Less-Than-Surprising Praise

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To say @AlisonWillmore enjoyed the new Reese Witherspoon movie is like saying a 13-year-old boy enjoys masturbation.

Reese Witherspoon Plays The Year’s Most
Satisfying Female Character In “Wild”

The headline was sufficiently orgasmic I actually tried to read Ms. Willmore’s gooey wetness of a review and gathered that Wild is one of those dull movies my girlfriends would talk me into going to see thirty years ago, like Out of Africa. Meryl Streep has spent her entire career starring in movies that no heterosexual man would choose to watch. Any man who has ever seen a Meryl Streep movie was either gay, or else he watched it to make his girlfriend happy. It’s really sad to think Reese Witherspoon is heading that direction.

So I read though Alison Willmore’s long, slow arousal of a review, which reaches its cathartic spasm in the penultimate paragraph:

Wild slips in and out of Cheryl’s past and present, but its point of view is always firmly female, showing what it’s like to be a woman by yourself on the road. A stranger encountered on the way is probably a friendly face, but always merits wariness too, sometimes justified. Cheryl tends to get some extra help as one of the few women on the trail, but also has to put up with unwanted overtures. A scene in which she encounters a flirty ranger speaks volumes without shouting, and when she at one point says she’s a feminist, it’s a welcome declaration, but one that’s already been made clear in word and action long before.

Empowerment! Equality! A tedious waste of an hour and 45 minutes!

 

74 comments

  2. Derivative as all get out. See, e.g. this, not to mention this, this and, of course, this.

    Here’s the deal. I write as one who’s spent quite a bit of time over the years on various trails in the middle of nowhere or above various tree lines by myself. Loved it. Yet, lots of people do it. Most of us find personal benefit to it. I suppose if thru-hiking the PCT or AT or Continental Divide trail helps someone get over a rough patch in life, then good for him.

    But s/he is not unique. Nor is s/he better or worse than someone who accomplishes the same thing by building model railroads or perfecting his golf swing. It’s just the rest of us aren’t narcissistic enough to believe that the whole world needs to hear about whatever insights we obtained. These sorts of memoirs become the functional equivalent of somebody showing you 4 hours of slides of their vacation.

  3. See, H8ers? Despite what recent polls say, feminism is relevant and important to more than just WASPy, college-educated, northeastern, liberal women!

  4. Yes, you can tell the character is a feminist long before, because she’s all empowered and everything, but still afraid of every Y-chromosome that crosses her path.

    Plus, RS is right. Honestly, the only “get out and adventure!” movie I’ve liked in probably 20 years was the recent Walter Mitty revamp.

  5. Meryl Streep has spent her entire career starring in movies that no heterosexual man would choose to watch. Any man who has ever seen a Meryl Streep movie was either gay, or else he watched it to make his girlfriend happy.

    That first sentence is defensible, but, as is your wont, you portray a tendency as an absolute.

    I would be happy to defend any of these films as non-chick-flickery:
    The Deer Hunter
    Still of the Night
    Sophie’s Choice
    Silkwood
    Postcards from the Edge
    Defending Your Life
    Death Becomes Her

    I wouldn’t necessarily go pay to watch all of them in the theater, but they all made for fine cable-fare.

  6. Streep is probably the best character actress in modern times. She seldom turns in a bad performance. The list of films you provide is evidence of that. Sophie’s Choice was a tour de force in my view.

  10. People throw “feminism” out there but often it does not mean the same thing as when the rad fems use the term. Who knows, maybe a film about some self destructive personality who stops being self destructive and takes some responsibility in her life might actually be good…

    it is going to have to be good on Netflix however because I am sure not going to the movies to see it.

  14. “Any man who has ever seen a Meryl Streep movie was either gay, or else he watched it to make his girlfriend happy.”

    Does this include The Deer Hunter? Otherwise, I can’t stand that pretentious bitch.

    I thought Out of Africa was rather good. Then again, I’ve an academic interest in colonial African history, have travelled around Kenya (including the areas depicted in the film), and have lived in Africa.

