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I recently moved back to New York after being gone for most of the year. In the time that I was gone, bed bugs decided to invade the city. Last summer they were everywhere. Now maybe they are still everywhere but people aren’t talking about them as much. I think they are pretending that the situation got taken care of. They are pulling a bit of an Anne Hathaway at the end of the Oscars this year. “Everything is fine. It’s FINE.”
What people have seemed to stop doing is going to the movies. I keep asking people to go with me and they refuse. They’ve conceded the entire cinematic experience to the bedbugs; that appears to be the compromise. I didn’t really understand where they were coming from until I went to the movies last week and saw a film that was so not getting bedbugs over that I finally got it. That film was called: happythankyoumoreplease. I don’t know if I’m supposed to capitalize the first word in a title like that.
happythankyoumoreplease was written and directed by Josh Radnor, one of the stars of “How I Met Your Mother.” It turns out there is more than one way for a star of a CBS sitcom to produce a trainwreck.
Radnor plays Sam Wexlor, aspiring novelist. In the beginning of the movie, he is about to meet with a very important publisher. Problem is, he finds a little African American boy, Rasheen, on the subway on the way to the meeting. He has no choice to take him along and keep him. They walk along the streets of New York high fiving. They pass a bar and see a red-headed girl and decide to go in and flirt with her. Her name is Mississippi. She’s a lounge singer. Sam takes Rasheen home and shows him the couch is. That’s where Rasheen lives now. They go to Sam’s best friend’s house for a party. It turns out she has Alopecia. You know this because it is an Alopecia Awareness themed party. She wants to talk to all her friends who she has known for years about why she doesn’t have any eyebrows and wears scarves on her head everyday. Rasheen eats some cookies. Zoe Kazan wanders in. In the movie she’s dating the Ziggy’s cousin from Season Two of the Wire. In real life, she’s dating Paul Dano. At this point I began to get distracted by the fact that Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano have strikingly similar shaped heads.
Sam goes on a date with Mississippi. He makes her sign a contract so she will sleep with him. Rasheen turns out to be an art prodigy. Buster from Arrested Development has a crush on the Alopecia suffering best friend but she’s she thinks she’s bald enough for the both of them and tries to let him down gently. Zoe Kazan goes to see a Woody Allen movie with her boyfriend. Then she gets pregnant and at first she’s sad, but then she’s psyched. Buster talks the best friend into loving him. Sam talks Mississippi into loving him. Rasheen tells Sam he’s his best friend but then Sam accidentally returns him to the child welfare office.
I feel like I would’ve gone easier on this film if it weren’t for what Josh Radnor wrote on the Huffington Post, explaining why you are essentially wrong if you didn’t like his movie:
“At Sundance, where the movie premiered in 2010, one journalist asked me, given that the theme of the festival that year was ‘revolution,’ what was revolutionary about my ‘feel-good, crowd pleasing movie.’ What his question revealed, I think, was the strange bias that many critics and cultural tastemakers share when it comes to optimism in film:. In other words, feel-good movies are less sophisticated than feel-bad movies.
My response to his question was that given the cynicism in which much of indie film traffics, the movie is revolutionary in that it’s about love and gratitude. No matter how dark things may get in a story, I feel it’s the responsibility of the storyteller to leave the audience with at least a shred of hope.”
Radnor then goes on to cite, you know, Jonathan Franzen an example of a fellow writer who inspires this kind of hope. And then he throws in a David Foster Wallace quote. Neither of which I’m pretty sure is even allowed.
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It’s barf. Jump into barf.
Do these comments show up on google searches? If so, a lot of people with a very weird and specific fetish are going to be disappointed today because of you.
Why is this guest blogger dogging on a movie starring Gabe?
Look at the still from the trailer, and tell me that this image doesn’t support my statement.
I hate, commas.
That was more of a disappointment “no” from Gabe more than a disagreement “no” from me.
Oh thank god Starlee, when I saw the title of this post I thought you were going to talk about how great this movie was and then I wouldn’t have anything nice to say…especially because it was advertised on Videogum a while back I think most monsters were already forced to watch this garbage trailer.
You know they advertised on Videogum, right? Gabe’s gonna be maaaaaaaaaaad!
lawyersbreachofcontractsettledoutofcourt
They’re going to make him give all ten of those dollars back!
“I don’t have any money, but here are 47 Microsoft Kins.” – Gabe
“Throw in a zune and we are done here.” — Josh Radnor’s counsel.
