Jennifer's Body, or The Dragon's Demotion

O, how the mighty have fallen! Woe is the day when we see two great Dragon Queens put on such mighty displays of epic failure-tude.

 

Since moving to Seattle, my life has been what one might call charmed. But this week has been my unveiling. It all began when a certain Dead Acorn called me by another Dragon’s Name. (You might know her by her affection for BABIES and DRAGONS in OVEN MITTS or on ROLLER SKATES.) Since then, I slept beyond my alarm which resulted in me sprinting, shoelaces untied, teeth unbrushed, to the bus stop to catch a bus half an hour after the one I was meant to catch. What was I late for, you might ask… well, I’ll tell you. A really fabulous volunteer opportunity: running a writing workshop for high school kids based on writing from art using the Picasso exhibit. Oh how my nostrils were flared and smoking on the way to the museum, panicked that I was going to be kicked to the curb after such an episode, without any contact numbers for the program directors. Just me, and the even smellier guy on the bus. Fortunately, I knew, the kids wouldn’t mind my unwashed mane.

 

And, as it turns out, the program directors were perfectly generous, merciful, and are going to allow me back.

 

But wait! There’s more. A parent complaint at work for my “mishandling” of their “not picking up their kid from school and so the kid was crying at my desk but couldn’t tell me the last name or phone number of the person who was supposed to pick them up” situation at work the other day.

 

Oh well, I say! I will not fail alone!

 

I’ve been meaning to write about this “film” for a while. I watched it this summer, with my mom, because it was for free on OnDemand. (O! How I miss my parent’s free HBO and very, very big TV!). This film, you might have gotten from the title, was the MEGHAN FOX vehicle, Jennifer’s Body. I had sort of seen this in the periphery and knew it only by the sort of slutty and also sort of gross picture of Meghan Fox (pictured below). Between the advertising the movie title, I assumed this was a movie centered entirely around a hot chic’s body. Which, considering today’s movies and Meghan Fox’s particular move choices, wouldn’t be too surprising (see Transformer and Transformer 2, plus her one time stint on Two and a Half Men (don’t ask me why I know this…)). (Woo! Parentheses party!)

 

So anyway, we are watching this movie and I am stunned… STUNNED… by the dialogue. It is sooo bad. And also… soo gooood. And also… not working, for some reason. Is it Meghan Fox? Perhaps she can’t act?! (gasp!) Or Amanda Segfried? Star of such gems as Dear John and Veronica Mars and that Abba movie? Or maybe it’s that guy from The OC? Is my sarcasm not simply DRIPPING…

 

But it wasn’t just the performances. In fact, I nearly enjoyed Meghan Fox , was almost charmed when she talked about “poo.”

 

And yet, and yet… this film fell short. And the whole time, as each line of dialogue cascaded into the open living room, I kept thinking that this movie should be so much better.

 

Witness the following:

 

Jennifer Check: I think the singer wants me.
Needy Lesnicky: Only because he thinks you're a virgin. I heard them talking.
Jennifer Check: Yeah, right. I'm not even a backdoor-virgin anymore, thanks to Roman. By the way, that hurts. I couldn't even go to flags the next day. I had to stay home and sit on a bag of frozen peas.

 

and then…

 

Needy Lesnicky: Jennifer's evil.
Chip Dove: I know.
Needy Lesnicky: No. I mean, she's actually evil. Not high school evil.

 

 

I still don’t know why it flopped.

 

But at the end I learned why the dialogue kept leaking the faintest stench of brilliance, the overwhelming sense of unfulfilled potential: “Written by Diablo Cody”

 

Some of you may remember her as the writer of the oh-so-clever dialogue of Juno.

 

And so I repeat, O! how these dragons have fallen from the sky like fiery meteors.

Or at least disappointing people a little bit.

How Mandy Got her Groove Back

Over the past couple of months, I've totally lost my swagger. It would probably be best to acknowledge that I never really had any real swagger, but whatever pizazz/oomph/zing/shazam I had has been sucked out of me for an assortment of reasons that I'm just going to call--for simplicity's sake--Composition. Now. I have a pretty sweet life. (And by that I mostly mean my fantasy football team is KILLING it.) I should be jolly. But just as Gollum cannot be without his Precious, I cannot be happy without my swagger. I woke to my alarm (Boston's "Amanda." Duh.) at 4:15am one Monday morning and discovered that my bathtub hadn't drained from my last shower. I seriously thought something along the lines of, "Screw you, shower. I'm getting my swagger back." Then I did some Mark Wahlberg moves courtesy of Boogie Nights. And by moves I mean Karate moves, sickos.

The best way to get one's swagger back? Make out with a vaguely attractive filmmaker over a vent while drinking slurpees. This should be done in 3d. If that doesn't work for you, you can always watch the cinematic masterpiece that is Step Up 3d. It will give you an admittedly false optimism about how life works (just like how the Mighty Ducks made me believe that the flying V was really the best idea ever during hockey games), but I eat that stuff up like Harry's green-flecked French Fries.

While it's true that watching dance movies can restore swagger, not all dance movies are created equal. I recently watched Stomp the Yard : Homecoming, and I was so disappointed. A dance movie can have a transparent narrative arc, bad dialogue, and lots of bad voiceover about the Power of Dance, but it needs to have super awesome dancing, preferably involving water or fire at some point. In the opening sequence of StYH, the hero gets involved in a dance battle in hopes of paying his way through college. (Like all strippers.) Here's the thing. The guy he's dancing off against is obviously a better dancer. At least to me, and I'd say a solid 100% of dance movie afficionados. But everyone in the movie world is cheering on our hero like his moves are the best thing since Michael Jackson. Our hero ends up "winning" the battle but gets swindled out of the money. The movie wasn't a complete failure, however.
Observe the movie cover.


EVERY TIME I see the cover, I HAVE to put my hands up in that pose. Have to. I'm doing it now at the smoothie shop. If that pose doesn't say SWAGGER, then I don't know what does.