a unibrow, pimples… and somehow this is supposed to make us laugh. But the worst part about this film is its message. It’s the classic “she was beautiful all along” tale, a variation of the pulling the ponytail down and taking off the glasses routine. And it’s just all so… shallow. Which is surprising coming from a Paris Hilton film. It essentially teaches girls the only way to find true love is to be objectively beautiful, or the ability to be. And while that’s indeed true, do we really want that in our escapist entertainment?
And that’s the worst of the worst. Trust me, there’s more where that came from. But during this month of love, if you’re girlfriend forces you to watch a romantic comedy, you know which ones to avoid. And if you can’t? Well, do you really want to date someone who finds these films entertaining anyway?
