thoughts on Sleeping with Other People

Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis star as Lainey and Jake, who lose their virginity to each other in college on the first night they meet, then don't see each other again for more than a decade.  When they run into each other years later, she has just ended an on-again/off-again affair with a guy who she has been pursuing since college, who only sometimes gives her the time of day, and who has just gotten engaged.  She hasn't had any good relationships because she has been hung up on him for years; she keeps cheating on her boyfriends to go running every time Matthew (Adam Scott) calls.  Jake also hasn't had any good relationships; he tells Lainey that he has a recurring habit of choosing the wrong woman, being unsure how to end it with her, then sabotaging the relationship by doing something truly unforgivable like sleeping with her sister or best friend.  They go on one date that he initially doesn't realize is a date, then decide to just be friends; she isn't really ready to date, and given his penchant for messing up his relationships, he doesn't want to date her for fear of ruining any chance at a friendship with her.  It's clear to them immediately that there is at the very least an attraction there; they make up a "safeword" (mousetrap) to use any time they start to feel sexual tension.  It doesn't take much longer for actual feelings to develop.  More than once, they acknowledge that they have these feelings and try to figure out what to do about them; the answer is usually "just try to ignore them until we can't ignore them anymore and, in the meantime, date other people that we'll only end up hurting."

It's a little painful to watch.  You are likely to recognize yourself or someone you know in Lainey and/or Jake, but chances are you won't like what you see, and their behavior/patterns/mistakes are likely *just enough worse* than yours that you may feel a bit judgmental or superior towards them (like Lainey, many of us have probably let a romantic interest treat us disrespectfully, but hopefully not for as long as she lets Matt string her along; like Jake, many of us have probably treated a romantic partner badly, but hopefully not sleep-with-their-sibling badly).  It is hard to see what Lainey sees in Matt; it is also hard to imagine that Jake would be as bad of a boyfriend as he fears when he seems pretty good at recognizing, understanding, and acknowledging his own feelings.  Alison Brie mostly succeeds in making Lainey sympathetic; Jason Sudeikis's Jake is always a bit obnoxious, even at the best of times.  Lainey legitimately seems to have been hurt badly by Matt and need some time to work through that; Jake just seems to need to get out of his own way, especially given that we see, through a late-in-the-film relationship with his boss, Paula (Amanda Peet), that he's perfectly capable of being a good boyfriend when he wants to be.  Lainey and Jake are both engaging enough characters to watch throughout the film; you just wish maybe they'd either get it together sooner or move on.

thoughts on Ricki and the Flash

Meryl Streep stars as Ricki, lead singer of Ricki and the Flash, the house band at a bar in Tarzana, California called the Salt Well.  We learn that years ago, she left her family to pursue a music career; her career apparently didn't go particularly well, given that she only ever put out one album, is a cashier at the Whole Foods-esque Total Foods, and is about to file for bankruptcy.  Early in the film, her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline) calls to tell her that their daughter Julie's (Mamie Gummer's) husband has left her and that Ricki needs to fly out to Indianapolis to see her.  Ricki is greeted by, at best, skepticism, and at worst, open hostility by the members of the family she finds there.  In addition to Julie, Ricki has two sons, Josh (Sebastian Stan) and Adam (Nick Westrate); Josh has gotten engaged and elected not to tell Ricki, while Adam is bitter that Ricki has never fully accepted that he is gay.  There is also Pete's second wife, Maureen (Audra McDonald), who is in Seattle visiting her sick father for most of Ricki's visit; she has been there for a lot of the children's life events, both big and small, that Ricki has missed, and is somewhat sympathetic to Ricki while also making it clear that her presence disrupts their lives.  Maureen sends Ricki back to California but ultimately sends her a conciliatory letter inviting her to Josh's wedding.  Ricki then must figure out how to forgive herself for her past; how to become part of the children's lives while respecting that an awful lot changed while she was away; and how to get out of her own way and enjoy her present, in which she, in spite of everything, has a band that she loves and a boyfriend (Greg, played by Rick Springfield of "Jessie's Girl" fame) who she can hardly believe loves her just as she is.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult) seems to feel affection for her characters, but isn't above subtly mocking them at times, or perhaps simply seeing the humor in their lifestyles.  Ricki almost always looks like she has decided to dress up like a rock star for Halloween; we will see her early in the morning, unmade-up and naturally beautiful, only to scenes later see her out in the world with blue eyeshadow up to her eyebrows, her hair in a wild series of braids, and an omnipresent black leather jacket.  It is easy to see why she attracts some odd looks at her son's wedding, yet the stuffy folks in Pete's world aren't above reproach, either; Josh and his fiancée, Emily (Hailey Gates), have a very expensive wedding that features flower girls in fairy wings, cocktails named after the bride and groom, and a vegan/gluten-free menu.  It's fairly clear that Ricki probably never fit into her ex-husband's world, yet also clear that the way that she shakes up her ex-husband's and children's routines isn't completely a bad thing; Maureen and Greg are almost certainly better-suited to Pete and Ricki in the present, but you can see what Ricki and Pete saw in each other all those years ago. Ricki clearly brought a bit of spark to Pete's life, and Pete and the children must have settled Ricki a bit.  The wedding scene begins to show how Ricki and Pete can continue to do that for each other while being romantically linked with people who let them be a bit more themselves.

The music scenes are top-notch.  Ricki and the Flash is primarily a cover band that plays for a bar of aging but enthusiastic patrons who enjoy a variety of classic rock and current pop hits.  Perhaps the best use of music in the film is a scene in which Ricki learns that Greg has sold his Gibson SG so that he and Ricki can afford to fly to Indiana for Josh's wedding.  She comes to this realization as they begin playing the Dobie Gray hit "Drift Away," and the performance is full of emotion as she finally realizes how much Greg loves her.  The casting of Springfield as Greg is fairly brilliant; Streep reportedly learned to play guitar for the film, and it works well to have an established, yet not immediately recognizable, musician as her lead guitarist.

As a whole, the film is enjoyable, with good music and good performances.  I would recommend.

thoughts on Magic Mike XXL

"How did a sequel become both simpler and smarter than the film that came before it?" asks BuzzFeed's Anne Helen Petersen in this excellent article.  It's a good question, and the description-- "both simpler and smarter than the film that came before it"-- is a pretty good characterization of the film.  Yesterday, a day after I saw Magic Mike XXL, I was asked how it was.  "It was a lot different than the first one," I responded. 

