women don’t understand these crazy male things like fun, pleasure, music, or partying.

What kills me is that I’ve dated so many guys who didn’t want to go out and do anything fun.  They just wanted to sit around at home.  I’m as much of a fan of doing nothing as the next person, but I’m not getting any younger.  I want to go out and drink, listen to music, take road trips, whatever.  Maybe I just don’t have any luck or, for some reason, I just happen to attract sticks in the mud, but it sure seems like a big, fat, fucking lie that only men like to have fun and women are joykillers.

Not only are women granted god-like power, they don’t have understandable motivations, but have no desires outside of securing and controlling men.

...and shopping! The shopping montages and the newer genre of shopping movies - THAT’S what real women desire and how they have fun. dontcha know.

as much as I think that Zach Galifinakis is awesomely bizarrely funny (esp. on Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!) he makes shitty movie choices.

A-FREAKING-MEN Amanda!

(also note to Target - I’m sick of every commercial you make having EVERY woman - despite being models you haven’t seen their 21st birthday yet, be a mother. Seriously… women OTHER THAN MOTHERS shop at Target and like having cheap laundry detergent to wash their own clothes, etc. But dontcha know it’s every woman’s DREAM to be a domestic gawdess. Gag.)

When are they going to make the chick version of Harold and Kumar?

I really, really, really want to see two irresponsible loser party girls having wild and improbable adventures which are totally hilarious and quite possibly involve actions that are technically illegal. Come on. Extra points if they are in fact actually really smart women who could be successful in life, but today, they just wanna party. Extra extra points if they get to either have sex and not be shamed for it, or get to have hilarious sexual misadventures that don’t involve actually getting laid, but make it clear that the getting laid was a priority and do not shame them just for wanting to get laid. Extra extra extra extra points if they are not both white. I’ll even hand out a few points if they *are* both white and one’s a blond chick and *she’s* the stick in the mud straight guy, and the wild one who starts the whole thing is a brunette. Although that would be even funnier if the stick in the mud straight guy was Latina and the wild and crazy girl was Asian, because it would totally screw with people’s stereotypical expectations.

Come on. Someone out there has to think this movie is a good idea. What kind of budget do you really need to make a movie about two young women on a wacky road trip?

I really, really, really want to see two irresponsible loser party girls having wild and improbable adventures which are totally hilarious and quite possibly involve actions that are technically illegal.

They tried, but it really, REALLY sucked.

The book is also unusual in that the writer Kesey wasn’t a right wing reactionary, but a drug taking counter cultural type.  Kind of a paradox.

Not at all.  The women’s movement made such huge gains in the 1970s because women in the 1960s counterculture got sick of being treated like fucktoys by the counterculture’s men.  Like this infamous quote from a raucous meeting after women started complaining about being treated badly:

“Revolutionary women have a lot to contribute,” Walls said. “I’m glad to see they’re [sic] enough women around here for all the revolution. The way the women contribute is by getting laid.”

Alara, I agree with you! Was thinking about all these guy movies, and how they would never be made if the escaping protagonist was a woman with a boyfriend who wouldn’t even call out for food delivery because “she does it better!”

Sigh.

Mnem, I’d like to see the movie Alara describes that passes the Bechdel test.

I haven’t read anything else by Kesey, principally because Cuckoo’s Nest really pissed me off.  (There’s also really disgusting racism in it.)  But supposedly his other stuff is also really misogynistic.  In Cuckoo’s Nest itself (not in the movie), Chief Bromden’s mother is a harridan who destroys his father.

You know, this post is funny, because the type of movies Amanda’s describing have always irritated me too, but for opposite reasons.  I saw them as portraying men as childlike characters who need to be led around by overly dominant women to make anything of themselves.

I have to ask why filmmakers have slipped into going out of their way to create situations where their characters minimize contact with women, which means that you don’t have to cast any comic actresses.

There has to be a foil, some check and balance, to create tension. If the women in their lives wanted to act crazy, too, the movie would be very short.

In real life, guys just want to hang out in their undershorts, watching RV, balancing a can of Busch on their lap. But domesticity gives them an excuse not to.

