I remember about a year ago a girlfriend and I went to one of those "yes! we'll serve you booze here!" movie theaters a few days before Valentine's Day to see the year's most unapologetic chick-flick, "Valentine's Day." No shame here. I like girl movies. I like ensemble casts. I like to make fun of Topher Grace. I like to heckle Ashton Kutcher. I like to contemplate Jessica Beal's impressive thighs. Things like that.
We got there early, we ordered up our drinks, we stood in line with 152 other women, giggling about the fact that none of them could convince their men to come along -- even with the promise of Scotch brought directly to their seat.
Turns out they over-sold the show. We had our drinks. We didn't have a seat. Oh, except they could pull a chair "into the doorway for one of us if one of us would like to watch the movie."
Screw that. As much as I love the idea of watching a movie from a "vestibule" while seated in a plastic chair sipping overpriced bubbly, I'd only do it if the BOTH of us could sit in the vestibule on plastic chairs together. As there was only room for one plastic chair: we begged unsuccessfully for a refund, guzzled another cocktail and split.
Off to another theater - one of those megaplexes with lots of screens and plenty of show times and a real, actual parking garage. We ordered popcorn. We stood in another line. A line that wrapped all the way through the theater lobby. A line of hundreds. A line including three men.
The ratio looked about like the show Ryan Gosling's band "Dead Man's Bones" played not long ago - except in this case, a little less exciting of a crowd to watch because girls didn't have their racks out like they thought if their cleavage looked good enough in the dark Gosling would track them down after the show and insist on taking them back to his hotel where he and his cuter band-mate could make her the filling in their musical man sandwich. This was just a "dateless Friday night at movies with girlfriends" crowd. The ratio of skinny jeans and boots to all other attire was still tipped heavily in the skinny jeans direction, but basically - a lot of girls and a lot of giant vats of diet Coke.
The movie was fine. I mean, each member of the giant cast probably got their six minutes of screen time. Every body lived happily ever after. Jennifer Garner got to wear cute little kindergarten teacher dresses and Jamie Foxx dropped by to be annoying. It was forgettable. Bradley Cooper was gay. Taylor Swift was insufferably shrill. Nothing special.
BUT, thanks to Gary Marshall's severe hangup with saccharine movies starring women desperate to get married, we're getting a sequel to "Valentine's Day." It opens this December. It's called "New Year's Eve." Oh boy.
Even better: Bon Jovi signed on to play a "rock star."
Who else is in the already-too-star-studded-to-allow-even-six-minutes-of-screen-time-per-actor cast? Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Lea Michele, Robert De Niro, Abigail Breslin, Zac Efron, Ashton Kutcher, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michelle Pfeiffer, Hilary Swank and Sofia Vergara.
I see that list and think, "Um, Robert De Niro and Zac Efron better really bring the big guns, because, uh, there aren't nearly enough boys on that list to pair each of those actresses up with "true love" by the credits."
And we're getting new reports of new people added to the cast daily, so I can only imagine that by the time this mess hits theaters nearly a year from now, there will be 174 people signed on and the movie will have to be nothing but one big musical montage that parades them all through the streets of New York for a few seconds at a time and leaves the rest to our imaginations.
I do love a good musical montage.
Anyway - mark your calendars. December 9th.
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