"Was it as good as the first one?" the friend asked.

"No?" I responded cautiously, a question in my voice.  I felt like I was being asked to compare apples and oranges, though I couldn't quite put my finger on what was so different about this film.  It featured most of the same cast as Magic Mike (Matthew McConaughey and Alex Pettyfer are out; Jada Pinkett Smith and Donald Glover are in).  It's still about male strippers.  It still has heart; like the first film, it treats the strippers, as well as the women who visit male strip clubs, as Real Human People with Feelings, and manages to acknowledge the humor inherent in male stripping without making fun of or really even passing judgment on the profession, those who work in it, or those who consume it.  If the first film was an insider's look at the industry told through a man who had been in the business so long he couldn't see outside of it (McConaughey); a man trying to get out but unsure how (Channing Tatum); and a man just starting out (Pettyfer), the second film is a road trip movie in which the strippers try to reimagine what they do outside of the confines of the characters they've always played onstage and the routines they've always done (Richie (Joe Mangianello) typically does a fireman routine; he's actually afraid of fire).  This lays the groundwork for a less serious film the second time around...but it's fun, and each group of women the men meet along the road help them see why it's perhaps best to personalize their routines based on what works for them and for the women.

In the end, I think it works as a sequel because it's able to take the characters and heart of the first film and put it in a second, very different, film, rather than simply retreading what was done in the first.  I liked it.

thoughts on Jurassic World

The park under construction in 1993's Jurassic Park is up and running!!! However, as park operations manager Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) explains, seeing a stegosaurus has become as ordinary to kids as seeing an elephant at the zoo; at Jurassic World, they have to keep upping the ante.  To that end, they have genetically engineered a dinosaur called Indominus Rex that is incredibly smart and incredibly violent.  As you might guess, this turns out to be a bad idea.  He runs amok as Claire's young nephews, Zach and Gray (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins), visit the park.  Raptor trainer Owen (Chris Pratt) helps get things under control.

The first Jurassic Park film was largely about the wonder the characters feel at getting to see dinosaurs up close and personal; they hear explanations about how the creation of dinosaurs was possible before things begin running amok.  In this film, it is already established that dinosaurs have been recreated and exist, so less explanation is necessary, which is good, because less Fake Science, more time seeing a variety of dinosaurs attack humans and fight each other.  The lesson if the movie is basically, "Don't underestimate your power over another living thing.  Just because you created it doesn't mean you can control it."

It's fun.  The dinosaurs look great, and there was one moment startling enough that I jumped in my seat.  I enjoyed it.

thoughts on Girls, Season Three (spoilers)

When we last left the gang at the end of Season Two, Hannah (Lena Dunham) struggled to finish her eBook as she tried to get by without medicating herself for OCD, which wasn't working out very well for her; Adam (Adam Driver) realized something was wrong and ran to her despite the fact that he was dating Natalia (Shiri Appleby); Marnie (Allison Williams) was back with Charlie (Christopher Abbott) and had determined, with Ray's (Alex Karpovsky's) help that she wanted to be a singer; Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) had dumped Ray; and Jessa (Jemima Kirke) had disappeared.  As we start Season Three, Hannah and Adam are back together and living together; Marnie and Charlie have broken up, Marnie is living with her mother (Rita Wilson) and working at Ray's coffee shop with Hannah; Shoshanna is going through a crazy independent/sleeping around phase; and Jessa is in rehab.

I don't care for these little breaks between seasons.  I think it gives them an easy way to skip over showing or explaining the tough stuff (how did Hannah get her OCD under control?  Why did she and Adam decide to get back together?  Why did Charlie and Marnie split up?  Since when is Jessa a drug addict?) and go right to a more interesting time in the characters' lives.  Don't get me wrong; Season Two was a bleak time for these folks, and I'm glad it's over and most of them are up to new things.  And Marnie and Charlie's break-up, at least, is pretty self-explanatory; they got back together more because neither of them particularly liked being alone, not because they were really in love or wanted to be together, and it didn't work.  I just always find the little time jumps a little disorienting.

Quite a bit happens to Hannah and Marnie in Season Three.  It's becoming clearer and clearer that Jessa is just there to add some crazy spice to their group and Shoshanna is there for comic relief; neither of them are ever given much to do, and Jessa's storylines usually take place mainly apart from the group (her nanny storyline in Season One; her short-lived marriage to Thomas-John (Chris O'Dowd) in Season Two; her time in rehab and subsequent return to coke use in Season Three), leaving me to wonder why she's even on this show.  Meanwhile, Hannah's editor dies, after which she learns that the publishing company no longer plans to publish her eBook but still owns the rights for the next three years, meaning that she can't publish her essays elsewhere; she then gets what seems to me to be a super sweet job writing for the "advertorial" section of GQ but basically decides she's too good for it and gets herself fired; and then gets into the MFA program at the University of Iowa.  Adam gets his first part in a Broadway play, a revival of Major Barbara, which makes Hannah jealous, insecure, and generally pretty awful.  Marnie gets her own apartment, has a little fling with Ray, deals with the fall-out of an embarrassing music video she shot when she was with Charlie, gets a job at a small art gallery, and begins writing music with Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), a musician and actor in Adam's play.

While I continue to enjoy this show and find the characters compelling, Hannah's self-centeredness gets really over the top in this season.  There is a moment when she calls her dad (Peter Scolari) to tell him that she's been offered a book deal, and he delivers the bad news that a lawyer relative has looked into the matter for them, and her original publishing company still owns the rights to her essays.  He also mentions twice during the call that he is at home recovering from a minor procedure.  We never find out what this procedure was, because Hannah jumps right over this news and back to herself.  There is another moment where the gang all goes to hear Marnie and Desi sing, expecting it to be awful; while Marnie has a very nice singing voice, their friend Elijah (Andrew Rannells) fairly accurately characterizes her performance style as, "Papa?  Why don't you love me, Papa?".  However, Desi does a great job getting her to relax and be more natural, and she does great.  Shoshanna turns to Hannah and very seriously asks her how she's going to deal with Adam having a part in a Broadway show and Marnie becoming a pop star.  Like, her other friends are genuinely concerned that she is too self-centered to be happy for her friends' success.  Hannah also gives Adam zero space as he prepares for his first Broadway play and actually tells him that she got into Iowa just moments before he goes onstage for the first time.  When he later asks her why she would do that (he felt it threw his performance off) she is mystified; she thought it was great news.  Sure, it is.  But it affects him and your relationship, so maybe acknowledge that and handle it sensitively instead of just being all, "Hey, I'm moving to Iowa!  See ya!," moments before one of the most important moments of his life.

