Smart People

This new "let's put unattractive people on the screen because it's trendy" really bothers me. I've always found the looks of Sarah Jessica Parker, to be unappealing yet somehow, she's considered lovely these days by mass media.

The male characters were mostly scruffy looking and unlikable. In fact everyone was pretty unlikable in the film. I didn't much care for the storyline either which was mainly, look how dysfunctional we are, aren't we cool? Woo hoo.

The most attractive looking leads in the film were Ellen Page and Ashton Holmes but that doesn't mean I liked the characters they played.

If I were truly one of the "smart people", which I've never claimed to be, LOL, I would have avoided this one. The trailer looked interesting, darn lying trailers!

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Bleacheddecay

Er, this is your second post within 3 minutes talking about how you didn't like a film because you didn't find the actors attractive enough. Forgive me, but I don't find that to be a particularly insightful or relevant criteria to use for a movie review. If you just want to look at pictures of attractive people, there are plenty of magazines which you can purchase.

I'm also not aware that there was any "trendiness" in putting unattractive people in movies...

I'm sorry that it upsets you that I don't enjoy looking at unattractive people. However, I do believe there is clearly a trend to put such people in movies, or good looking ones and then scruff them up. That and the "nerd" trend are pretty big in casting these days under the false idea that these are "normal" looking people.

It matters to me. I mainly got this one because it looked like it might be funny and cute with Ellen Page. It wasn't funny or cute. I was disappointed.

Magazines rarely interest me.

It doesn't upset me that you'd rather look at attractive people -- by definition, we'd all prefer to look at the people we find attractive. But that doesn't mean it has anything to do with a movie's quality, or that most of us go to the movies for these purposes.

I can take a class on, say, calculus and technically prefer that my teacher be attractive, rather than unattractive -- but I wouldn't use that as a criteria to judge the quality of the class, because it's not important, and that's not why I'm there. Similarly, I would hope nobody would see or not see a movie for such a reason, because if so, they'd be going to movies for the wrong reasons.

There are entire industries that cater to those who want to see attractive people. The movie industry isn't (entirely) one of them, and I'm pretty thankful for that. Plenty of great, ugly actors out there, and plenty of good movies with nary a square jaw or hourglass figure to be seen. Thank goodness.

I have to say that I too find it somewhat bizarre to judge a film mainly on the appearance of the actors. I have seen you post mini reviews before and you are usually more insightful than this. I'm sure that wasn't the main reason why you disliked the film. My sister has it on DVD and i've been curious about seeing it, so maybe if you gave us a stronger and less superficial reason as to why you disliked it I might make up my mind as to whether to borrow it or catch it when i'm dead bored.

This is news to me, but as trends in movies go I can think of alot worse.

Ok, I dont mean to be rude or offensive in the slightest, but come on....
Ive never heard of this movie yet, this is the first ive known of it, Im a great Ellen Page fan you tell me nothing about the movie other than it lacks attractive people.

Whats the movie about? Who else appears in it? What was the main plot? What characters appealed, what else did you not like about the movie rather than the fact that you didnt like the unattractiveness? As reviews go, this isnt very imformative. Which is a shame cause id like to know more about the movie from someone who has seen it rather than my "googling" or searching for it.

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Sorry everyone has such problems that I didn't find these people attractive. If, there had been a decent story or decent characters that would have been overcome but for me, there wasn't. One's taste is subjective and that is mine.

To those saying I didn't say anything else about the movie than my remarks about looks I will point out this part of my original post:

In fact everyone was pretty unlikable in the film. I didn't much care for the storyline either which was mainly, look how dysfunctional we are, aren't we cool?

By saying everyone was pretty unlikable I meant they were unlikable as characters.
I hope this clears things up a bit.

Ok, its not so much that you dont find the characters attractive, its the fact that it sounded like thats what you based your dislike of the movie on.

you point out there "In fact everyone was pretty unlikable in the film. I didn't much care for the storyline either which was mainly, look how dysfunctional we are, aren't we cool?"

Thats all well and good, but you dont explain very well what the problem with the characters is, just like you dont actually tell us what the film is about. You just lacked giving any details at all. I think thats what is getting to most people.

The film was about a family of four, their dysfunction and the people or situations they came in contact with.

There wasn't much of a storyline to explain IMO. The characters were mostly self absorbed and stupid. Most of the bad stuff that happened to them they caused. They didn't make me care about them or the outcome of the very limited story. I didn't find there to many many relevant details in the movie because the story and characters were so lacking.

When the storylines and characters are so lacking, I turn more of my attention to the general look of the film and the actors.

Now sometimes, if you find an actor attractive enough, you can simply enjoy watching them going through the motions in a film but that's rare for me.

Sometimes if you find them unattractive they can overcome that with a doing a great job in how they interpret and portray a character. I would say that Philip Seymour Hoffman did that in Charlie Wilson's War.

That's awesome when that happens because it seems to me that so many performances these days are just phoned in. It also seems to me that so many movie projects are just cobbled together in the attempt to follow some formula that might make money.

BTW, I don't really go for the square jaws and hour glass figures either. We all have different likes and dislikes. It absolutely matters to me if someone I can't stand the looks or behavior of in RL is in a movie or not.

When you take fairly attractive people, such as, Dennis Quaid, and Thomas Haden Church and scruff them up but it doesn't have anything to do with the film or help the story or characters at all, it bothers me a great deal.

Here is the plot summery for the movie from IMDB:

Lawrence Wetherhold is miserable and misanthropic: he's a widower, a pompous professor at Carnegie Mellon, an indifferent father to a college student and a high-school senior, and the reluctant brother of a ne'er-do-well who's come to town.

