Frankie Goes to Hollywood

On Demand Free Movies: Say Anything...

So I've decided to start posting on the movies that I watch 'on demand', since on demand movies are usually b-rate or totally awesome. I usually spend at least one night a week watching worthless television, and I think that the world needs more bad movie reviews, so here's my take on the best and worst of 'On Demand'. For what it's worth to those of you who have Comcast On Demand, one of my favorite films of all time, "Magnificent Obsession" starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson and directed by master of melodrama Douglas Sirk, is currently available. Walk, don't run, to your TV set!

Last night I watched Cameron Crowe's teen classic, "Say Anything." Snicker all you want, but I've never seen it before. Since I decided to do about 45 minutes of strengh training and yoga while watching the film, I didn't pay enough attention to really get a sense of the 'filmic artistry' that could've been in the film. I also had an incident with an unnamed one-year-old that made it difficult to focus on the last part of the film, and which cut into my yoga and stretching. (He watched the last 30 minutes of the movie with me.)

I don't have much to say on the way of a movie critique. It's hard to criticize something that's gone down in the canon of teen film, as do most movies from the 80s with John Cusack. The film had a great tie-in deal with 7 Eleven, as Lloyd has two Big Gulps during the course of the film and the couple of Lloyd and Diane end their first date at the infamous convenience store. (It's amazing what I choose to focus on when I watch films.) I would eulogize about the politics of masculinity and femininity in the film, because that's what I usually do, but I can't focus enough tonight. For now, all I have to say about that is, "There are enough guys in the world. Don't be a guy, be a man," or something like that, courtesy of Lloyd's best friend Corey. I bought into the romance, which I don't do very often. The earnestness of the actors, and the simplicity and believeability of the plot, made it work better than, say 'Pretty in Pink,' which has the same theme of all classic teen movies - opposites attract. All in all, worth seeing once. (On another note, the last movie I saw was 'High School Musical 2' - not proud of it - and the romance was so completely manufactured, just like the rest of the film, that I don't see how anyone could believe it, even a tweener. Have our brains really digressed that much in such a short amount of time?)