Meanwhile, I feel like I "get" Marnie more after this season.  In my review of the second season, I stated that the only reason I could think of why she would sleep with Elijah is to spite Hannah.  I think I was mistaken about that.  I think that a big part of Marnie's impending singing career, as well as the people she's chosen to sleep with at times when she's not in a serious relationship (Elijah, Booth Jonathan, Ray) are more about a need for attention and affection than anything else.  She has a somewhat off-putting, uptight personality, so even though she's very pretty, she's not the type who is going to have a ton of success trying to pick up random guys in bars (and I don't think she'd want to do that, anyway).  Therefore, she seeks out this attention and affection from guys she already knows, even though they might be totally wrong for her, and even though sleeping with them might be hurtful to her friends. 

So...why is everyone so dismissive of Ray?  Shoshanna dumped him basically because she felt like he wasn't good enough for her.  Marnie, on one occasion, actually grabs his hand and pulls him down behind a car to avoid running into people they know when they're together.  Are his goals not lofty enough for them?  I like Ray.  He's one of the only people on the show that I can really say I think is a good person.

Aaaand that's all the seasons the public library had available, so it looks like I'm done for awhile.  I'll miss this crew, even though I have problems with them sometimes.

thoughts on Girls, Season Two (spoilers)

When we last left the characters at the end of Season One, Marnie (Allison Williams) had just moved out of Hannah's apartment for reasons that were only vaguely clear; Jessa (Jemima Kirke) had just married Thomas-John (Chris O'Dowd) completely out of nowhere; and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) had just lost her virginity to Ray (Alex Karpovsky).  Hannah (Lena Dunham) and Adam (Adam Driver) were finally a real couple, but he offered to move in, and she either didn't get that he meant it or just didn't want him to.  She asked her gay ex-boyfriend Elijah (Andrew Rannells) to move in instead.  This hurt Adam's feelings, and he proceeded to get hit by a truck during their argument about this. 

Season Two picks up roughly three weeks after Season One ends.  The only thing that really changes in those three weeks is that Hannah inexplicably decides she's totally done with Adam and begins dating Sandy (Donald Glover) for like five minutes, so the three-week jump initially seems like a convenient way for them to avoid explaining Hannah's change of heart about Adam.  I eventually came to feel like I understood their dynamic, though. I think she secretly liked that he kept her at a distance throughout most of Season One because she didn't think he would like what he saw if or when he got too close.  We find out late in the season that Hannah suffers from fairly severe OCD, which seems to be heightened in times of intense stress.  She states that she thought she was "done with it" after high school, but the symptoms/behaviors associated with it resurface after she gets her first book deal and is given a tight deadline.  Her parents pick up on what's going on and take her to a psychiatrist, who prescribes medication; though she later tells her dad during a phone conversation that she is taking the medication, it doesn't appear that she is doing so.  The season ends with her videochatting with Adam, him immediately realizing that something is wrong, and coming to her.  Meanwhile, Shoshanna dates, then eventually breaks up with, Ray; Jessa and Thomas-John get divorced, Jessa briefly moves in with Hannah, and then disappears; and Marnie gets "downsized" from her gallery job, takes a "pretty person job" as a hostess at an exclusive club, briefly dates an artist named Booth Jonathan (Jordan Taccone), then gets back together with her ex-boyfriend, Charlie (Christopher Abbott), who has become very successful seemingly overnight through creating an app.

I didn't like it as much as I liked Season One.  It took me awhile to figure out the timing of events, for one thing; six or seven episodes into the season, Ray comments that he and Shoshanna have been dating for four weeks, indicating that each episode takes place over the course of less than a week.  This surprised me, as it seems like *a lot* happens over the course of the season.  Hannah has a number of hook-ups between Sandy and getting back together with Adam, for one thing: a guy who lives in her building that she buys coke from; a hot doctor who happens into the coffee shop where she works; and Jessa's nineteen-year-old stepbrother.  Jessa's marriage must last maybe a month, which makes me feel like it only happened in the first place to give all of the characters a reason to get all dressed up and be at the same fancy event at the end of the first season. 

Beyond the timing issues, the characters are all just generally at a pretty crappy place in their lives.  Hannah has a chance at professional success, but it seems that her OCD will make it difficult for her to achieve it.  Marnie is clearly a very driven, intelligent person...who doesn't really know what she wants to do with her life.  Shoshanna and Jessa just really aren't given enough to do, with their storylines in this season mostly reduced to their ultimately short-lived romantic relationships.

Also, I don't get Hannah and Marnie's friendship at all.  I reiterate my point from Season One that I don't really get why any of these people would be friends, but in addition to not really having anything in common, Hannah and Marnie are just generally not particularly nice to each other.  For example, in an early episode, Marnie has sex with Hannah's ex-boyfriend Elijah.  Why?  It would be one thing if she liked Elijah or even if she was particularly attracted to Elijah, but-- she doesn't and she's not.  She seems to do it purely to spite Hannah.  Again, why are these people friends?  It's one thing that none of them have that much in common, but another that some of them don't even seem to particularly like each other.  My friends and I have a ton of fun together and generally like and trust each other.  It's one thing to have people in your group who you connect less with than others, or to have falling-outs and arguments based on misunderstandings or personality conflicts.  It's a totally different thing to be intentionally spiteful to people that you spend time with by choice.  I just don't get it.

There were still high points.  I continue to like most of the characters individually even if I don't get them as a group.  Hannah's "boyfriend of the week" period was fun, even though I would have bought it more if this was all taking place over the course of a few months rather than one.  I still find it compelling.  Hopefully Season Three will be better.   

thoughts on Aloha

Bradley Cooper stars as Brian Gilcrest, who used to be in the military but is now an independent contractor.  He is traveling to Hawaii to negotiate on behalf of billionaire industrialist Carson Welch (Bill Murray), who has financed and is planning to launch a satellite.  An Air Force officer named Allison Ng (Emma Stone) will be keeping an eye on Brian.  He also will be crossing paths with his ex-girlfriend, Tracy Woodside (Rachel McAdams), who is now married with two kids.