Radnor then goes on to cite, you know, Jonathan Franzen an example of a fellow writer who inspires this kind of hope. And then he throws in a David Foster Wallace quote. Neither of which I’m pretty sure is even allowed.
That’s some Nicholas Sparks shit.
How I Met… Oh, Brother!
“This is what I write.”- Josh Radnor
I think I need something to wash this trailer from my brain:
Yeah, that’ll do.
movieawfulnausiahangmyself
sorry frank
I might be delving into old timey lurkergum here but weren’t there 500 days of summer ads up back in the summer of 2008? Which ended up eventually being in The Hunt? (pushes up nerd glasses like a nerd)
..and that was meant as a reply to facetaco. I was clearly thinking too hard about website ads from 3 years ago, and STILL ended up saying 2008 when I meant 2009.
2 years. 2 years ago.
Rootmarm, I’m upset with you because your comments caused me to remember that “The Hard Times of RJ Berger” existed.
I don’t know about anyone else but Ted Mosby’s quote “My great shame as a writer is that I’m just this suburban kid with good parents. Hardly Dickensian, you know what I’m saying?” DRIVES ME NUTS.
Many great writers (contemporary or otherwise) came from happy two-parent households and it’s apparent that such an upbringing brought no adverse effect to their writing. I hate the idea of one being ashamed of their good upbringing, even if it’s just a character in a stupid movie.
I agree, although I am fond of this Tina Fey quote, “Only in comedy is an obedient white girl from the suburbs a diversity candidate” which takes kind of a different spin on the whole thing.
I hate defending Ted Mosby, because he SUCKS, but I kinda think your last sentence is paramount, especially with you not having seen the movie (which I assume is the case).
/buzzkillgum
Obviously I agree with you that Franzen and Wallace weren’t dumpster-diving as teens and they still figured out how to write good novels.
Any good New Yorker knows that when you find an abandoned kid on the street, you drop him or her into the nearest orphan box, or “o-box” (they are on every other corner) and then call 311 to let the city know; what you don’t do is take them to work.
I mean, doesn’t everyone remember the ad campaign the city ran last year when they started installing O-boxes?
“If you find an abandoned kid, find an O-Box and lift the lid.”
I’ll show her my O-box
I don’t go in there?
Those worked fine until people started mistaking them for safe needle disposal boxes.
If I were to pick one mid-nineties alternative rock band to take care of an orphan I’ve found, I think The Offspring would be a better choice than 311.
Signed in just to upvote this, see you later!
I choose not to go to the movies in New York because the theaters are all overrun with orphans.
this thread is so funny it gave me an O-face
You know this is, like, a real thing in California right? (Well okay it’s only for newborns, so you don’t throw them in the dumpster, but still)
There was supposed to be a picture with that:
“I think, was the strange bias that many critics and cultural tastemakers share when it comes to optimism in film:. In other words, feel-good movies are less sophisticated than feel-bad movies.”
I agree with this idea. I do not agree that this idea is revolutionary.
WE HAVE A BREACH IN RULE 34! REPEAT: WE HAVE A BREACH IN RULE 34!
I saw this. It’s the movie Ted from HIMYM would make. Read: pretentious yet lovey-dovey, cloying, just all around AWFUL.
I don’t know why people are giving this movie such a hard time. It’s basically “The Pursuit of Happyness” without that pesky “Pursuit” part nobody wants to see.
Clearly, Josh Radnor is the Zach Braff of our generation.
True story: Part of this movie was filmed inside a brownstone on my block in Park Slope. I even saw Josh Radnor talking on his cell phone once.
Second true story: At the same time they were filming, my apartment had bedbugs. So as this movie was being made, I was walking back and forth, back and forth (repeat 20 more times) past the film crew so I could wash literally everything I own at “Sud’s on 8th” (sic) in scalding hot water.
Point being, sure, bedbugs may be keeping people from seeing movies. But maybe, considering that I’m pretty sure every single place on my block had bedbugs too, bedbugs will begin to stop people from <making so many movies. Or at least from making so many terrible-sounding movies, like this one.
I know exactly where and what you are talking about. EXACTLY. But no, I’m not Josh Radnor.
Free Tony Hale!
Not to be a complete nerd or anything but “He makes her sign a contract so she will sleep together” breaks some grammar rule I don’t remember the name of.
Please express your gratitude in wedgies or swirlies.
Choose Your Own Adventure:
she –> they
or
together –> with him
Or, I suppose, she could have multiple personalities, and everybody knows that some people are into this fetish of watching people with multiple personalities have sex with themselves (“that’s not a thing” “it’s a thing”).
Yecch, that font, that accursed FONT.
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