IN THE latest Twilight, we learned the appropriate attire for a vampire/human wedding. In Fast Five, they showed us who would win in a fist-fight between The Rock and Vin Diesel.
In The Smurfs, we learned how mystical woodland creatures would look and sound if they discovered hip-hop. And in both No Strings Attachedand Friends with Benefits, we discovered that there are always strings to go with those benefits.
It might not look like it on the surface, but there are lessons to be learned for those willing to pan for such golden nuggets of wisdom among the films released in 2011.
Here are some more lessons learned from watching mainstream movies this year.
Getting pregnant is a bad idea
A child is a blessing for any parent, as long as they’re not movie characters.
At best, the pregnancy is an unwelcome complication during a daring Mossad operation ( The Debt) or worse, a life-threatening vampire-human-foetus hybrid that attacks its host from within ( Twilight), or even worse, results in a self-involved emo-kid with bad table manners and awful social skills ( We Need to Talk about Kevin).
I'll wager none of these elements appear in real-world pregnancy books like What to Expect when You're Expecting. (Time will tell if next year's film adaptation of What to Expect . . .will feature any such horrors.)
Tough guys rarely speak, if at all
The makers of hipster car-chase movie Drivewere aware of the power of silence, and Ryan Gosling's strong, quiet performance helped us forget that we were watching the romantic lead from The Notebookand Lars and the Real Girl.Such was the level of silence in Drivethat some critics nicknamed it Stare. Meanwhile, hairy fugitive thriller Essential Killing– starring Vincent Gallo – was even tougher and featured even less communication, unless you count gasping, running and gurgling.
Only actors should act
You would think this was fairly obvious, but 2011 proved once more that acting is harder than it looks. The worst offender was Rose Huntington Whitely in Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, whose inexpressive face and pneumatic body were probably perfect for her previous career as a lingerie model.
(Director Michael Bay also cut his teeth – so to speak – in underwear commercials.)
More experienced moonlighters also disappointed though, most notably Jon Bon Jovi in rom-com New Year's Eveand even Justin Timberlake, who struggled to emote with a rare lead role in sci-fi clunker In Time.
Hollywood is acknowledging the recession . . . in its own way
A full four years after the economic devastation began, Hollywood is tentatively addressing the issue.
Multimillionaires Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy appeared as working stiffs in the ostensibly crowd-pleasing Tower Heist,taking down a Bernie Madoff- style villain and offering a burglary-themed solution to economic problems.
A more audacious acknowledgement of harsh times appeared in the entertaining workplace comedy Horrible Bosses;a former yuppie is reduced to bar-room sex acts to make ends meet, serving as a cautionary tale that forces our heroes to stay in their crummy jobs.
Your average Nicolas Cage film will only get worse
Nicolas Cage is a talented, compelling actor, but for some time now, quality control has been a problem. For Cage’s long- term cage fans/apologists, attending his films is a gamble, like eating a bag of Revels with extra coffee ones but a few rabbit droppings thrown in.
Things aren't going to change any time soon; since his famous financial woes last year, the money- hungry actor has become even less selective, as shown by low- rent exploitation flick Drive Angry 3D, drab vigilante movie Justice, listless Crusades, horror Season of the Witchand the widely unseen domestic thriller, Trespass.