This article came out today explaining why the film flopped at the box office this past weekend, and this leaked e-mail from Sony's Amy Pascal sums it up as well as anything: “People don’t like people in movies who flirt with married people or married people who flirt...The satellite makes no sense...I’m never starting a movie again when the script is ridiculous. And we all know it.”  The thing is, there's a lot that's good here.  Most of the cast is good.  The Hawaiian backdrop has a lot of potential.  Writer/director Cameron Crowe simply needed to give Brian Gilcrest a simpler reason to be in Hawaii interacting with this cast of characters, or perhaps slightly different characters played by the same actors.  Although the satellite storyline ultimately leads to an exciting climax, I found the storyline pretty boring and difficult to follow throughout much of the film. 

The interpersonal storylines also don't carry a lot of tension.  Brian finds Allison annoying at first, but eventually develops feelings for her and comes to view her as a second chance or fresh start.  It's clear from pretty much the beginning that (spoiler alert, but really, it's pretty obvious) Tracy's oldest child is Brian's, but it honestly doesn't seem to matter that much; Brian doesn't seem particularly mad that Tracy never told him he had a daughter, and Tracy's husband, Woody (John Krasinski), seems to have been a fine father to her all this time.  I always find Bradley Cooper a little hard to root for, and as Brian, he just doesn't seem to care enough about any of this.

That said, it's not like I had a horrible time.  The film is moderately pleasant.  It's just that for all that seems to be at stake here, it's less exciting and feels less important than it should.  

thoughts on Girls, Season One (spoilers)

So.  I rented Season One of Girls from the public library on Thursday and finished it in three days.  The episodes are short (about thirty minutes each), and the whole season was only ten episodes long, so it went fast.  Some thoughts:

Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) is an interesting character.  A couple of things she goes through in the first season are so similar to things that I've gone through that at one point I said out loud, "Wow.  None of my life experiences are original," and at another point, I shut an episode off halfway through and went back to it the next day because I just really couldn't even deal.  There are other aspects that I can't relate to at all.  The whole action of the series is set in motion because her parents tell her that they're not going to support her anymore, given that she's twenty-four and has been out of college for two years now.  What? People's parents do that?  And there are yet other aspects that make me sometimes say out loud, "You're a ridiculous person," or cover my face with my hands because it's so uncomfortable to watch.  She makes a rape joke on a job interview, for example.  At another point, she has a boss who is a little handsy, and rather than asking him to stop, quitting the job, just putting up with it like her co-workers do, or taking any number of courses of action that you might imagine a human being taking in this scenario, she offers to have sex with him in the most awkward and uncomfortable way possible.  Her goal is to be a writer, but she goes through long periods of unemployment where it doesn't seem like she's even really actively looking for a job, which is a little frustrating to watch because Marnie (Allison Williams), her best friend and roommate for most of the first season (who actually has a consistent, real, paying job), winds up picking up the slack a lot, and Hannah seems to kind of take it for granted. 

This eventually becomes a problem, though I don't know that I totally got the argument at the end of the season that leads to Marnie moving out.  Marnie has been dating a guy named Charlie (Christopher Abbott) for four years.  She's pretty much done with the relationship from the very beginning of the series, but it doesn't actually end until Charlie's friend Ray (Alex Karpovsky) snoops around, finds Hannah's diary, and reads Hannah's thoughts on Charlie and Marnie's relationship.  This leads into a fairly horrifying (from the perspective of someone who keeps a diary, anyway) scene where Charlie and Ray play a song called "Hannah's Diary" in one of their shows that consists of Charlie reading aloud from Hannah's diary while he and Ray play accompanying music.  It's awful.  Charlie and Marnie have a long talk in which she eventually begs him to stay together, then decides (during sex) that she really does want to break up.  He starts dating someone else almost immediately, and she is miserable.  This all happens at around the same time that Hannah starts dating her hook-up, Adam (Adam Driver), for real, and Marnie and Hannah eventually have a huge argument that leads to each of them yelling about who's more selfish and who's the worse friend.  Marnie eventually says she wants to move out.  I don't totally get what leads to this, or what they're really arguing about.  I don't know if this is because the show didn't lead up to it well enough, or because the argument isn't really about anything in particular and just the culmination of issues that they've been dealing with for years.

Hannah and Marnie's group of friends is rounded out by Jessa (Jemima Kirke), who went to college with Hannah and Marnie, and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), Jessa's cousin.  Jessa is a nanny for most of the first season until the father of the kids she's watching becomes interested in her.  She surprises everyone by marrying someone she's known for only two weeks in the season finale.  Shoshanna lives in an incredibly pink and fluffy apartment (that she shares with Jessa and eventually Marnie); uses terms like "OMG," "obvi," and "totes adorbs" a lot; accidentally smokes crack at one point; is a virgin until the season finale; and is maybe my favorite character on the show, even though she has the least to do.  It's just always a good time when she shows up.  Ray watches her when she's high on crack and is eventually the guy she loses her virginity to, and he tells her she just "vibrates on a different frequency," which is as good of a way to describe her as any. 

Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna are all so different that I don't fully understand how they're all friends.  I know that's a complaint that was made about Sex and the City, as well, and I guess I'll give it a pass since these girls are all just out of college (or in Shoshanna's case, still in college), and I feel like college friendships are often based more on randomness (who you're assigned to live with or near in the dorms, who you have a work study job with, for example) than common interests.  Still.  The thing about TV friendships is that they often withstand things that would tear real-life friendships apart, simply because everyone's still on the show and it usually doesn't work to have characters that don't really interact with each other.  If we all look back at Friends, for example, we will remember that Chandler basically stole Joey's girlfriend at one point, and that, brief periods of trying to avoid each other notwithstanding, Ross and Rachel stayed friends during the "off" parts of their on-again, off-again relationship.  Because it's less common for real friendships to survive under such circumstances, TV shows have to show either that these characters' lives are so intertwined that it's impossible for them to avoid each other, or that their friendships are so strong that they will fight to work out conflicts, withstand periods of awkwardness, and move past their own hurt feelings and pride in ways that real friends are, quite frankly, not always able or willing to do.  I don't get that from these four girls yet.  As I said, I will give it a pass because these are college friends and college wasn't that long ago, and also because we're only ten episodes in.  Also, I really like each of these girls separately, even if I don't totally get them together.  Also, also, I appreciate that it's fairly out in the open that Marnie and Jessa don't really like each other (at least for most of the season) and only hang out because they have friends in common.

