On Movies I Have Seen This Winter Break

I've been catching up on my movie-watching this winter break. Some I paid for on-demand and in theaters. Others I have stumbled across on cable, some for the second time, others for the 322nd time. Here are some thoughts, in the order in which I viewed them:

1. The Muppets - Yes, I am now in the demographic where my teenage son will not see such a film with his parents, so Mr. Snarkshelf and I saw this one ourselves. It was, eh, just OK. I wanted it to be funnier. I did like Kermit's mansion being stuck in 1977 - I swear we had the same brown couch in my house in the same year - and Animal's anger management class. Also, my husband's hometown looks exactly like Smalltown. I feel a song coming on...

Dude, Xanax.

2. Young Adult - Why didn't I think of this movie? It was so brilliantly bitchy, it is like Diablo Cody read my mind.

Here is the gist of it. Charlize Theron plays the (ghost) writer of a young adult novel series. To the folks back home in Mercury, MN, she is hot shit, but in reality she lives in a messy condo, is a depressed alcoholic who can barely get out of bed in the morning, and passes out facedown in her clothes watching "The Kardashians" every night.

She gets a email birth announcement from her high school boyfriend, who seems dim but happy back in Mercury and just had his first baby with his cute but simple wife. So, naturally, Charlize sets out to rescue him from all that, you know, misery.

Back in Mercury she meets Patton Oswalt, the class dweeb (but really smart and nice) who is equally as damaged yet more levelheaded than she. While she was a pretty, pretty princess in high school, he was beaten by the town bullies and is still disabled.

Where the movie goes is really dark and funny, and of course, for Charlize, pathetically embarrassing. It lives out NO ONE'S fantasies of "What ever happened to...?" (which of course none of us have anymore because of, you know, Facebook) unless of course your fantasy is that your class's homecoming queen eats at KFC by herself often and is a total disaster.

The best part of this movie? No Hollywood treatment. If it had the Hollywood treatment, Patton Oswalt, who is about five feet tall and chubby, would have been played by Ryan Reynolds wearing bad glasses to make him, um, nerdy. Then Charlize's Mavis (now played by Sandra Bullock, natch), would have realized old boyfriend be damned, love was right here all along. They get together and live happily ever after in Mercury, where she writes a bestseller. The end.

Doesn't happen that way at all. Now turn up "The Kardashians." This is the one where they are talking about boobs.

She is totally a pig. That's why I love her.

3. Friends With Benefits - Speaking of the Hollywood treatment, I caught this rom-com on cable the other day. It was like two different movies stitched together with threads as skinny as Mila Kunis' jeans. The main plot point in between is for Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis to run around in their underwear (see also, Love and Other Drugs with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhall).

The first half, the movie TOTALLY makes fun of rom-coms and their accompanying cliches (so much so, there is even a movie with a movie with a climactic scene, of course, at a train station). The writing was kind of snarky and snappy. I had high hopes, but knew better. Those types of relationships - they didn't have a hashtag-worthy name back when I was single, but trust me totally existed. You know who you are - never ended well. They usually just .... ended. Usually when one of the parties found someone they enjoyed having sex with more than their friend with benefits.

So of course, Mila Kunis overhears Justin Timberlake telling his sister "I don't like her...we're just sex partners" (because you know, like she's gorgeous and they set up the whole first half of the movie making her out to be the coolest girl EVER. You know how men just hate hot girls who drink beer and want no emotional attachment).

That's when Mila Kunis pouts and frets and we head into Katherine Heigl movie territory. Also, the hilarious non-story storyline thrown in for no good reason? Richard Jenkins as Justin Timberlake's father who has Alzheimer's. It's so cute! He does things like take off his pants in public but otherwise he is totally normal! My father has Alzheimer's. It's not cute. Suck it, Hollywood people.

Anyway, can you guess what happens in the end. Will Justin and Mila continue sportfucking? or will they realize they were made for one another? Hmmmmm.

I'm hot; you're hot. What would be the odds that we would be attracted to one another? Mull that over during this five-minute naked montage.

4. Eat Pray Love - Again. I saw this movie I hated which was an adaptation of a book I hated the first day it came out last year. Read my review here. I caught about 40 minutes of it on Starz the other night. I stuck with Julia Roberts from her unfulfilled relationship with James Franco (oh, boo-hoo) to eating pasta and not having sex in Italy.

Still like nails on a chalkboard. My husband actually sat through some of it. He is a good man. I think I will stay with him instead of fleeing to a gelato stand I heard about in Rome.

Nope. I still HATE this movie.

5. The Sound of Music - It's now a Christmas Eve classic on ABC! Yes, you know every word and every song and it's sappy and you know Julie Andrews is the worst nun ever to consider the convent, but still a classic. The Captain is, well, a dick, but put a guitar in his hands and he is an ole' softie - who will still stand up for Austria. Take that, Nazis. This one is worthy of the Hollywood ending.

Cry me a river, Julia Roberts. Leaving the convent, taking on seven kids and fleeing the country on foot. Now THAT's finding a purpose.

What should I watch over the remaining long weekend?