    Denys Finch-Hatton (1887-1931) was always a curious, mysterious figure, a man who “went his own way” long before the Manosphere.

  15. Here’s the thing about Out of Africa: The girls get to see Robert Redford, one of the most handsome leading men in cinematic history. The guys get … Meryl Streep.

    You see what I’m talking about? It’s like every Barbra Streisand movie, ever.

    There’s this feminist fantasy film formula where the ugly duckling is paired with the impossibly handsome man. Somehow, with her feisty ways and her quirky sense of humor, she manages to make this sexy hunk of a man fall passionately in love with her. It’s basically Chicken Soup for the Unattractive Girl’s Soul, except it’s toxic.

    This kind of fantasy encourages unrealistic romantic aspirations in quite the same way as all those movies where the clumsy schlub magically lands the Playboy Centerfold Dream Girl.

    When Harry Met Sally — I mean, it’s hilarious, and Billy Crystal is one of my favorite comedians, but there’s no way a guy like that ends up with Meg Ryan. Maybe if a guy like that gets rich, he can marry a good-looking woman, but you know she’s going to be fucking around with the Guatemalan gardener or something.

    I understand that all romantic movies involve some element of fantasy, but here’s the deal: MOVIE STARS IN ROMANTIC ROLES SHOULD BE SEXY.

    Is that too much to ask? I’m not insulted or offended if the leading man is tall, muscular and handsome, so why do these GOD DAMNED FEMINISTS always want the studly hunk hero to be paired up with a hound like Meryl Streep?

  16. Well, Streep was good in Sophie’s Choice.

    But I still have PTSD from watching Out of Africa with the K-Missus.

    She’s agreed to watch every Bond flick with me for the rest of my life as therapy. Also all ten episodes of Band of Brothers every year.

    Edit: by the way, I’m pushing the Plaster Casters meme out there, regarding the SCOAMF doing his premature death mask thing.

    See here: http://therightscoop.com/heres-your-new-virtual-3d-potus/

  17. I hope I am wrong, but I foresee the day coming soon, maybe very soon, when American women turn desperately to American men and say, “I am not a feminist!”

    But by then, the question will be whether there are enough courageous men left to do the protecting.

  19. I really don’t get the plastic, Hollywood super-model thing in movies.

    I actually prefer watching British productions, where people look like people (mostly). One of the reasons Downton Abbey is so popular is that most of the actresses (especially) are made up to look like they NEVER wear the least bit of makeup, nor have any hairstyles other than keeping the hair out of the way.

    When I watch the plastic people in American films (prime example, the hot chicks in all the Transformer movies — it’s like your When Harry Met Sally example, only on steroids), I feel like I do when I’m at a costume party.

  24. In my ”outdoorsy” period when I was a young man, I didn’t walk trails much except when I was hunting. My idea of camping wasn’t suited to ”backpacking”. In part because it’s really hard to carry an eighty quart Coleman cooler full of beer any great distance.

  26. Definitely not a chick flick, but I still can’t forgive the 182 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

  33. Good to see you are among the enlightened. Just don’t blow your cover, and the rest of these H8erz will go to the re-ed camps as soon as we denounce them. Then we can take over this place and run it right.

  38. Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick in Election and as June Carter in Walk the Line go so far beyond what Meryl Streep has ever done as to make your whole premise absurd.

  39. There was the occasional flask of Bourbon, as well. Man does not live by water alone, as you know. A cocktail, smoked oysters, some Gruyere, and dried fruit. Damned civilized.

  42. Fun to watch, existentially disturbing if you think about it too much, and a good metaphor for the mutually enabling abusiveness of frenemies (which parallels partner violence).

  46. Indeed she is very, very talented, but, as with so many actresses [they are not ‘actors’], she has frittered-away her talent in a lot of Feminist-inspired dreck.

    Her best performance was in The Deer Hunter, a very conservative [and majestic] movie.

  47. Do you think the same about Ben Hur or The Godfathers I & II?!?

    The Deer Hunter is one of the few films that captures it’s period beautifully. It’s bloody Shakespearean.

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