The Celebration of Mediocrity July 26, 2005 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy

To entertain myself last night, instead of watching the uncreative drivel on aerial TV (I don’t have cable), I took out two films from the library. One was called the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, and the other was Fritz Lang’s M. I put in the first film, the “the discreet charm..”, which was billed as a “wicked Academy Award winning film,” a “priceless satire on the absurd lifestyle of the upper class,” and “a pioneer of Surrealist cinema.” My God, what hyperbole! The story revolves around a bunch of coke dealing ambassadors, their drunken wives, and their repeated failed attempts at having a civilized dinner. After about forty minutes of this film, I had to shut it off. I rarely do that to a film, but it was that terrible. The setup was pretty good: The neighborhood bishop wants to be the couple’s gardner. The guests think the police are coming to raid because the hosts have disappeared out in the yard to have sex. The first restaurant they visist has a dead man, the former owner, laid out with his mourners in the next room. Yet the jokes in this film are so poorly executed, so few and far between, the plot virtually non-existant, and the characters so loathesome, that the movie fell flat on its face. Honestly, I don’t even know why it won so many awards. I can think of several films from the 1970s, specifically those of Woody Allen, which take Surreal cinema and comedy to commendable, if not genius levels. Though not from 1972, I think Stardust Memories is one of his best.

I did watch “7th Heaven” before the film, only because I was doing my bills, I couldn’t both read subtitles and write checks at the same time, and it was the only thing that came in without static. “7th Heaven” is one of those shows where every character is beautiful, their deepest flaw is that they sometimes like to sneak out and have pizza without telling their family, and every minor conflict works out miraculously in the end. One of the girls was pregnant, decides to sneak out with her brother to get a gift for herself and the baby, when, what-do-you-know, she goes into labor in (you guessed it) a stuck elevator. Eventually, the whole town seems to find out about the incident, and they swarm around the elevator waiting for the news. Of course, the husband somehow gets into the elevator to help deliver the baby (if he can get in, how come she couldn’t get out?) and the department store owner says, “Anything you want from the store, it’s yours.” If they made “7th Heaven” novelettes, Barnes & Noble would put them in the Fantasy section, right next to Dragonriders of Pern. But I suppose it’s nice to escape into the gooely hypnotic world of make believe for a while.