The final important element of the show is Adam, who starts as Hannah's hook-up and eventually becomes her real boyfriend, though their status is unclear at the end of the first season.  In an early episode, Hannah complains that he's so great when they're together, but then she won't hear from him in two weeks and he won't return her texts and she'll feel like she's made him up.  Eventually, she shows up at his apartment to deliver the iconic speech that includes the sentence, "I just want someone who thinks I'm the best person in the world, and wants to hang out all the time, and wants to have sex with only me."  They supposedly aren't going to see each other anymore after that (and after he has sex with her one "last" time, because aughhhh), but within a couple of episodes he's yelling at her, "Do you want me to be your boyfriend?! Is that what you want?!," and then he is, and then things actually change for the better.  The season ends with him offering to move in after Marnie moves out, and her brushing him off and asking her gay ex-boyfriend Elijah (Andrew Rannells) to move in instead.  Adam is hurt, upset, and frustrated by this, and it's unclear where they stand at the end of the episode and season.

Also: Jessa and Thomas-John's (Chris O'Dowd's) wedding.  We don't even know that Jessa and Thomas-John, a character who we've been introduced to exactly once before, are dating at the time that Jessa invites all of the main characters to a "mystery party" that turns out to be their wedding.  They tell the story of how they met and fell in love.  Most wedding goers seem surprised, mystified, and a bit skeptical.  Shoshanna is visibly upset.  Adam cries a little; when Hannah asks him what's going on, he says something like, "I'm very moved.  People finding love, taking shelter...it's beautiful." And...I'm sorry, but it is pretty moving.  I know that it's silly to marry someone you've known that short of time.  I know, based on the number of episodes IMDB tells me that Thomas-John is in, that it probably doesn't last.  There is something moving about being willing to make that big of a commitment and take that big of a chance, though. 

So, despite some small issues, I enjoyed it a lot.  Looking forward to watching the next season.  It is going to be delivered to my public library from a different public library within a couple of days.  So that's exciting.

thoughts on Tomorrowland

As a child, Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) visited a World's Fair at Disney World with a jet pack that he had invented.  It didn't quite work, but his enthusiasm and smarts lead a young girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) to give him a pin that transports him to Tomorrowland, a dimension that seems to be an idyllic and technologically advanced future.  More than forty years later, optimistic teenager Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) also receives a pin.  She briefly gets to visit Tomorrowland; when her pin stops working, she does research and finds that a novelty shop in Texas is looking for the pins.  She travels to the shop and learns that the pins were given to optimistic and gifted individuals that could help create a better world; however, Frank (played as an adult by George Clooney) discovered that the world was going to end on a date now less than sixty days in the future, so recruiting was supposed to have ended.  Casey has been brought in as a last hope.

The movie is wild.  We're going back and forth between the past and the present, between Earth as we know it and Tomorrowland.  There are robots that look like humans, impressive technological developments, and a lot of fun details that incorporate current attractions and landmarks (Frank first enters Tomorrowland through the Small World ride at Disney World; Casey later learns that the Eiffel Tower is actually a rocket).  It's, for lack of a better word, neat: lots of fun stuff to see; actors with expressive, almost cartoonish faces; and a dash of Disney cheesiness (Frank gives a speech near the end that basically amounts to, "Let's save the world using science and optimism!").  I enjoyed it quite a bit.  It was fun.  Bring the kids.

thoughts on Pitch Perfect 2

The Bellas are back.  The first time around, they were a laughingstock because Aubrey (Anna Camp) projectile vomited onstage at Nationals. This time, they're a laughingstock because Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) had a wardrobe malfunction while the group was performing for the President of the United States at the Kennedy Center.  The group still gets to perform at the World Championship since they're the defending national champions, but they have been replaced on their world tour by the German group Das Sound Machine, and they aren't allowed to recruit new members.  The film primarily focuses on the group trying to bounce back from their embarrassment while dealing with what they're going to do after graduation (would-be music producer Beca (Anna Kendrick) already has an internship that competes for her time); welcoming the only new member they were allowed to take on, a legacy named Emily (Hailee Steinfeld), into the fold; and entertaining a rivalry with Das Sound Machine.  Also, Fat Amy has a romance with fellow a cappella enthusiast Bumper (Adam DeVine).

The storyline of the first Pitch Perfect was a bit tighter, and it worked better as a standalone movie.  However, there are SO MANY CHARACTERS in these movies, and it was nice to walk in knowing most of them and just being able to get down to the story.  Looking back at my review of the first movie, I also see that a lot of the conflict in that one was a bit tedious (Beca thinks it's dorky to be in an a cappella group! Aubrey has a problem with Beca dating a rival Treblemaker! Aubrey is stubbornly clinging to the way things have always been done even though it's clearly not working!); the conflict in this one seems a bit more natural (Fat Amy doesn't realize or acknowledge her feelings for Bumper until it's almost too late; Emily takes awhile to gel with the group; Beca is caught between her past and future, as many college seniors are).  The previous story was about a group of very different young women putting aside their differences to achieve a goal; this story is about a group of close friends trying to grow up without growing too far apart.

There is also zero projectile vomiting in this movie.  For me, that is a HUGE point in this film's favor.

It was fun.  Good songs and familiar, likeable characters.

thoughts on The Age of Adaline

At age twenty-nine, a young widow named Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) was in a car accident that changed her life forever.  During a freak California snowstorm, she veered off the road into a river.  She was nearly dead when lightning struck her car; a narrator tells us that the effects of the lightning strike were threefold: it defibrillated her heart; it jolted her awake; and it froze her cells in a process that supposedly won't be named/discovered/explained until 2035, effectively stopping the aging process.  When she is in her early forties, people begin to notice that she is not aging; acquaintances and the police become suspicious, and the FBI wants to bring her in for questioning.  Instead, she runs away and changes her identity, moving once a decade to avoid arousing suspicion, doing her best to avoid forming ties with anyone other than her daughter (played as an adult for the bulk of the movie by Ellen Burstyn).  In the year 2014, at age 106, she meets Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman), a man who might just make her want to stop running.


