Destination Wedding

Pam's review was succinct, and uttered as soon as the credits rolled:

"God, That was tedious!"

She asked Perry (our dog), "Wasn't that tedious?" And Perry did not disagree.

I had not thought of it that way, but yes, this RomCom was as tedious as it was predictable.

And yet... And yet, I said, I can maybe write just a bit more about it.

Image: IMDb

We have written quite a bit on this blog about Our Noni's long comeback. Following her very public shoplifting conviction, she took a lot of roles that we deemed beneath her. When she finally re-emerged, it took her some while to make the transition from her angsty adolescent persona to something more appropriate to her age (and ours -- she is 8 years younger than we are, but gaining on us).

She rediscovers her teenage cynic as Lindsay, a profoundly reluctant wedding guest, who falls in with Frank, who is equally reluctant and even more cynical. A dozen people are credited in this film, but only these two have speaking roles. (Four additional actors deserve credit in our opinion -- the passengers seated directly in front of Lindsay and Frank who never even flinch at their antics.)

Remarkably, our protagonists are shown at the wedding and all of the pre- and post- doings that have become standard in certain circles -- without their presence being noticed by anybody in the wedding party.

In lieu of direct interaction with the wedding's participants, the audience is treated to 90 minutes of patter about the wedding and related topics. At times, Lindsay and Frank echo Veronica and J.D., cloaking their growing romantic attraction in witty banter about the absurdity of the romance. At other times, they are channeling the front-row gang of Mystery Science Theater, popping off witty one-liners at the expense of those in the main show. This includes ageism, homophobia, transphobia, and inappropriate language regarding intersex individuals.

Some of the wit is genuinely witty, but the overall effect is tiresome, as the writers laboriously move through the inevitable three steps of any romantic comedy produced for a U.S. audience.

The IMDb entry mentions that this was filmed in ten days. That seems about right for what was essentially a two-person play, long on banter and short on plot or character development.

Final Verdict: one croquet ball

The Dilemma

If you find out your best friend's wife is cheating on him do you tell him? What if you were working together on a big testosterone-laden car development project for Chrysler and the whole thing would collapse if he found out? What if you weren't exactly sure what the "bro-code" said on the subject? Kevin James (Nick, the cuckold) and Vince Vaughn (Ronny, the friend) star in this awful bro-fest with Our Winona playing Geneva the cheating wife. This one was so bad not even Queen Latifa (in a supporting role) or Ron Howard (as director) could save it.

The movie follows Ronny as he tries to get evidence of Geneva's affair to give to Nick, and how this obsession effects his personal life, and his own romantic relationship. There is only the slightest exploration of what might cause a woman in a 20-year marriage to have an affair. This comedy is decidedly not funny, and in the end we all the the valuable lesson that no matter what concerns there might be about a relationship it can all be fixed with a big shiny engagement ring.

To find out what the experts say on the subject of "Should I tell" read this column from The New York Times' Ethicist

James adds: Pam describes our annoyance with the movie well, but we both agree that it "merits" two croquet balls. So what makes it not quite a complete failure? Some of the banter between Kevin James and Vince Vaughn in the first half is actually funny, or at least amusing. But as the movie begins to revolve around the "bro-code" halfway through, it became quite tiresome and somewhat offensive..

Final Verdict: Two Croquet Balls ("Must be one of her comebacks." Note that this is a step below "Good enough for non-fans.")

Sex and Death 101

As the title and the poster art imply, this is Noni in a smoldering role -- a most fatale of femmes -- but she is not given quite enough room to make this film her own.

Roderick Blank (Simon Baker) is, for reasons never made clear, fated to bed 101 women over the course of his life, while an unknown number of men around the world are fated to die at the conclusion of trysts with a mysterious woman. The fates are personified by three men in grey suits, whom Blank pesters endlessly for details about what will happen next and what it all means.

Eventually we realize that the paths of Gillian De Raisx (a.k.a. Death Nell, a.k.a. Our Noni) are destined to cross, but not before Baker's character exhausts every clichéd male fantasy in the book with impunity and abandon.

A few moments of introspection and many moments of cleverness make this film a bit better than its premise deserves, but not a lot better. For our final verdict, we had to review our standards carefully. This is good enough for non-fans, but does not quite reach the second tier of Noni's work.

Final verdict: three croquet balls.

Zoolander - Noni as Anonymous Groupie

I doubt we would have ever watched this very funny movie if we hadn't discovered that Our Winona has an un-credited role in it. We're not sure why she didn't even get billing as "herself" as so many other cameos did. She actually had a small speaking part, where so many others who did get credit did not. (James offers this guess: this was apparently filmed before her shoplifting arrest and released after. Of course, plenty of people with much more serious rap sheets appear in film credits all the time.)

