Movies make riding buses look cool. Riding buses is not cool. Ask anyone who had to stand in the snow or rain to wait for one. Buses smell. They stop every few minutes. They make a twenty minute trip take forty-five.
Movies make dating look cool.
They make love look easy to stumble upon.
In movies all the music is hip, even if it isn’t hip, it sounds hip because the people involved are hip.
Movies make the world seem better.
Cooler. Brighter.
I’ve been wanting to watch 500 Days of Summer for about a month. It came to the Little Art Theatre but I couldn’t go when it played because the only vacation hours my job as a parent gives me is when I’m at work. So I had to wait. Well, I just watched it, and it stirred all of these emotions up in me. Not the emotions that I was intended to get per the director. I didn’t feel like I was going to meet a very manicured, successful employed partner to spend my very thin and well-dressed time with. All I noticed was how glossy the world looked. It looked clean and void of smells. It was a world where karaoke was fun – when it really isn’t. It was a world where the kid from Third Rock From the Sun is attractive enough to date Zooey Deschanel.
I prefer movies where the classic scrappy underdog gets the girl/guy. I like these sorts of movies because I am the classic scrappy underdog and one day I want to get the guy. I wonder if all of those movies, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Tully, Sixteen Candles is selling the same crap as 500 Days of Summer just tried to sell me? It tried to be different – the underdog didn’t get the girl – which is a lot more realistic. However, he did get another very attractive girl instead. I’m not convinced that this is how life works. I’m not convinced that riding the bus to work is ideal and that people make out in the copy rooms of their offices (none of my co-workers are even mildly attractive enough to even desire to make-out with). And I think that this realization proves that I’m finally maturing a little bit. I’m finally beginning to understand that movies are not real life. Movies are fantasies. Movies reflect the way we want the world to be. Movies are the way we would write the world if we could. And it’s great to have that kind of power – even if only for two hours.
