Debbie Schlussel: Weekend Box Office: Depressing, Predictable "Two Lovers", Muslim Students Run Asylum in Boring French "The Class"
No big blockbusters out this weekend (next weekend is "The Watchmen" weekend), just a couple of indie, smaller releases:
* "The Class" (Entre Les Murs): It figures that this movie was a nominee for best foreign language film (along with "Waltz with Bashir"--read my review) at this year's Academy Awards. It's one of the most boring movies on earth. Have insomnia? See this. It's in French, with English subtitles.
On the other hand, it's an insight to what's coming to America, if we continue to allow Muslim immigrants and illegal aliens to come to our shores.
A French public school teacher loses control of his classroom, as Muslim troublemakers--both Black and White--from North Africa act up and exalt their ignorance upon the rest of the class. It was written by the real-life teacher and stars his real-life students, based on their real-life experience. We see how most of these students' parents can't speak French and are complete unabsorbed into their population. Some of them get deported, and the idiotically liberal teachers feel bad for these aliens and take up collections for them. The insolence of the students is headed up by a troublemaker named Suleman, but we're suppoed to feel sorry for him because his father might send him back to Mali if he's expelled. I say, get packing.
Political correctness, thuggery, ignorance, and hip-hoppery run the classroom and its teacher, not the other way around. We already have a lot of this here. Expect more with illegal aliens. Islam and polite western civilization don't mix.
FOUR MARXES
* "Two Lovers": An aging Jewish couple is selling their business to a younger Jewish couple, as they worry about their troubled son, Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix). He once tried to commit suicide and seems to be going nowhere. They want him to date and marry the lovely daughter of the Jewish couple that's buying their dry cleaning business, and secure a good future for him. But he's drawn to the beautiful but wild, nutty, and aimless blonde gentile woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) in the apartment building, who uses him--and, as you could guess, doesn't change, despite pretenses and promises otherwise.
He dates the Jewish chick, but obsesses for the blonde, who wants someone else and plays him. It's the age old story of someone wanting someone who plays them repeatedly and predictably and doesn't really want them. On another level, I reject this self-hating hypothesis presented by liberal Hollywood Jews--that Jewish women are less sexy and desirable, the lesser alternative choice. Interestingly, in this movie the less desirable Jewish chick is played by the Jewish Vinessa Shaw, whereas the "hotter" (in the movie's eyes) chick is played by the half-Jew, Gwyneth Paltrow.
The one thing I liked about this movie is that they touch on an issue not well-known outside the Jewish community, and less-known within it, as intermarriage plagues Judaism at a rate of higher than 50%. It's the Tay-Sachs disease test that most Jews get before marriage. The usually fatal disease is more common in the Jewish community than other populations, and many Jews get tested to make sure they are not both carriers of the gene. If both are, the chances that they will have kids who have the disease and will die--and the couple have to re-think whether they will marry, if they want to have kids. We learn that Leonard was engaged to the love of his life, but both tested positive for the dominant gene, and the relationship collapsed.
The story told in this movie, while mildly entertaining, was unoriginal, predictable, and sad. And the movie was cold. A far superior, more cheerful and warm version of this movie was in 1988's "Crossing DeLancey," which I highly recommend (my dad took me to see it and we both loved it). This movie also has slight echoes of the original 1972 version of "The Heartbreak Kid."
ONE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS
Posted by Debbie on February 27, 2009 05:40 PM to Debbie Schlussel