Illustration by Tom Gauld
On Christmas Day, Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone will open in "Grudge Match," a movie about a couple of old, rival boxers spoiling for one last fight. This may seem like an unpromising premise, but perhaps the movie will please the same audience that went for the recent comedy "Last Vegas," which is about three AARP-appropriate Brooklyn guys from the old neighborhood — one married, one divorced and one widowed — who get together for one last ring-a-ding-ding Vegas weekend to toast the impending wedding of their fourth pal, a holdout bachelor who has spontaneously decided to tie the knot. (Gentle life lessons ensue.) The fact that the preternaturally tan and swinging groom to be is played by Michael Douglas (age 69) adds a dribble of amusement to the premise. So does the paycheck-collecting participation of aging movie stars like De Niro (him again), Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline.
As ingratiating geezer group projects go, "Last Vegas" would make a swell double feature with the 2000 action-drama "Space Cowboys," in which the elderly former test pilots Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner share one last blast, rocketing into the unknown to save a failing satellite. (Cosmic life lessons ensue.) Or perhaps a viewer might want to pair the film with the recent comedy "Stand Up Guys," in which Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin play Medicare-eligible mobsters who get together for a last hurrah. (Goodfella life lessons ensue.)
By this point, you may be noticing a pattern.
The entertainment aims of these stars-of-a-certain-age vehicles are fairly modest. Yet the tagline of "Last Vegas" — "It's going to be legendary" — hints at the mini-genre's more grandiose aims. That declaration reads as a haunting plea rather than as a jaunty boast, an admission of longing that deserves to be treated with forbearance, especially by women.
By my count, "Grudge Match" and "Last Vegas" are the umpteenth stories for men, about men and by men in which men do something one last time and with the goal of making that last time epic. And always, in one way or another, these men yearn to stop time, at least for a moment.
Consider the middle-aged suburban crew in the 2007 Dockers-friendly comedy "Wild Hogs" (with John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, Tim Allen and William H. Macy) on a legendary motorcycle trip. Or the Gen-X bros in the 2009 aged-frat-boy comedy "The Hangover" (with Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Justin Bartha) on a legendary bender. Or the barmy, midlife Brits in the 2013 sci-fi comedy "The World's End" (with Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan) on a legendary crawl with the goal of repeating, and this time completing, a 12-pub circuit of beer chugging first attempted more than 20 years earlier.
If these Arthurian quests tend to put a jokey face on the core mission — Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman (him again) are two guys living large and legendary while dying of cancer in "The Bucket List" — the implication is nevertheless tinged with pathos: Men crave one last victory before coming to terms with . . . well, something. Death, I guess. Or, if they're not quite Eastwood's age, perhaps they're making peace with routine. Responsibility. Maturity. The old ball and chain that constitutes commitment. They're hoping that maybe one phenomenally fun night of boozing, flirting, smashing things, driving fast, fighting, vomiting and slapping one another on the back will ease the pain of creaking knees, pouching gut, dimming memory and domestic servitude. Excelsior!
Or something like that. I wouldn't know. Because we women, we don't play like that. I can't think of one movie pitched to a female audience in which a gaggle of ladies or a pair of best gal pals go wild in an effort to recapture feelings of long-past girlish abandon. Unlike the dissatisfied guys, for example, in the 2010 way-back fantasy "Hot Tub Time Machine" — magically beamed backward to the party-hearty years of the mid-1980s they all remember so fondly — the title characters in, say, the delightful 1997 comedy "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion" are under no illusions that the old days were the grooviest days. On the contrary, while attending a 10-year school get-together, Romy and Michele (Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino) try to fake one-night-only improvements on their dweeby former selves to impress the grown women who still loom large in memory as disdainful popular girls, with unfortunate (and hence amusing) results. On-screen and in real life, women look to the future. We go for the forward-motion makeover, not the backward-glancing do-over.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Riff: One! Last! Time!
Dengan url
http://koraninternetonline.blogspot.com/2013/12/riff-one-last-time_22.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Riff: One! Last! Time!
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar