Was Book Club (2018) the perfect bad movie and why can't I stop talking about Book Club (2018)?
The beauty of art lies in its ability to make an audience feel things. Great art can make you laugh, can make you cry, can set you alight with passion to share or to argue. Book Club has yet to make me shed a tear, but we're two from three. Is this movie about four older ladies reading 50 Shades of Grey secretly the best movie of 2018???????????
No.
But it very well might be the best bad movie of 2018. It might actually be the movie I have the most to say about of 2018. Unlike so many other movies of its kind, Book Club takes no shame in what it is. The director, Bill Holdermann, and his wife who wrote it with him, knew exactly what demographic they were aiming for in crafting this movie. Every single element of the plot, from the perfectly pitched racy for the over-sixty set jokes to the movie's complete ignorance of how the dating app bumble. works is done with a wink and a nudge to the audience both of target demographic and beyond it, rolling their eyes. Every single element about Book Club that I hated - and by god, there were so many of them - was then quickly ramped up and up and up to the point where it became something I could laugh at the sheer audaciousness of.
Take, for example, the movie's egregious use of green screen. This pops up not only for loftier scenes (Diane Keaton and her new lover Andy Garcia taking a plane ride), which might have me scoffing, but also for unassuming scenes (Jane Fonda and her rekindled flame Don Johnson are...talking on the roof?). Take the scene wherein Diane Keaton needs to put on something sexy for her date with Andy Garcia, and her team do a quick makeover montage. When Mary Steenburgen, Jane Fonda and Candace Bergen are done with her, she's wearing...pretty much the same thing. Take the photo composites of the four cast members together at different ages, except hideous and beyond parody!
There's a lot to pick apart in Book Club. I could sit here and list all of the plot elements that just needed a tidy, either in the writing or the edit bay. It's not just the things that no one else cared about (men don't send the first message to women on bumble!!! It's the very basis of the app!!!), but also the characters that were sketched out hastily and the ways the plot lines were tied up. In fact, the way they were resolved possibly irritated me more than anything else about the movie: plot by plot, a neat monologue to put a bow on the storylines. My mother turned to me, rolled her eyes, and said "Oh please!"
What made Book Club a firmly Bad movie were the problems inherent to the premise alone. I loved that it was a movie giving agency to a traditionally ignored demographic, especially in giving them sexual agency. That's all well and good, but the movie hinges on women being incomplete and unable to be alone. Keaton's character makes a big point of her autonomy and her daughters needing to allow her to move on in spite of her husband's death, and yet she is flung by the plot into the arms of a man. Bergen's character begins obstinate in her distaste for men and her satisfaction alone with her cat, but the plot ensures that - for some reason - she continuously re-involves herself in the hells cape that is online dating. Fonda's character is built on being a strong single woman who enjoys casual sex, but of course one man holds power over her. Steenburgen has the most interesting plot scaffolding, happily married but sexually dissatisfied, and her plot still ends up involving the uncritiqued sexual assault of her husband. None of these characters are allowed to end up alone, despite an assortment of unhappy relationships or happiness alone. Women are, on some level, not seen as whole. I can't quite comment on whether this is a deeper problem in the text or just a difficult take on the gross world we're living in, but I'm not optimistic.
Still, as I said, movies are successful when they draw emotions forth. For the woman two seats down who clapped and squealed every time someone referred to 50 Shades of Grey and teared up at one point, it was inarguably a success. The fact that I spent a week getting less angry and more amused by the increasingly bizarre parts of this movie? I'd say that was a surprising success. I certainly didn't expect to still be thinking about it. To my grandmother, for whom the jokes landed and the criticisms I level will undoubtedly seem baseless, it was a success as a fun movie.
Rating: 4/10 - I enjoyed this movie more than a lot of things with far more critical acclaim, even though it was a technical mess. I gave The Seagull the same score, because I found it more painful, but it was far easier on the eye.