Look at Sex in the City: four gal pals dealing with mysterious but desirable men. The only men friends they have are gay. The other men are there to create dramatic tension.

I guess they could make a male buddy movie with some lesbian pals.

Basically, the directors are constrained by convention. Women are either

One of the boys.
Mom
A desirable sex object
A desirable, yet unapproachable sex object
A partner
A bitch

I’d like to see as comic foils: One of the boys, Mom, a partner, or a bitch. (Any of these could also be lesbian.)

“But domesticity gives them an excuse not to.”

I mean, domesticity gives men an excuse to do nothing but vegetate on the couch. “We’re just going to spend a quiet evening at home.”

Mnemo, don’t forget the other buddy movie, Thelma and Louise, a very cautionary tale indeed for restless women.

I think Zack & Miri is a bad example if only because Kevin Smith 1. actually seems to have a mature outlook on women (ironic considering how juvenile his movies often are), and 2.  has the ability to pretty much do whatever he wants at this point.  He doesn’t have to suffer making movies through focus groups or marketing surveys.

I had an experience kinda like this when talking to one of my male co-workers (back when I had a job). We and a few others were eating lunch and he was talking about how he and his fiance were planning their wedding. It was going pleasantly for a while until he started making jokes about how it was such a drag talking about “wedding stuff” and how his life was going to be basically over as soon as he said “I do.” To that I replied, “If you think your life is going to be over, then don’t get married and stop bitching about it.”

He defended himself by saying that he DID want to get married but he knew he was going to be giving up some “stuff”. Once again, I told him that if there were things he didn’t want to give up then DON’T FUCKING GET MARRIED. It became a paradox in his head where he tried to justify his desire to, you know, GET MARRIED, with all the bullshit that we’re all lead to believe about married life, particularity for men, a la “Everybody (actually doesn’t) Love Raymond”.

Thanks to this website and Feministing, I pointed out to him the studies done that show it’s women’s happiness that goes down after marriage, and that marriage benefits men more than women. I was dismissed and someone quickly changed the subject.

Some of the friday the thirteenth movies had a “girls just wanna have fun theme” of course they are usually killed because of it.

Starbuck in BSG sort of seemed like marriage cramped her style.

MonkeyShines, thanks for the synopsis.  Back in college, while on my study abroad, some douche in a hostel told me to “reexamine my life” because I hadn’t seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Being drunk and being myself, I was pretty offended, but curious about why the movie was that damn important.  Well, you’ve added many pieces to the puzzle, thank you.

This whole problem with movies is why my eyes glaze over when I’m around a bunch of guys and they start talking about movies.  They never talk about anything remotely important about the film at all.

In Logan’s Run, the computer that controlled the world that kept all of the characters trapped and sated with sex and entertainment was called “Mother.” In many ways it can be seen as a condemnation of over-indulgent mother figures.

In any case, the reason why women and “goofy antics” don’t stereotypically go together is because, culturally, women are conditioned to “act mature,” while men are given a pass for—and even encouraged to—maintain their youthful goofiness and affectations. Insofar as this is changing, mass-market movies are always going to be behind the cultural curve in what they depict.

some douche in a hostel told me to “reexamine my life” because I hadn’t seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

He was trying to seem mysterious but desirable .

I need to create a mystique about myself.

Maybe this would help: Ursula, did you ever change your pseudonym a lot on a certain discussion board?

There’s also Spring Breakdown, staring Amy Poehler and Parker Posey and Rachel Dratch about women who go to a popular college spring break spot. Hilarity supposedly ensues. Haven’t seen a trailer for it but I guess we can have high hopes because there’s some nice comedy chops in there.

Once again, I told him that if there were things he didn’t want to give up then DON’T FUCKING GET MARRIED.

He wanted to have his cake, and eat it, too. He wanted to settle down, yet be able to complain about how settling down would restrict his freedoms. It was a crude play for your sympathy. You should have joked about the ol’ ball an’ chain.

women who go to a popular college spring break spot.

Where the Boys Are. It’s a female quartet who go on Spring Break. Paula Prentiss is so charming you just want to hug her. But one of the girls is seduced by a cad—that’s the cautionary tale part.

