{"id":6111,"date":"2010-12-17T21:29:23","date_gmt":"2010-12-18T01:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=6111"},"modified":"2010-12-17T21:29:23","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T01:29:23","slug":"how-do-you-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=6111","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A visual motif is supposed to be used to express a feeling that is never overtly expressed by the characters, revealing something about them that they\u2019re unaware of or trying to hide. A perfect example is Tammy Metzler in the movie Election<\/em>, and the use of garbage that she either hides behind or hangs out near. Tammy tries to sabotage the school president election by encouraging the student body to vote for her because her first order of business would be to dismantle the student government. She also offer the suggestion that they not vote at all. Tammy does all of this to get back at her brother who is now sleeping with Tammy\u2019s Sapphic crush Lisa. Tammy isn\u2019t confused by her own lesbianism but Lisa made her feel ashamed for her honest emotions, and so Tammy views herself as an outcast, trashy by the standards of her upper middle class community.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The use of garbage perfectly exemplifies Tammy\u2019s personal worth, but I have no idea what the meaning of Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson\u2019s characters in James L. Brooks\u2019 How Do You Know<\/em> seeming obsession with very elaborate alcoholic drinks, of the bendy straw tradition. Sure, Rudd and Wilson are both courting aging softball player Reese Witherspoon (aging by the sport\u2019s tradition, but also too skinny for it), and there\u2019s supposed to be a symmetry going on. But Brooks pairs up plenty of other incidents, two different female characters raise their hands to uncharacteristically hit male characters arrogantly spouting off, two characters, Wilson and Rudd\u2019s father, played by Jack Nicholson, inexplicably live in the same building (as if rich people in Philadelphia, where the movie was shot, all lived in the same building), setting up unfulfilled farcial elements, and most egregiously, everyone in the movie talks in self-help \u201cwisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If anything, Brooks was more interested in these mantras as whole conversations in the movie are made up of such nonsense, to the point where the characters are simply robots who spout therapeutic gibberish. It overshadows what Brooks (Broadcast News, As Good As it Gets, Terms of Endearment<\/em>) does so well, which is sprinkle his overlong films with genuine wit, instead of here, where everyone\u2019s lives are lived in theory and metaphor. Rudd, being sued by the government for financial misdeeds in Nicholson\u2019s company, gets off a number of good lines, such as when he tries to avoid souring his mood and asks his father, \u201care you going to make me run from bad news?\u201d Wilson, playing a heel baseball player, offers so much honesty that he tells Witherspoon that \u201cI can\u2019t trust myself not to manipulate you,\u201d and whenever he\u2019s kind, looks alarmed that he\u2019s not behaving like a cad.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s all overwhelmed with this Mad Libs of psychobabble, with Witherspoon, Wilson, Nicholson, and Rudd all either stating outright or offering variations on the notion of \u201cI fought myself.\u201d Yes, there\u2019s an element of the film about frustration with one\u2019s own inertia and impotence. And there\u2019s the presentation of Nicholson\u2019s character as a man aware that his time is valuable precisely because it\u2019s running out. Brooks even tickles us with the notion that aging isn\u2019t just about accepting our own mortality, but narrowing our range of what we accept. But then all that goes down the drain as soon as the all-knowing wisecracking doorman character* is introduced, positing us in sitcom land (Brooks produced Taxi<\/em> and The Mary Tyler Moore Show<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Brooks\u2019 instincts are so questionable throughout How Do You Know<\/em> that he forgets to lay out seemingly important details. For about an hour, it seems like Owen Wilson is a baseball agent, and part of his interest in Witherspoon (she of the Aniston-ian potato chin) is professional, and that\u2019s why he\u2019s conflicted about treating her like a fling, instead of with respect. It\u2019s emblematic of these issues that Tony Shalhoub, sporting his Men in Black<\/em> ears<\/span><\/a>, shows up as a therapist, who at least would be a conduit for all the psychiatric masturbation, leaves a minute later. Nothing he says or does is funny or relevant, and so it just comes across as strange that you\u2019d cast a recognizable actor in such a part, unless, and this is likely, most of Shalhoub\u2019s part was cut for time.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s odd is how much How Do You Know<\/em> resembles a movie that Brooks produced, Cameron Crowe\u2019s Say Anything. Both feature a blandly handsome guy (Cusack, Rudd) dealing with the legally suspicious activity of a single father (John Mahoney, Nicholson) while in pursuit of a women whom he perceives as out of his league. In both cases, the criminal proceedings are nothing more than ill-advised, contrived obstacles to bring the lovers together, since nothing they do or say would naturally end in a relationship. Say\u00a0 Anything was Crowe\u2019s first directing job, so a misstep is acceptable, even if it makes you wince. Brooks is a veteran filmmaker, so he has no excuse for the fact that How Do You Know?<\/em> is so confused.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>* The wise doorman character is so hacky that it echoes a fictional part that Bruce Campbell wrote about in Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way<\/em>. The role was of Richard Gere\u2019s practically omniscient doorman in an overpriced [fake] Mike Nichols movie. The differences between Nichols and Brooks, both formerly hip, old fogey, filmmakers desperate to remain relevant, is not so great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A visual motif is supposed to be used to express a feeling that is never overtly expressed by the characters, revealing something about them that they\u2019re unaware of or trying to hide. A perfect example is Tammy Metzler in the movie Election, and the use of garbage that she either hides behind or hangs out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[2565,3804,2216,3350,7391,393,3175,7393,7395,2564,6158,7399,267,3815,294,824,7400,1427,7401,7394,7396,239,3349,626,140,3808,7397,3756,314,1277,7389,4986,4801,7392,7398,1638,3897,7390],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}