One might imagine a lot of things they might do if they discovered that they were going to be young and feel great forever.  There are some limits that one might not initially think of, however, and Adaline imposes more limits on herself by choosing to keep her condition a secret and to repeatedly change identities.  You might say, for example, that you would want to travel and see the world, and Adaline does a little of that...but since she's changing her identity once a decade, she can't really save up money for that long, or acquire debt without becoming a legit criminal when she changes identities.    You might try to test the limits of your mortality, what your body could do, and what you could get away with, and it seems that maybe Adaline has done that, too, given that she drives like a maniac...but you'd have to live with the consequences of anything you did FOREVER, meaning that you wouldn't want to do anything that caused non-fatal but permanent damage to your body, or do anything that would land you in jail.  You might be happy that you have all the time in the world to accomplish your goals...but remember that you only have a decade in any one place, and that you're trying to avoid drawing attention to yourself.  Add to that the fact that Adaline is generally kind, and careful with other people's hearts.  She winds up living a pretty small little existence; she's witnessed over a century worth of history but doesn't have a history of her own, or not one that she can tell anyone about, anyway.  It would be sad, to not be able to keep in touch with people or keep pictures or have goals or tell your own stories.


The film is interesting and entertaining.  However, given its premise and a few directorial choices, it is also sometimes silly.  The narrator adds a degree of whimsy to the proceedings, which doesn't really fit given that the film mostly takes itself seriously.  Prior to Adaline's accident, the narrator tells us very seriously that something "almost magical" happened that night: it started to snow in northern California!  "Adaline did not know how to drive in the snow!," I thought to myself dramatically, anticipating the accident that was about to occur.  The narration tries to provide transitions between the different parts of Adaline's life; while transitions are perhaps necessary, one wonders if there might have been a less clunky way of providing them. 


The film also takes a somewhat odd turn when Adaline meets Ellis's parents and is immediately recognized by Ellis's father, William (Harrison Ford), with whom she had a brief but intense love affair decades before.  William recognizes her so easily; is so quick to doubt Adaline's explanation that William must have known her mother, not her (Adaline is now calling herself Jenny); gets Adaline to tell him the truth with so little trouble; and accepts the truth so readily that one wonders why she didn't just tell him when they initially knew each other: he obviously would have believed her.  Further, as a would-be doctor turned astronomer, he had the intelligence, resources, and contacts to try to help her understand her condition.  It would be one thing if they had added in a detail that she had tried to tell lovers the truth in the past, but they had either thought her crazy or believed her but freaked out about the age difference; we are given no reason to believe that any such thing has happened.  The secrecy seems unnecessary, then, and seems to have cost her literally decades worth of happiness.


I generally enjoyed the film.  The performances were good; the costumes and sets were beautiful.  You have to get past the fake science and some silliness and just roll with the story if you're going to see it, though. 

thoughts on The Longest Ride (spoilers)

Britt Robertson stars as Sophia Danko, a college senior who is planning to leave the North Carolina town where she attends school for an internship in New York City after graduation.  One evening, her friend Marcia (Melissa Benoist) talks her into going to a rodeo with a group of friends.  There, she meets Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood), a professional bull rider who is trying to make a comeback after being sidelined with an injury.  On the drive home from their first date, they happen upon a car accident; an older gentleman (Ira Levinson, played by Alan Alda) has driven off the road and is unconscious in his burning car.  Luke gets him out, and Ira manages to tell Sophia to grab the box that is sitting on the passenger seat.  As she waits for him to regain consciousness at the hospital, she discovers that the box contains a series of letters that Ira wrote to the love of his life, Ruth (played by Oona Chaplin in flashback).  After he wakes up and Sophia explains what is going on, he tells her that his vision isn't great and asks her to read one of the letters to him.  As Sophia begins dating Luke, she also begins visiting Ira regularly, and the film goes back and forth between scenes featuring her romance with Luke and scenes showing Ira and Ruth's life together. 

It's all fairly well-done and interesting.  Sophia and Luke's story intertwines nicely with Ira and Ruth's.  The tension in Sophia and Luke's relationship comes both from the fact that they both know that Sophia is supposed to leave soon and from the fact that doctors have advised Luke against continuing to bull ride following his previous head injury.  The tension in Ira and Ruth's relationship comes from the fact that they can't have children due to complications from an injury Ira sustained in World War II.  The common element between them is art: Sophia is studying art history; Ruth was also an art aficionado, and amassed quite a collection during her marriage to Ira.  Luke is portrayed by Eastwood as an old-fashioned gentleman who makes excuses for clinging to bull riding long after he should have called it quits.  Sophia is studious and independent, though her relationship with Luke makes her question her future plans.  As most films based on Nicholas Sparks novels are, it's set in a North Carolina that seems almost magical.  It avoids some of the more predictable elements of films based on Sparks novels, however.  There's no evil, abusive ex-boyfriend or ex-husband.   No one turns out to be a ghost (I'm pretty sure that only happened in one Sparks novel/film, but hey, that was crazy, right)?  With that in mind, it's probably one of the better Sparks stories, period, as well as one of the better adaptations, second perhaps only to The Notebook.  Yes, Sparks has a particular formula that he follows.  However, if you enjoy that formula, this is a good example of it.

thoughts on Scandal: "It's Good to be Kink" (spoilers)

The gist of this episode is that a woman named Sue Thomas (Lena Dunham) is planning to publish a book in which she reveals the details of her rather kinky sex life; this is going to be both scandalous and of interest because she has slept with a number of Washington, D.C.'s movers and shakers, including David Rosen (Joshua Malina) and Leo Bergen (Paul Adelstein).  Abby Whelan (Darby Stanchfield), who has been romantically involved with David and is currently involved with Leo, enlists Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) to put the kibosh on this.  Olivia first tries shaming Sue, telling her that if she publishes this, the whole town is going to think she's a whore.  Sue will have none of this; how DARE Olivia, one of the most powerful women in Washington, try to make her feel bad for having an active sex life and wanting to talk about it.  She wants three million dollars not to publish the book. 

