As I mentioned before, Partner and I saw “Due Date” with Robert Downey and Zach Galifianakis on Sunday. We'd seen the previews and were anticipating a vacuous little romp, and we both like a vacuous little romp once in a while.
About fifteen minutes into the movie, however, I began to sweat. Oh no, I thought. A Problem Movie.
This is my own pet category, which I define like this: “a movie, usually a comedy, that throws the protagonist(s) into one bad situation after another, each worse than the last, until you want to climb the walls.”
There are lots of these movies. “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.” “Lost in America.” “The Out-Of-Towners.” “The In-Laws.” “Meet the Parents” (which spawned a whole Problem Movie franchise). In each one of these movies, every time you think the plot is beginning to ease up, you get hit in the face with another bag of doorknobs.
They keep making these movies, so I can only assume that people enjoy this kind of thing. For me, they're like fingernails on a blackboard.
There are less venomous variations on the formula. Take “The Hangover.” The movie begins with four dimwits, and ends with four slightly happier and more self-assured dimwits. And the problems they encounter along the way are over-the-top and funny rather than gratingly awful.
Why are Problem Movies popular? Do they make people feel better about their own lives? “Geez, look at these simps. I'm stupid and unlucky, but I'm not that stupid and unlucky.” Or are we supposed to identify with the protagonists, and nod sadly and knowingly?
Either way, I'm not on board. If a movie gives me the sense that only bad stuff happens – that things just gradually keep eroding – then no thank you, please refund my ticket.
I think this is because of my own psychological makeup. I'm a nervous person with a moderately negative outlook on life; I expect things to get worse and worse. I don't need to be reminded.
This is probably genetic. I remember my Grandma Boitano in the hospital, in 1975, the last time I saw her alive. She was lying in bed before heart surgery. I was 18 or so. “Don't worry, Grandma,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “Everything will be okay.”
She looked at me with this wondrously woeful look and said, “Oh, honey, I don't think so.”
And she was right.
And I should go see a movie that reinforces this point?
Oh, honey, I don't think so.
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