A seizure and a fall send Lawrence to the emergency room where the physician, a former student of his, ends up going on a date with him.

His daughter, Vanessa, lonely and friendless, who's been bonding with his brother, tries to sabotage dad and the doctor's relationship, but Lawrence is good at that without help. Is there any way these smart people can get a life? Can happiness be pursued beneath layers of irony? Written by {[email protected]}

See now that was much more informative

You keep saying this sort of thing, but no one has said anything like it. It's not about whether or not you like to look at attractive people (we all do) or whether or not you find one person more attractive than another. It's about whether or not the attractiveness of the cast is relevant to the quality of the movie, or whether or not it makes sense to watch movies to see attractive people.

This distinction has been mentioned and clarified more than once, so I'm not sure why there would be any confusion about it, unless this re-phrasing is some sort of rhetorical device to make the criticism seem unreasonable.

I think we all realize that taste is subjective, and you've certainly found refuge in this fact many times in our other disagreements. But not all opinions are unassailable simply by virtue of the fact that they're opinions.

Not all opinions are created equal, either: some are arbitrary, while others are thought out. Some are accompanied by supporting experience or reasoning, while some are the result of a misconception or misunderstanding. We never know which without elaboration, which is why we all place such a high value on it, I think. An "I liked it"/"I didn't" exchange isn't that interesting, but getting to the bottom of the disagreement can be.

For example:

I honestly don't get why this would be something they have to "overcome." It's never occurred to me that an ugly actor has to give a better performance to offset their ugliness.

I suppose it comes from expecting fundamentally different things out of the movies. To each their own on that front, but as I said before, I think anyone going into a film with this perspective is bound to miss out on some great movies and performances, or at least enjoy them less, if they go in taking points away based on superficial criteria.

That's right, I'm superficial. Thanks so much.

Yep and about 5 of them work in mainstream Hollywood films.

If this is meant to be sarcastic or facetious, I think it's out of place. You semi-jokingly said the same thing your post about The Darjeeling Limited.

Anyway, yeah, suggesting that actors be given more or less credit for their performance based on their looks is superficial, by any standard, and anyone who uses this criteria will inevitably miss out on fully enjoying some great performances. I think you can get a lot more out of movies with a different approach.

But perhaps you regard movies as merely a pleasant diversion; obviously most of the people here take a decidedly more serious approach to them, but that's certainly your prerogative.

Sigh...

If history could teach you one thing, it's that a majority of people aren't overly attractive. Even more so, I've rarely seen a teacher that is attractive. If anything, the un-attractiveness of the actors in this movie makes it that much more real.

I'll admit, I'm not a fan of Sarah Jessica Parker. Her voice is shrill (to me) and her face seems like someone took her face and stretched it out.

Overall, the film itself isn't bad. It does have weak parts to it, but overall, it's a feel-good movie at its core. If you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth a watch, just don't go in expecting too much out of it.



Lesson for the day, don't base the quality of films on the attractiveness of the actors playing in the film. Doing this will 1) Degrade the enjoyment of the film by nitpicking irrelevant things and 2) Make you look conceded and ignorant later on.

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

I've never told someone that their view of things important to them in movies or the enjoyment of them was invalid or shallow. I've never personally attacked anyone on this forum (that I can recall, it's not generally in my nature) for expression a P.O.V.
If some of y'all feel that way, and say so, that's fine.

Even so, when I give my opinion of things, I'm still going to include the things that affect my enjoyment of a movie.

BTW, I never said that people I find unattractive had to put in a better performance. What I said was sometimes they overcome my initial dislike of their looks because a performance is so good it makes me care about them as actors and/or characters.

Yes, I do often (but not always), see movies as a pleasant diversion. If that's offensive and not deep enough, again, that's my choice to enjoy or not movies as I see them.

Forgive me for belaboring this point, but there is also the issue of what things are reasonable criteria to judge a movie on. Our own enjoyment is only part of the picture. Some ways of judging movies are not particularly fair to the movie, or particularly helpful or insightful to the people reading the opinion.

Obviously we're not just here to catalogue our opinions for posterity, but to share them in meaningful ways with others. If I gave a movie a bad review because of, say, the fact that I could hear a dog barking next door, it'd be perfectly understandable that I didn't enjoy the film, but it wouldn't be fair to the movie and it it wouldn't be very helpful to anyone reading my review, either.

Similarly, if most people judge a movie based on its actual performances and quality, and not the attractiveness of the actors, they won't get much out of such opinions. Lots of things can affect our personal enjoyment, but that doesn't make them particularly sensible criteria to judge with, or helpful criteria for others.

What's the difference, exactly? You said it is something they can "overcome." This means it is an obstacle or hurdle towards your enjoyment of their performance, which means they have to do a better job to achieve the same result of a more attractive person. There's not a lot of room for parsing here.

I'm not offended by the idea at all, though I can't disagree with it strongly enough. As you say, it's your choice, just as it is my choice to point out that you can probably get a lot more out of some films with a different perspective.

Surely you can't be surprised by this response; we're on a forum full of movie-lovers! Of course most of us are going to advocate using more serious, meaningful measures of a movie's quality.

There's nothing wrong with an opinion, but when you say that a movie is bad simply because the actors in the film aren't as attractive as they should be, you're not leaving room for anything else to be critiqued.

I'm not trying to attack you here, just want to know why you feel that attractive actors are what make the movie.

Again, that wasn't the only reason that I said it was bad. Y'all keep beating that dead horse though . . .