I don’t Smith’s movies are extremely juvenile, nor do I think there’s anything inherently wrong with that.  But his stuff does tend to appeal to adolescent/teenage boys and for good reason with all his shit and fart jokes.  Still it varies.  Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back—extremely juvenile.  Chasing Amy and Dogma—not so much.  In the end, I’m glad the dumb jokes appeal to the kids, because then the overall message, which is usually fairly positive, gets through.

I did feel bad for Mann’s character, because her reaction wasn’t because he went off and did fun stuff by himself, but that he didn’t want to do any fun stuff with her. And she was pretty clearly driven to harridanism by Rudd, I thought.

(Rudd’s character was right about the sex offenders, though. Those sites are only good for their intended purpose, to get people elected state representative.)

Oh, and every ‘family sitcom’ ever, “Home Improvement” being the excelsior. Maybe they were taking payoffs from more than the Office of Drug Control Policy.

WOW. I just read the Christina Hoff Sommers post and all I could think was…Is she being ironic? Then I read some of the comments. There’s one who is blaming feminists because women in their late 30’s and early 40’s were selfish in their 20’s because they didn’t “sacrifice” themselves for their family. Now, according to the commenter (who I am almost positive is a man) it must be too late for them to have a family so that means they MUST be unhappy. Where do people get this shit?

Now, according to the commenter (who I am almost positive is a man) it must be too late for them to have a family so that means they MUST be unhappy. Where do people get this shit?

The commenter really wishes that he could get pregnant and bear a child. In his mind, all male accomplishments pale by comparison—they are mere pastimes, games, really. He so desires the experience of pregnancy and childbirth that he cannot understand why a woman who could reproduce would not do so. By projecting his feelings upon women, he concludes they must be unhappy.

Call it womb envy, if you will.

Paul Rudd’s character was that of one of the world’s biggest asshole shitclown. 

He would have been the biggest had it not been for Seth Rogan’s character.

The third biggest asshole shitclown on earth was Katherine Heigl.

The closest thing to a sympathetic character in that movie was Leslie Mann.  She was trying to hold it together while being surrounded by obnoxious, self-centered asshole shitclowns.  Plus she had kids to worry about.

I feel sorry for the kids.  Paul Rudd is clearly a worthless pile of crap father, and I wouldn’t want to see how phenomenally fucked up the Heigl/Rogan kid is gonna be. 

I found that entire movie to be one massive insult to human dignity and intelligence. 

Even the pothead jokes fell flat.

“I really, really, really want to see two irresponsible loser party girls having wild and improbable adventures which are totally hilarious and quite possibly involve actions that are technically illegal.
They tried, but it really, REALLY sucked.”

Check out “Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion”. Pretty good overall, with an “ending” that has the girls offer up some serious payback to the stuck up popular types who had sneered at them all through high school.

That, plus I always felt Lisa Kudrow was one of Hollywood’s more underrated beauties, not that Mira Sorvino is any slouch, either.

These archetypical stories you are describing come from deep in our cultural unconscious. They illustrate the conflicts of an oedipal complex. Little boys want to marry their mothers but fear castration will be the result. Or you could just see it as a cautionary tale against marrying too young. Pro-birth control, as it were. The idea that a person’s youth ends when he or she gets married, however, became fiction with the advent of easy divorce. Nowadays one’s youth is not over until the child arrives. Not a bad thing if one’s youth is actually over. Big problem when it’s not.

When it comes to goofy comedies, the “advantage” of setting your story in the fictional matriarchal world—-where men have no choice but to marry, parent, and suffer—-is that the escapism means escaping women, and you don’t have to do something stupid like cast a woman in a genuinely comic role.

Gender-swapping that sentence gives a very weird effect.

Lack of humor is really the key failing in both the far right and far left movements.

Where’s your evidence for the leftist comment? I mean, this comment shows that you—-a far right nutjob—-lacks a sense of humor.  Even Monkeyshines was amused by the post. It’s funny, too, because a lot of people think having a sense of humor means shutting down your critical faculties, but in fact, shutting down your critical faculties means moving on the road to being a wingnut.  Which of course means that your sense of humor will all be shot to hell.  Have you seen right wing attempts at “comedy”?