Liv's next course of action is to figure out who all of the men (who Sue has given code names) are, get them all together in one room, and try to get them to pool together the $3 million.  Now it is David Rosen who will have none of Liv; this is extortion, plain and simple, and none of them should have any part of it.  Everyone begins preparing for the eventuality of Sue publishing the book.  David Rosen assumes he will be fired as Attorney General.  Huck (Guillermo Diaz) fears that this will cost him the immunity David has promised him in return for testifying against B6-13.  Abby prepares to turn in her resignation to the White House; she gives a great speech (the second great speech in the episode, after Sue's) to Leo about how as a woman, she gets critiqued not only on her job performance, but on her appearance and her love life, and that she will be ruined along with Leo for her involvement with him.

Liv's Plan C is to do some research on Sue and figure out what she's after, exactly.  It turns out that Sue was fired by a boss who assumed she would have kinky sex with him and basically had her blackballed from her field when she said she wouldn't.  Olivia helps her go after the boss and get a new job, and Sue agrees not to publish the book, realizing that while she isn't ashamed of her sex life, she doesn't want to be defined solely by it, which is what would happen if the book came out.  This doesn't stop Huck from MURDERING HER out of fear that her stories would eventually get out, anyway, and his deal would be ruined.  Quinn (Katie Lowes) steals the only copy of the book.

Huck visits David to discuss his deal.  David laments the death of Sue, and gives the episode's third great speech.  He didn't do anything wrong, he supposes.  He had consensual sex with Sue.  He refused to be extorted or to let other people be extorted.  He didn't do anything illegal.  Still.  He didn't particularly treat Sue with respect, and now she, someone's daughter, is dead.  He may not have done anything wrong, but he didn't do anything particularly right, either.

I thought it was a solid, solid episode.  There are a couple of other subplots going on-- Olivia tries to move past her kidnapping, as well as past her relationships with Fitz (Tony Goldwyn) and Jake (Scott Foley); Mellie (Bellamy Young) takes preliminary steps toward a run for senator of Virginia.  But for the most part, the show's main characters are involved in the Sue storyline, and along the way, they have a lot of thoughtful and thought-provoking conversations about the way women are judged for their sex lives and appearances, and how these judgments often overshadow their professional accomplishments.  Lena Dunham gives a solid guest performance in a role that honors the actress's feminism.  Huck is unfortunately still crazy as hell.  Leo and Abby continue to be both solid and really fun as a couple.  David continues to prove that he represents the moral and ethical best of all of them.  And Liv has some hot sex with a man who is neither Fitz nor Jake.  What's not to like?

thoughts on Hindsight, Season One (SPOILERS!!!)

So.  Those of you who know me in real life and/or keep up with me on The Facebook know that I've been going nuts over this show Hindsight on VH1.  To recap: as the series begins, Becca (Laura Ramsey) is about to marry longtime friend Andy (Nick Clifford).  She already has one failed marriage under her belt, but her biggest regret is the loss of her friendship to Lolly (Sarah Goldberg), who hasn't spoken to her in ten years.  Becca has the opportunity to travel back in time to 1995 and set things right; her first order of business is to never marry her first husband, Sean (Craig Horner).  As the first season progresses, the details of Becca's life the first time around are revealed little by little.  Eventually, we learn the following:

Becca and Sean initially got along great and had a lot of fun together.  However, he was an artist who Becca had to work to support.  Because she was responsible for supporting him, she stayed far too long in the wrong job. Meanwhile, Lolly fell in love with her longtime friend Kevin (Steve Talley) but could never bring herself to tell him how she felt.  As Becca's marriage to Sean went downhill, she wound up forming a friendship with Kevin that eventually developed into an affair.  The eventual revelation of the affair was the reason that Lolly stopped speaking to Becca.

In her "redo," Becca leaves Sean at the altar, quits her dead-end job, and gets a job writing for a cutting-edge new magazine.  Becca reveals to Lolly that she is from the future and that the two of them had a falling-out the first time around, but doesn't tell Lolly why.  Becca is initially happy to have the opportunity to "undo" her big mistakes, as well as rectify some smaller disappointments for both herself and others; for example, in one episode, she remembers that her (now former) coworker Lois (Lauren Boyd) was crushed when no one attended her birthday party, so she rallies Lolly, her cousin Phoebe (Liz Holtan), and Andy's then-girlfriend Melanie (Jessy Hodges) to join her at it.  They all have a great time...but Becca is horrified to learn that Phoebe ditched a blind date with the man who Becca knows became her husband the first time around in order to be there.  Not only does she sometimes mess things up without meaning to, but she also is frustrated to learn that just because she knows how things play out doesn't mean that she will always be able to change them; for instance, the first time around, Lolly broke Becca's brother Jamie's (John Patrick Amedori) heart, sending him on a downward spiral.  Even though Becca tells Lolly that things ended badly the first time around, and even though Lolly believes her, Lolly still pursues things with Jamie. 

Sometimes it seems that nothing Becca does matters; Phoebe meets her husband anyway, and it seems that one way or another, things weren't going to turn out well for Jamie.  Sometimes, however, her actions lead to HUGE changes: as a result of a series of events set in motion by Becca, Andy, Becca's future second husband, marries Melanie, the girl who the first time around broke up with him because of his failure to commit.  Sean never succeeded as an artist before; now, not being married to Becca frees him up to meet a woman whose connections in the art world help his career.  Becca encourages Lolly to tell Kevin how she feels about him; she does, he tells her that he loves her like a sister, and Lolly actually eventually gives Kevin and Becca her blessing to date each other.  It seems that things really are going to turn out for the better, for almost everyone, this time.

Except then Lolly figures out that something must have happened between Kevin and Becca before, and Becca tells her the truth.  And Lolly tells her that their friendship is over, and Becca is confused: she fixed it!  She did things right this time!  Lolly tells her it doesn't matter: it still happened.  Becca still has it inside her to do something like that.  She's a bad person.  She can't fix that.  And Becca runs back to the elevator that allowed her to time travel in the first place, screaming that she wants to go back. 

Stop for a minute and wrap your head around that.  Imagine that you have gone back in time and made things better for almost everyone, including yourself.  You avoided the failed marriage.  You left the dead end job.  It maybe wasn't even so bad that you had an affair the first time around, because the guy you cheated with was the guy meant for you.  Your second husband-to-be was better off with his old girlfriend all along, and you gave him the push he needed to commit to her before it was too late.  Some things you did didn't matter, and you couldn't save everyone, but for the most part, the world is a better place because you time traveled.