As to the modern equivalent of whether I'm a Miranda, Carrie, Samantha or Charlotte being "Who in Book Club are you?", I'm definitely whatever Candace Bergen's character's name was. Maybe if she'd given up on online dating.
No.
But it very well might be the best bad movie of 2018. It might actually be the movie I have the most to say about of 2018. Unlike so many other movies of its kind, Book Club takes no shame in what it is. The director, Bill Holdermann, and his wife who wrote it with him, knew exactly what demographic they were aiming for in crafting this movie. Every single element of the plot, from the perfectly pitched racy for the over-sixty set jokes to the movie's complete ignorance of how the dating app bumble. works is done with a wink and a nudge to the audience both of target demographic and beyond it, rolling their eyes. Every single element about Book Club that I hated - and by god, there were so many of them - was then quickly ramped up and up and up to the point where it became something I could laugh at the sheer audaciousness of.
Take, for example, the movie's egregious use of green screen. This pops up not only for loftier scenes (Diane Keaton and her new lover Andy Garcia taking a plane ride), which might have me scoffing, but also for unassuming scenes (Jane Fonda and her rekindled flame Don Johnson are...talking on the roof?). Take the scene wherein Diane Keaton needs to put on something sexy for her date with Andy Garcia, and her team do a quick makeover montage. When Mary Steenburgen, Jane Fonda and Candace Bergen are done with her, she's wearing...pretty much the same thing. Take the photo composites of the four cast members together at different ages, except hideous and beyond parody!
There's a lot to pick apart in Book Club. I could sit here and list all of the plot elements that just needed a tidy, either in the writing or the edit bay. It's not just the things that no one else cared about (men don't send the first message to women on bumble!!! It's the very basis of the app!!!), but also the characters that were sketched out hastily and the ways the plot lines were tied up. In fact, the way they were resolved possibly irritated me more than anything else about the movie: plot by plot, a neat monologue to put a bow on the storylines. My mother turned to me, rolled her eyes, and said "Oh please!"
What made Book Club a firmly Bad movie were the problems inherent to the premise alone. I loved that it was a movie giving agency to a traditionally ignored demographic, especially in giving them sexual agency. That's all well and good, but the movie hinges on women being incomplete and unable to be alone. Keaton's character makes a big point of her autonomy and her daughters needing to allow her to move on in spite of her husband's death, and yet she is flung by the plot into the arms of a man. Bergen's character begins obstinate in her distaste for men and her satisfaction alone with her cat, but the plot ensures that - for some reason - she continuously re-involves herself in the hells cape that is online dating. Fonda's character is built on being a strong single woman who enjoys casual sex, but of course one man holds power over her. Steenburgen has the most interesting plot scaffolding, happily married but sexually dissatisfied, and her plot still ends up involving the uncritiqued sexual assault of her husband. None of these characters are allowed to end up alone, despite an assortment of unhappy relationships or happiness alone. Women are, on some level, not seen as whole. I can't quite comment on whether this is a deeper problem in the text or just a difficult take on the gross world we're living in, but I'm not optimistic.
Still, as I said, movies are successful when they draw emotions forth. For the woman two seats down who clapped and squealed every time someone referred to 50 Shades of Grey and teared up at one point, it was inarguably a success. The fact that I spent a week getting less angry and more amused by the increasingly bizarre parts of this movie? I'd say that was a surprising success. I certainly didn't expect to still be thinking about it. To my grandmother, for whom the jokes landed and the criticisms I level will undoubtedly seem baseless, it was a success as a fun movie.
Rating: 4/10 - I enjoyed this movie more than a lot of things with far more critical acclaim, even though it was a technical mess. I gave The Seagull the same score, because I found it more painful, but it was far easier on the eye.
As to the modern equivalent of whether I'm a Miranda, Carrie, Samantha or Charlotte being "Who in Book Club are you?", I'm definitely whatever Candace Bergen's character's name was. Maybe if she'd given up on online dating.
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