Of course, what people often mean by, “Have a sense of humor,” especially when aimed at their intellectual superiors is this: Quit having a sense of humor that’s so dry/dark/cultured/intellectual.  Turn off your brain and watch “Everybody Loves Raymond” so that I don’t feel so bad about being so stupid.

I will grant that I’ve met the leftists with no sense of humor in my time.  But I know you haven’t, AJ, because you appear to live in a bubble, and all the new people you meet on the internet fly right past you, because your comprehension skills are that low.  If you did know anything about leftists, you’d know that Pandagon is far from a “leftist” site.  You’re just spouting off what someone else told you that you took on faith.  Which I can understand.  I’d tell you to start thinking for yourself, but that of course is as far out of your intellectual reach as graduate school physics or figuring out that you pour the milk in the bowl after the cereal. 

Where your problem is is in believing you should have an opinion.  White male privilege strikes again.  You falsely believe you have anything of value to say, because you looked at your penis and noticed it was pale.  In a sense, this isn’t your fault—-all of society tells you this, and you’re clearly too stupid to think about the problems with this assertion.  But now you have been told, and you should heed wisely.  Your belief that you should say something even though you understand nothing has led you to listen to equally moronic, loud-mouthed right wing pundits, and to echo what they say as if it were clever.  Why do you think it’s clever?  Probably because said pundits chuckle when they say things like this, a way of indicating to the morons in their audience that this is a clever gem that should be remembered and regurgitated.  I’m also aware that they tell you that liberal irritation at hearing these “clever” gems is evidence of how clever they are.  This is incorrect.  Watch people’s reaction when they hear a bad pun, and their reaction when you say something you’ve been told by Limbaugh is witty.  They are similar reactions.  What you said was offensive, primarily because it was such a bad joke. 

I’m sure you’ll take this as evidence that I have no sense of humor.  Men like you do define “sense of humor” in women as “willing to pretend that my horrible jokes are funny”.  So much the sadder for you, sweet, broken asshole. 

Wingnut disclaimer: There were many jokes in this comment. That you can’t see that should be taken as further evidence of stupidity on your part, not as evidence that vaginas and/or liberal ideology precludes making jokes.

inge, it really does go to show how bizarre the “malevolent matriarchy” premise is.  After all, the malevolent patriarchy that actually did give women no choice but to marry wasn’t all that far in the past.  And yet, the culture didn’t really see fit to give women escapist fantasies.  So it appears that escapist fantasies can not be taken as evidence that the thing you’re supposedly escaping from actually exists.

Amanda, I wonder if it’s not its very bizarreness that makes it stuff of comedies. If you gender-swap, you get a genre mismatch: The resulting story (in the [...] patriarchal world—-where women have no choice but to marry, parent, and suffer—- [...] escapism means escaping men) would not tend naturally towards comedy.

AJones: Lack of humor is really the key failing in both the far right and far left movements.

Yes, but is that relevant? Neither are you on a leftist site, nor is this a leftist topic. Yes, people deeply involved with anything, be it a person, a fandom or an ideology usually dislike humour that puts their obsession into question and prefer a type of humour that mocks the out-group and strengthens in-group bonds, but if you got into a little more detail on how that relates to romantic comedies, your post might look a little less off topic.

The resulting story (in the [...] patriarchal world—-where women have no choice but to marry, parent, and suffer—- [...] escapism means escaping men) would not tend naturally towards comedy

So, is it funny when men do it because we all know that they’re just pretending to suffer to begin with?  It’s so much fun to watch the privileged enjoy their privileges, and if women were to try it on it would have much more of a Thelma and Louise desperation?  That makes me sad.

I really would like to see films where women have as much fun as men, but given how Catherine Heigl was pilloried for saying something just as mild as that I don’t have much hope that it will be coming anytime soon.

“Romy and Michelle” is awesome.  And they win in the end!  That movie shows that you can totally pull off a buddy comedy without making the malevolent matriarchy a villain.  After all, the snotty jocks and know-it-alls of high school that grew up to vote for Bush are much more realistic and amusing villains.