Except you couldn't fix the one thing you most wanted to fix.  And the person you love most in the world has pointed out that you'll never fix YOU.  So...do you stay in this new, better world and try to move forward, knowing that there are things you will never, ever change no matter how hard you try?  Or do you do what Becca does and run back to the time machine, begging to go back to the future that is worse in some ways, but where at least you don't have the burden of knowing everything and, in some cases, hurting people all over again no matter how hard you try not to?

The episode ends on a cliffhanger, so we don't know yet whether Becca gets to travel back to the original 2015, whether she's stuck in this new 1995, or something else entirely.  But the image of Becca in that elevator screaming and crying that she wants to go back is POWERFUL.  Apparently, knowing the future is painful.  And maybe even if we did get do-overs in real life, and maybe even if we did get to change some things for the better, we still wouldn't be happy.

We'd still just be us.

thoughts on Fifty Shades of Grey (spoilers)

This is less a review than a piece where I try to work through my thoughts on things.

I tried to read Fifty Shades of Grey a little over a year ago.  I couldn't get through it (though when I went back and looked at the placement of the bookmark in my copy the other day, I saw that I actually made it through quite a lot of it-- over 400 pages, albeit 400 pages read in short bursts of "I guess I'll try to read that book again" determination to try to finish).  I have friends who legitimately liked it and thought it was really hot.  I have friends who found it laughably bad.  I found it pretty bad; the dialogue in Anastasia Steele's first meeting with Christian Grey is written in such a way that when I tried to tell my friends about it, I said something along the lines of, "Yeah, so she's interviewing him for her college newspaper, and his answers to her questions are basically like, 'I'm an important businessman!  I do important businessman things!'" There was also Anastasia's inner monologue, in which she makes repeated references to her "inner goddess."  Then there was my impatience with the contract.  The contract included a lot of things that very few people would agree to, including restrictions on her diet and exercise habits and the stipulation that she stay with him EVERY weekend.  She wasn't signing the contract and it was pretty clear she wasn't going to; my feeling was that she just needed to say no and move on with her life, rather than what she does, which is try to negotiate, eventually agree to it, and then put him off every time it comes time to actually sign it.

The thing I didn't get until after watching the film, however, is that Ana's hesitation to sign the contract isn't mere indecision.  I saw her as having two choices: live with Mr. Grey on his terms or without Mr. Grey on her own terms.  She wants there to be a third choice: live with him in a relationship in which they discuss things and make compromises and both maybe get some things they want and some things they don't want, but are both happy at the end of the day because they're together.  At the end, however, she realizes that no compromise she could make would ever be enough for him; she's not willing to go to the lengths he wants her to go to. 

Upon discussing it with my friends after leaving the movie, it was mentioned that he was very straightforward about how it was going to be and what he wanted from the very beginning.  Yes, he was...but he also actively pursued a relationship with her knowing that she wasn't "into" the same things he was into.  He showed up at her place of work.  He took her out for coffee.  He sent her an expensive graduation gift.  He showed up and took her back to his hotel with him when she made a drunken phone call to him.  He even showed up at her apartment after she read the contract and told him, by e-mail, that the whole thing was off.  He was ALWAYS the one pursuing her, even at the times in the film when he was telling her that it could never work.  Why keep pursuing her?  Because he wants to be with her and expects that she will "come around" to what he wants.

So what we basically have is a couple in which both members enter the relationship knowing that the other person wants completely different things than they do, but hoping that the other person can and will change.  What's more, because of their power dynamic, and because, with the contract, he HAS set up their relationship in "we'll do this my way or you'll completely lose me" terms while continuing to pursue her, she is actually being pressured to change.  This very well-written article considers it interesting and important that she leaves him at the end of the movie; the article discusses it in terms of rejecting the wealthy but ultimately empty lifestyle he offers.  Looking at it through the frame I've been discussing the movie, the end also suggests that they both accept that neither of them can change, and no "compromise" is going to work for them.  However, this is the first in the trilogy, and we know going in that they'll somehow "work it out."  I'll admit that I'm curious to find out how they do so.  I'm just having trouble imagining how they could ever possibly do so, or that it could possibly be a good thing if they did.

thoughts on Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Louis Bloom, who stumbles onto a career as a "nightcrawler," showing up at crime scenes with a video camera to get footage to sell to the local news.  This is more consistently lucrative than what he was doing before, which early scenes establish was mainly stealing things and selling them to pawn shops.  Even at its best, "nightcrawling" is a pretty skeezy profession, as it involves waiting around all night for the police scanner to alert you to crimes and then hauling ass to make it to the scene before your competitors.  However, Louis quickly takes it to the next level.  He moves a dead body before the ambulance gets there to get a better shot.  He blackmails the news director at the TV station he sells footage to (Nina Romina, played by Rene Russo) into sleeping with him.  He cuts the brake lines on his top competitor's van.  Before long, he is basically staging crime scenes-- withholding information from police and revealing it at just such a time that it is likely to erupt in a particularly violent way.  Some of the people at Nina's station think showing some of this footage is unethical, but Nina is desperate for ratings.  The cops are on to Louis, but they can't prove anything.  The worse Louis behaves, the more he is rewarded.

Louis is a disgusting character, and it's disturbing to watch him commit more and more heinous atrocities with a calm smile on his face.  He is not charming, exactly, but he can talk his way out of or into almost anything.  Gyllenhaal and Russo both give excellent performances.  It's not an enjoyable movie, exactly; I felt a little like I was going to be sick afterwards.  However, it is somewhat fascinating to see how far he will go and how much he will get away with.

thoughts on Into the Woods

James Corden and Emily Blunt star as the baker and his wife, who learn that the reason that they haven't been able to conceive a child is that a witch (Meryl Streep) has put a curse on their home.  To reverse the curse, they have to go into the woods to get a cow as white as milk; a golden slipper; a red cape; and hair as yellow as straw.  This provides the set-up for a story that weaves together characters and plot details from Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel, ultimately culminating in the main characters trying to save their village from the wife of the giant at the top of the beanstalk.

It's all incredibly well-done, with songs and the baker and his wife providing the connection between the separate stories.  All of the actors give solid performances, with Chris Pine stealing the show as Prince Charming.  It's a well-acted, magical twist on familiar fairy tales.