Just Pick One

In a vain attempt to distract myself from all of the stuff I mentioned yesterday, as well as some stuff at work today that has prompted an ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? response that I can only scream inside my head, I will now talk movies.

First, a little secret about me: I hate “What is your favorite _____” questions.  Favorite color, favorite sushi order, favorite book … who can answer this?  My opinions change at least hourly and largely depending on my mood.  But people who ask these questions are just trying to learn something about you, right?  So if asked, I’ll usually play along.  Last week someone asked me what my favorite movie was.  I sputtered out “Fight Club.”  On most days, at most times, this movie is probably in my Top Five.  It’s original; it’s creative; it’s subtle in certain ways; and it has Brad Pitt AND Ed Norton.  What’s not to like?  (I know, the gross house and the soap-from-fat thing.  But I love that too.)

But there’s another one perpetually in the Top Five.  Allow me to detour for a moment: I had the same roommate all through college.  We had the perfect roommate relationship, from the dorms and through several apartments.  We were very, very different.  We were friends, definitely, but it was unlike my other friendships.  Many times we’d end a discussion with both of us wrinkling our brows and wondering how the other could hold the opinion that she did.  Because we lived together in close quarters (did I mention the dorms?) I think we knew each other’s deepest darkest dirt, but we held it close to the vest.  Sometimes we went places together and sometimes we had our own separate things going on, and it never caused hurt or feelings of being left out.   As roommates go, it was ideal.

In any case, we were in our fourth year of living together when she came back from a movie with her boyfriend.  She said the movie they’d seen was, hands down, the worst movie she’d ever seen.  Worst.  She went on and on for awhile about how much she hated it and how she couldn’t believe they’d stayed for the whole thing because it was The Worst Movie Ever.

Flash forward two weeks: My boyfriend at the time and I had planned to go see a movie at the dollar theater (do they have these anymore?), but it was sold out when we got there.  The only movie starting in the next few minutes was The Worst Movie My Roommate Had Ever Seen.  She’d been so passionate in her hatred that I told the boyfriend that we should just leave, but he convinced me that since it was only a dollar, we should give it a try and leave if it sucked.  Okay.

Flash forward two hours and I am walking out of the theater, half sobbing, proclaiming that I had just seen The Best Movie Ever. Best Ever.  Stop the presses because I have found my favorite movie!  Except first I had to blaze home and tell my roommate that she had zero taste in movies.  She took it in stride, firmly believing that I actually had no taste.

Behold:

It was on some TV channel last night.  I hadn’t seen it since I watched on DVD while I was in labor.  But it made me all weepy again.  Yes, I appreciate that no one would accuse Lawrence Kasdan of being overly subtle or nuanced with his message on this one, but I just love it.  I love Kevin Kline’s world intersecting with Danny Glover’s and the thing with the baby (sob!) and Mary Louise Parker who I just love in everything and want to be best friends with.  I still love it.

And for the record, I feel it’s important to mention that I hated Crash.  Crash was a cheap ripoff of Grand Canyon to me and I still can't believe it won Best Picture.

I may in fact need my own planet.