The culture of this sort of film is fairly recent in film history. Even though sexism was pretty thick in the ‘30s, there were many strong woman characters who didn’t remotely fit the Malevolent Matriarchy type. Some films even showed men and women to be equal partners in a relationship. I wonder if that would be considered revolutionary today. From what I see now, men acting like little boys only to be reined in by “mommy” is a staple of television sitcoms and unfortunately I’ve seen it IRL from married couples. BTW, men acting like adolescents has a looong history in movies, and it was often the woman’s lot to (usually) acquiesce to their men’s harebrained schemes.

Hey, it’s not funny if it’s not rooted in truth.

What gets me is how many of these female-centered comedies disprove the much-uttered Hollywood myth that nobody wants to see funny women acting funny. From what I recall “Romy and Michelle” did fairly well (imdb sez $30 million), but that was 12 years ago, and it wasn’t followed by any significant attempt to make other wacky female-centered comedies. Because women are not funny, of course. Similarly, “Mean Girls” and “Baby Mama” made money but didn’t provoke any interest in female-centered comedy, and even all the hoopla about “Juno” doesn’t seem to have altered the ingrained Hollywood belief that nobody wants to see women being funny. Apparently no amount of successful female comedies will ever change their minds.

As for Leslie Mann in “Knocked Up,” I’m not sure what Apatow intended with her character. Maybe he thought she would be sympathetic, and Mann’s performance did seem to try to play her that way. But her attempts to assert herself against Paul Rudd’s disconnection from his family were so much stereotypical ways that women act “foolish” according to our society—berating their husbands, being overprotective of their children, trying and failing to hang on to their youth—that I think the audience was conditioned to see her as a controlling bitch who was spoiling Rudd’s fun.

Honestly, I’m not sure what to think. As from the trailer, it could in theory be a complete subversion:

They got out for the whole “one last night of freedom” and the whole “escape the crushing unfun that is women” cliche, because it’s what’s expected of them. They’ve seen movies, it’s what you do before you get married, a big rousing bachelor party.

But they aren’t that sort of person. They’re dorky homebodies. So their attempts at drunken revelry get entirely out of control (as opposed to the slow controlled burn of people who know what they’re doing) and they would all like nothing better but to forget the whole headache enducing experience.

But they can’t, because even while drunk, actions have consequences, and holy shit there’s a random baby. And now they have to put everything back in order as quickly and, preferably, as anonymously as possible and go back to being the sort of people who would never do anything that stupid.

This movie could entirely not be that, but I would actually enjoy that movie. And I think that’s the kind of movie that would actually work as a vehicle for Zach Galifinakis much better than typical MANcomedy.

Here’s my theory.  Not too long ago, men could expect to return from a long day at work, kick back, and yell “where’s my dinner!?” with the full support of the rest of society.  Now men are supposed to (gasp!) help around the house, and (cringe!) assist with child-rearing, and (shiver!) pick up after themselves.  Any perceived erosion of liberty from the 50s sitcom image will be perceived as being in the woman’s favor, and thus her fault.

These movies represent a cultural awakening moment, the moment when men realize that the party is over and they are going to have to contribute at the home as well as at work.  I think these feelings boil down to a question, which probably isn’t even conscious: what is a man if he has to do all the women’s work, too? 

I would also add that there is the message that some things men like to do are considered “juvenile.”  You acknowledge that aspect by saying that the women in these movies (most of which I haven’t seen, actually) “don’t understand these crazy male things like fun, pleasure, music, or partying.”  While there are plenty of cool, fun-loving women in the world, and while I agree they deserve their own movies too, this “anti-fun” attitude is out there.

My girlfriend is totally cool, understanding, fun, etc etc, but there are times when she rolls her eyes if I mention I’m going to watch baseball on tv.  This sense, sometimes verbalized, is “why would you waste your time watching men hit balls with sticks.”  Obviously my girlfriend doesn’t speak for all women, but I can understand creating a movie where the male characters want to escape any suggestion that what they want to do for fun is somehow wrong.

