Meg Ryan's new film with Tom Hank's son, My Mom's New Boyfriend, is a romantic comedy. The plot is fairly predictable and far from original. The former, you'll see when you see the film. As to the unoriginality, here's an example: art thieves repeatedly triggering the museum alarm trying to fool the police and guards into thinking that the alarm system was faulty and should be deactivated is an idea at least as old as Audrey Hepburn's 1966 How to Steal A Million. And there seems to be a consensus that Meg would have looked better without all the botox and facelifts, Colin Hanks can't act, and Antonio Banderas's shining role is not enough to save the movie. After all, the film didn't even make it to the cinemas in the U.K. or the U.S.. However, it is sufficiently entertaining for a Friday evening, at least to me.
Enough talking about the plot or acting. No need to be as critical as the pros not least because I don't make my living on being (harshly) critical. I did laugh a lot during the film, and I liked one moment in particular: when the messy, devastated, and hugely overweighted Marty Durand (Meg Ryan) was mistaken for a bum by a passerby at the airport, who threw a quarter into her coffee cup. We all know what would happen next: she quit the perpetual junk food eating, soda drinking and cigarette smoking, got her life back together, took good care of herself while her surrogate-husband son was away, and turned into this slender, sexy mid-aged woman (with a little help from cosmetic surgeons, of course) who would date a bunch of men with a wide age range at the same time.
Basically, that quarter saved Marty's life more than what a quarter could do to any real bums. The exact moment it hit the bottom of Marty's cup, Marty was hit by the realisation that this couldn't have been the life she wanted and she could have done so much better than being obese, wasted and clingy all the time. She needed drastic changes in her lifestyle, and she pulled it off. In fact, even the name "Marty" was part of the reform. It was "Martha" before. Martha wanted a complete breakaway from her old life, and a more masculine, independent-sounding "Marty" would be a perfect new label.
That's really nice. Call it the butterfly effect -- you never know how far the ripples of your seemingly insignificant choices can go. And it's lucky to have someone poking you when you need a poke. Newly born hottie Marty owes her life to her own willpower as well as that stranger who happened to have a quarter in his hand at the time.
I wish I could have such a moment to quit my laziness and internet addiction and shed a couple of pounds without the help of cosmetic surgery. Sadly, I don't think I have the necessary willpower anyway.
Enough talking about the plot or acting. No need to be as critical as the pros not least because I don't make my living on being (harshly) critical. I did laugh a lot during the film, and I liked one moment in particular: when the messy, devastated, and hugely overweighted Marty Durand (Meg Ryan) was mistaken for a bum by a passerby at the airport, who threw a quarter into her coffee cup. We all know what would happen next: she quit the perpetual junk food eating, soda drinking and cigarette smoking, got her life back together, took good care of herself while her surrogate-husband son was away, and turned into this slender, sexy mid-aged woman (with a little help from cosmetic surgeons, of course) who would date a bunch of men with a wide age range at the same time.
Basically, that quarter saved Marty's life more than what a quarter could do to any real bums. The exact moment it hit the bottom of Marty's cup, Marty was hit by the realisation that this couldn't have been the life she wanted and she could have done so much better than being obese, wasted and clingy all the time. She needed drastic changes in her lifestyle, and she pulled it off. In fact, even the name "Marty" was part of the reform. It was "Martha" before. Martha wanted a complete breakaway from her old life, and a more masculine, independent-sounding "Marty" would be a perfect new label.
That's really nice. Call it the butterfly effect -- you never know how far the ripples of your seemingly insignificant choices can go. And it's lucky to have someone poking you when you need a poke. Newly born hottie Marty owes her life to her own willpower as well as that stranger who happened to have a quarter in his hand at the time.
I wish I could have such a moment to quit my laziness and internet addiction and shed a couple of pounds without the help of cosmetic surgery. Sadly, I don't think I have the necessary willpower anyway.
