Day 3 of Oscars Preview: Valentine's Day


THE YEAR IN FORMULA ROM-COM:
Hollywood mercifully eased off this pedal this year. It may be that they’ve run out of ideas, or it may be that they have run out of dated catch phrases like “Friends With Benefits” on which to hang another sorority sister, focus-tested script. For this, we can thank texting shorthand…no one has the balls to title their movie “Sexting” or “LOL BFF.” Yet. We’ll get there about the time texting gets replaced by something else.

I have to be honest – it took 15 minutes of internet research to establish that No Strings Attached and Friends With Benefits were, indeed, two different movies. I thought one was the tagline for the other.

I’m still skeptical. Here are the elevator pitches for both:

“While trying to avoid the clichés of Hollywood romantic comedies, Dylan and Jamie soon discover however that adding the act of sex to their friendship does lead to complications.”

“A guy and girl try to keep their relationship strictly physical, but it's not long before they learn that they want something more.”

I rest my case.

MOST TOLERABLE ROMCOM:
Crazy Stupid Love

This movie is legitimately funny and entertaining for an hour plus, then throws in a plot twist so implausible that disbelief gets the Pete Rose ban. But it doesn’t matter, because it goes right back to being funny.


KING OF QUEENS AWARD FOR MOST UNREALISTIC MOVIE RELATIONSHIP:
Rio – Cartoon lame-parrot and Cartoon Hannah Parrot
Zookeeper – The King Himself & Rosario Dawson & Leslie Bibb
Transformers: Dark of the Moon – Shia LeBeouf & Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (AFTER Megan Fox)
Horrible Bosses – Charlie Day & Jennifer Aniston

WINNER: Shia LeBeouf – Transformers 3.

As I’ve perhaps carped on in the past, modern advertising is based on the notion that all women are hot and brilliant, and that all guys are goofy shlubs that these hot, brilliant women somehow manage to tolerate. Since it’s Valentine’s Day, we’ll just assume this is true. If nothing else, it confirms both gender’s world view. It’s what brings unfairly hot women to George Costanza’s doorstep. It’s what sells paper towels for hot, brilliant house wives to clean up after their idiot husbands. It’s what made Denise Richards a nuclear scientist named Christmas in a Bond flick. Even Chris Farley in Tommy Boy went to this well.

No form of entertainment better captured this than The King of Queens. Indeed, the King of Queens continues to dial this up, pretending to have dated both Leslie Bibb and Rosario Dawson in Zookeeper. But he can’t win because Rosario Dawson is a serial offender on this front; at a certain point you have to wonder if she’s hot. Jennifer Aniston and Charlie Day never seal the deal, because ultimately Aniston is crazy…in the movie. And anything can happen in a cartoon. We’re left to believe that Shia LeBoof moves from Megan Fox to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Michael Bay just can’t help himself.