Anyway I hope I’m making myself clear.  I don’t want to excuse any of the attitudes in these movies, just offer some thoughts about where they are coming from.  Push the “blaspheme” button indeed

“What’s so funny about Dr. Strangelove?  We should watch Super Troopers again.”

To each their own.  Except for Super Troopers—Club Dread was the superior movie.

“My girlfriend is totally cool, understanding, fun, etc etc, but there are times when she rolls her eyes if I mention…”

Which is clearly because she has a vagina, seeing as dudes never, ever bag on hobbies they personally don’t enjoy to the point of not getting why anyone else would.  Oh, wait.

That men also make fun of men, and women, or people make fun of people in general, is not my point.  I’m talking about a specific dynamic where women dismiss men’s interests because they are considered juvenile (which they are. see also the xkcd argument above).  These filmmakers are expanding on this one particular criticism of men, and I’m confirming that this criticism is not entirely imaginary.

Does it deserve so many films and so much attention?  Heck no.  Like you say, people make fun of people all the time.  The fact that these movies are so obsessed with these trivial issues indicates to me something powerful and unconscious is going on.  That’s why I’m interested in the “why,” not just the “what.”  Thus my theory of the end-of-the-50s mentality and all.

““What’s so funny about Dr. Strangelove?  We should watch Super Troopers again.””

Funny you should ask. Check out following review here:

Classic Cold War Comedy, 29 May 2002

While this movie isn’t quite in the same league for all-out hilarity as such comedy icons as “Airplane!” or “Clerks”, it nonetheless is a classic in its own right. Quite simply, this film asks the question - what could possibly be funny about nuclear war? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. We have an Air Force general who flips out and, on his own authority, sends his bombers to attack the USSR. At his side is an RAF officer who doesn’t seem to know quite how to deal with the whole situation. On a larger scale, the president and his men are assembled in the War Room as they attempt to placate the Soviet Premier (who just happens to be drunk) in an effort to avoid Armageddon. Not that it matters, as it turns out, one lone American bomber gets through, thus triggering the Doomsday Device, and ending all life on Earth. Well, not entirely, for it seems that a mysterious Dr. Strangelove has concocted a plan in which all virile males can hide out in the nation’s deepest mineshafts and reproduce (at a ratio of ten women to each man) so as to assure the continuation of the human race despite all the radiation on the planet’s surface.

On the surface, this sounds like a recipe for a mess, yet director Stanley Kubrick makes it work. To be honest, this is really Peter Sellars’ movie; it is he who deserves the lion’s share of the credit for this film’s enduring success. For example, when I first saw this movie some 15 years ago, I had no idea that Sellars played the three leads in this film, I had him pegged only as the veddy proper British officer Lionel Mandrake, not having the slightest clue that he also played the geekish American president as well as the nutcase German scientist Dr. Strangelove. It is to Sellars’ credit that he managed to play such different characters while making each utterly convincing. In addition, much credit is due to George Scott as the bombastic General Turgison. The scenes where he stares down the president while stuffing gum in his face are definitely priceless. And, last but not least, is the Soviet ambassador DeSadeski, who alternates from being menacing to being ludicrous. There are rumors that Slim Pickens (the B-52 pilot) was never told this was a satire, and was requested to play the role straight. This I find hard to buy; anyone who recalls the part where he reads off the contents of the survival kits, which include such items as lipstick, condoms, and nylon stockings, will find it hard to believe he could do that scene with a straight face without being in on the joke. Also, there are a number of acts of sheer farce, such as when Mandrake is forced to order Col. `Bat’ Guano to shoot open a Coke machine in order to get change to phone the president to put an end to the nuclear crisis. There are some “Airplane!” style sight gags, most notably when the B-52 is flying low over Russia but its shadow is that of a World War 2 B-17. And the pacing is also dead on. At first, there is little evidence this is actually a satire, one could easily watch the first half hour or so and fully believe they were seeing a serious (albeit, rather corny and low budget) war film. But, in time, the humor builds, such that, by the end, the president and his men are contemplating the advantages of being holed up in a mineshaft with hordes of women chosen primarily for their sexually stimulating attributes when all the while Strangelove is trying (and failing) to suppress his rabid love for his `Fuehrer’.

