Maria Diaz lady business. pop culture. whatever.

Poor People Are The Only Ones With Real Emotions

I flew cross country on a plane without personal televisions today. I know. How dreadful. I also was without reading material (procrastinated on packing and woke up 10 minutes before my super shuttle came to pick me up) and using my laptop without power is a cruel joke I choose not to play on myself any longer. You know the minute you stop messing around and doing Important Things like organizing your iPhoto library or reading all of your email from 2 years ago on Mail is right when that thing decides it has 5 minutes left to go.

And so, I was forced to partake in the common entertainment. At least American Airlines doesn't make you pay for headphones. The movie was Four Christmases which at first I ignored but once I saw a scene involving Kevin from The Office and Cedric Yarbrough from Reno 911!, I decided to stop being an asshole, turn off my podcast and watch the movie.

Of course, I found the headphone jack right as the scene with the funny dudes was ending and ended up watching the schlocky, over acted remainder. It stars Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn as two hateful San Francisco yuppies (let's say they live in Russian Hill) who have ignored their families for years and who end up having to give up going to Fiji to spend time with them instead. As to where in the Bay Area their families lived, I'm going to say that Vince's dad probably lived in Sonoma County (the sticks, basically) and Vince's mom was a total Sausalito/Larkspur monied Marin County lady. I'm going to say the same for Reese's dad.

In the movie we learn: (1) adult man children can get rid of their Peter Pan syndrome towards avoiding commitment in the span of an hour especially when their tough working class dad teaches them what true love is really about over a beer, (2) only poor, uneducated people with children can feel real emotions, and (3) you should always pretend to never have had a past in front of someone you're in a serious relationship with. See, Reese Witherspoon's character used to be fat and made fun of in elementary school and OMG that's the worst thing EVER. The movie treated this fact as if Reese's character was hiding serious jail time. And we're supposed to believe that these people had been dating and going on vacations together for 3 years and they didn't know any of this?

What really drove me crazy with this movie was how the writers really hate Witherspoon's character. She suffers much more humiliation than Vaughn's, who is just guilty of having a weird post divorce family and lying about his white trash name. Reese however, gets puked on, is forced to endure having to steal a peed on pregnancy test from a group of children and doesn't even get the satisfaction of being pregnant. They allude to the fact that her mom and sisters are hitting on her boyfriend and she comes off as weak and baby crazy.

I went to sleep right as the couple was doing their fake reconciliation dance over cheesy music. It was just too much to bear.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG0nmabeQN8&hl=en&fs=1]