Here at Cinecultist we like to appeal to all of your movie-going needs and thus bring you the following picture at right as a part of our new ongoing feature, Beefcake Tuesday. Just kidding sillies, that's actually a production still from the new film Win A Date With Tad Hamilton which CC saw over the weekend at a preview screening. (We strongly urge you to click over to the official website just so Josh Dushmal can whisper to you in the Flash intro, "Dance With Me" it will make your morning.)
Win A Date isn't a very good movie, it's very typical of this January film season littered with filler and fluff at the cineplex. If it comes out now, there's a reason that it's not a part of the end of the year Best Of pool. But even in its badness, there was something interesting about the picture, in that it seems to be strangely representative of this fascination with "real guys" versus media constructed hunks ala tv's "Average Joe". These stories show us the average guy pineing for the girl who is enamored with this construction and it expects us to be rooting for him. It is the most natural thing in the movies that the girl should give up the rich actor who says he loves her because its crystal clear that he couldn't love her as much as the average guy does. But in the end, this foregone conclusion is surprisingly unsettling. Not that CC doesn't like Topher Grace or think he's unworthy of Kate Bosworth's Barbie dollness but it felt more "unreal" than anything we've seen at the movies in a long time. Maybe CC just wants to see movie characters acting more crass, materialistic and self-serving on screen. That's what reality tv says we're doing in real life, after all.
Posted by karen at January 20, 2004 8:32 AM