In the final analysis, this movie has a lot going for it, but it also has its flaws. Most notably, it is politically dated. Apparently the impetus behind Gen. Ripper’s plan to attack the USSR is that he thinks the `Rooskies’ have plotted to contaminate our water supply with fluoride. I guess, back when this movie was released, people could relate since the notion of flouridization as a `Commie plot’ was popular among conspiracy theory nuts at the time, but to a modern audience, the reference just seems out of date. Finally, there are the silly names and sexual innuendo. I guess having names like General Jack Ripper and Premier Kissoff has a certain entertainment value, but quite honestly, Beavis and Butt-head came up with funnier names when they tried to join the army as Major Woody and Private Parts. And having Ripper ramble on about the loss of his precious bodily fluids was no doubt sexually risqué in the 1960’s, but by today’s standards it just seems, well, icky. But these are nitpicks. On the whole, this movie has stood the test of time and remains a classic from its era.

9/10

“Have you seen right wing attempts at “comedy”? “

Two Words - Team America, World Police

America, F*ck Yeah!

“Have you seen right wing attempts at “comedy”?”

Oh, and then there’s An American Carol starring Kelsey Grammar and Bill O’Reilly. Lampoons Mikey Moore to perfection. Audiences not only laughted, they actually cheered at the end of the movie!

PS Make by one of the guys from the movie Airplane!, so you just know this is gonna be damned funny!

” It’s “Old School”.  “

Old School sucked. Total “Animal House” clone. Reviewed it here in the Internet:

Not funny, 24 July 2004

Some things you just can’t recreate, no matter how hard you try. Woodstock, for instance. In this case, it’s “Animal House”. They can rip off (or pay homage to) the original all they want, but they just can’t recapture the spirit. Animal House worked because it was fresh and new, but this movie, made 25 years (and countless other college/party animal movies) later, just reeks of staleness and recycled ideas. In addition to swiping the central plot from “Animal House” (uptight Dean resorts to dirty tricks to drive wild fraternity off campus), it also borrows shamelessly from “Revenge of the Nerds”, “Back to School”, and a ton of other movies, such that there’s barely a single scene that isn’t borrowed in some form from an earlier movie. Take, for example, Will Ferrell shooting himself with a tranquilizer dart, which is similar to a scene where he is shot in the butt with a tranquilizer by a monkey in “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back”. It was, to put it bluntly, a lot funnier the first time around. And that applies to pretty much the entire movie. Most of it isn’t very funny, and even the parts that are, were funnier before, elsewhere.

3/10

Er. Well. ‘Audiences’ is an interesting phrase to use with “An American Carol.”
“An American Carol”: cost: $20 million. Box office gross: $1 million.
Fahrenheit 9/11: cost: $6 million. Box office gross: $124 million (theatrical, does not include DVD.)
Bowling for Columbine: Cost: $3 million. Box office gross: $22 million (theatrical only.)

Looks like the people have spoken.
Score: Moore 2, angry right-wingers nothing. Or, -$19 million.

“Jesus Christ, what is it with trolls and their romances with the copy/paste function on their computers?”

Sorry. Next time I’ll just provide a link, OK?

http://www.imdb.com/user/ur1117555/comments?order=useful&start=70

The funny thing about this notion of movies about 21st Century men looking back to a 1950s Golden Age of freedom and opportunity is that actual men of the 1950s railed against their “caged animal” status as what would later be called “success objects”, compared with the majestic authority they imagined men enjoyed in the 1890s.  They imagined themselves being squeezed dry by rapacious women who had entrapped them into marriage and would cruelly force them to, you know, work and pay out money for stupid stuff like schoolbooks and refrigerators.

And of course, in the 1890s men complained about these newfangled suffragists—excuse me, suffragettes….

um, ericjg, i beg to differ on your assertion that team america: world police is right wing humor.

unless you think the colbert report counts as right wing humor too.

omnibus, in the xkcd strip, the ball-pit dweller is female. And the dismisser male.

Insofar as one can tell.

why do you fill your apartment full of balls?  Because we’re adults now and that means we get to decide what that means.

I was told there’d be no slut-shaming on this BBS