"so courageous"

This cult film features Ben Stiller as Derek Zoolander, an empty-headed male model who discovers that he has been brainwashed into killing the Prime Minister of Malaysia. With the help of a reporter from Time magazine -- Marcia Brady look-alike Matilda Jeffries (Christine Taylor) -- and his rival Hansel (Owen Wilson), Zoolander tries to thwart the assassination attempt instead. Will Farrell has a relatively small but delicious role, leading us to have our annual viewing of Elf right after this show.

This is a pretty goofy movie - very funny at a sophomoric level, but not to be taken for anything else, aside from a very light brush with social justice in the very beginning of the film. A red-carpet emcee dismisses concerns about "ugly protesters bothering beautiful people" over slave labor in the fashion industry, but this is not a major theme of the film.

Final Verdict: Four Croquet Balls

The Darwin Awards

Our Hero falls hard for Our Noni

Our Winona costars with Joseph Fiennes as investigators helping an insurance company to identify patterns that might lead their customers to untimely and highly unusual deaths in The Darwin Awards. This is the relatively weak plot device that frames what is essentially a marathon of urban-legend vignettes. Nonetheless, it works as light entertainment and is probably Noni's most successful romantic comedy.

Viewers can enjoy the ride, as it were, and then explore Snopes to see which of the film's strange-but-plausible stories is actually true.

We rate films for this blog strictly on the basis of Winona Ryder's performance. We both found this one to be successful.

Final verdict: Four croquet balls

Lagniappe

The film brings to mind Dumb Ways to Die, public-service announcement with a catchy tune and a morbid sense of humor that has been viewed over 90,000,000 times on YouTube.

Staying Cool

Maybe it is just an indication of how much our recent viewing of The Last Word had lowered our expectations, but this film was a bit more fun, with at least a few clever bits in the writing.

Henry McCarthy (Mark Polish) is an author of low-brow nonfiction who attempts to Stay Cool as he returns to his high school as a commencement speaker. He attends classes and events for several days in an effort to "reconnect" after almost two decades away from school. Decidedly low-key antics ensue.

Our Noni is Scarlett Smith, Henry's old flame, though the romance never burns bright enough to warrant the use of her fiery first name. Although Henry pursues her early in the film, he is equally interested in Shasta, a flirtatious student played by Hilary Duff. She pursues Henry as he pursues Scarlet, but nobody involved seems to realize that a love triangle has been formed. Henry simply drifts back and forth between the two in alternating scenes. It was actually rather refreshing to see nothing come of this triangle. There was no stupid scene in which one of the women involved "discovers" Henry with the other woman, and then makes the type of ugly face that movie directors think women make when they see such, which is then followed by the woman not talking to the guy for a long time, then coming back around to him in the end. None of that happened. It was also pleasing to see Duff's character played with more agency than one would normally expect in a film about high school hi jinx.

Some tension does develop between Henry and Scarlett's Neanderthal old boyfriend Brad. Her ex is as overplayed as is Henry's gay friend, known simply as "Big Girl." Chevy Chase as Principal Marshall is the only character to develop beyond a single dimension, or at least to play his single dimension with some imagination.

The film does have a couple of small brushes with relevance. Watching this during commencement season here in the Boston area, we were interested in the school administration's attempts to pre-censor Henry's speech. Student-led protests have led to a few cancellations in our area, for politics rather than prurience. It is during a "safety drill" in the library that Henry learns -- to his only slight dismay -- that preparations for active shooters have become routine in schools. Both issues are touched upon only lightly, though, as this film does not stray far at all from a predictable path.

"The library is still a sanctuary for the socially challenged."

Even the disparagement of the library is clichéd, though we can thank the writer for not putting any librarians in glasses and tight hair so that we could see them magically unfurled later in the film.

Final verdict: The high side of three croquet balls; a good-enough diversion for non-fans and better than some of the other mediocre works that characterize Noni's work in the decade of the Aughts.

Mr. Deeds

When this movie first came out in 2002 we were torn about watching it because as much as we enjoyed watching Winona Ryder films we really didn't like Adam Sandler's early goofball films. Eventually we succumbed, and only vaguely remembered having seen this before when we watched it again over the weekend - a typical rom-com with no surprises. Our Winona plays Babe Bennett, a tabloid television journalist who goes undercover as Pam Dawson (a school nurse) in order to get a story on Longfellow Deeds (Sandler), the unexpected heir to a multi-billion dollar fortune. Babe pretends to woo Deeds, then falls for him, is found out as a fraud, and the usual romantic comedy archetype ensues.

Final verdict: Three croquet balls: