Word: smugness
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...result is a movie that is at once smug and lazy, qualities fatal to comedy. And qualities increasingly prevalent in an era enervated by the ironic ideal. (Wouldn't it be ironic if irony destroyed our ability to make one another laugh?) At some point in What Planet Are You From? you start to wonder how these people acquired the air of unearned superiority that makes the movie seem so old and tired...
Gomez and Steinfeld aren't superior to this stupidity--nothing smug about them, partly because as virtual unknowns, they're eager to please. On the other hand, there's a definite limit to the number of moron jokes we can absorb in 100 minutes, and their movie exceeds it. These guys have a nice gift for sly, sidelong comic glances. One appreciates the Coke machine that stands, uncommented upon, in the middle of the funeral parlor. One would not entirely mind seeing the dinner-theater production of Oh! Calcutta! they casually mention. But they need to be as smart...
...least that's the conclusion that can be drawn from this collection of essays, short stories and poems in which male writers imagine life as a woman for 24 hours. With rare exceptions, the 38 contributors belabor the fantasy of dressing up and sleeping around, while expressing a smug self-loathing for the callousness of their gender. A few strive for empathy and thoughtfulness (Alexander Theroux and Brian Bouldrey stand out), but for the rest of these men, being a woman too often means feeling angry, oppressed or prone to tears...
...truth universally acknowledged that a Bridget Jones novel that begins with "Hurrah! The wilderness years are over" must be setting up a false dawn. What fun, after all, would it be seeing the same woman whose diary invented a whole support vocabulary for Singletons turn into a Smug Going-Out-With-Someone? Fortunately, while Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason begins where Bridget Jones' Diary left off-i.e. in happily-ever-after mode, with Bridget making goo-goo eyes at new-found beau Mark Darcy-the heroine reverts back to her neurotic type, convinces herself that Mark secretly...
Still, America watched. We can't help ourselves. Sitting in the comfort of our homes, we can feel mildly appalled and wonderfully smug. Whatever our own love life might be, we haven't sunk so low. We assure ourselves, as we watch the bevy of prospective brides, that we never will. Money, we think, isn't everything. And we wonder how much she'll cop in the divorce settlement...