Ruddtrospective #10: Paul Gets Weird

The following post contains spoilers for three weird movies: The Oh in Ohio, I Could Never Be Your Woman, and Over Her Dead Body.

These movies are all very odd for different reasons. We will get into them shortly, because this is a review. But first I have to write something random here before I start the review. It’s tradition. Okay. Tradition fulfilled. Review time!

The Oh in Ohio(2006)
I’m not going to talk a lot about this movie because it makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I’m going to give the synopsis and elaborate as little as possible. The synopsis reads as follows: “Priscilla Chase(Parker Posey) is a woman who has never had an orgasm.” Priscilla Chase is married to a teacher named Jack Chase, who is frustrated by this situation. The movie goes from there, with Priscilla exploring and their relationship eventually ending. Jack then ends up in a completely inappropriate relationship with a student, and also, Danny DeVito is in it, doing and saying things I never thought I would see him do or say. That is all I will reveal about the movie, because it’s so weird and it made me super uncomfortable, but everybody should watch it. Not for Paul Rudd’s character, who is a horrible person, but because it’s just bizarre and nothing that happens makes any sense at all. Everybody should watch this.

Overall Rating: 10/10(I hate this movie so much, but it’s so entertaining.)
Rudd Rating: 6/10(I love Paul Rudd, obviously. But he is not the interesting part of this movie. His character is so grotesque and unlikable. Which he does really well! So I guess he should get a 10/10 since I’m rating his performance and not his character? I don’t know. Watch this movie!)

I Could Never Be Your Woman(2007)
This movie seems like it would be normal and then it isn’t. I watched this a few months ago and wrote my thoughts as I went. In the interest of low effort, those thoughts are below.

• The synopsis for this movie reads: A mother falls for a younger man while her daughter falls in love for the first time. Mother Nature messes with their fates.
• Upon reading that, one would assume this was a joke or euphemism for their lives being all weird or whatever.
• That’s incorrect. There is literally a character in this movie called Mother Nature(Tracy Ullman). The movie opens with a very upbeat pop song while aerial shots of the beautiful earth are shown. We see animals playing and existing and stuff. And then a woman in a white dress comes into frame and says, and I quote: “Pretty impressive, huh. People tend to think of me as that environmental nut. But when I get down to work they say, “Mother Nature, you’re such a destructive bitch!”
• Okay.
• A monologue about how humans aren’t grateful anymore because the baby boomers ruined everything with consumerism and pollution and jobs and everything.
• I mean, we knew that.
• And then she just rants about plastic surgery for a bit. Which then leads into a way-too-long montage of people getting plastic surgery. What an opener for what I assumed would be a fairly standard film. Dear God. We literally get transitioned into the next scene by a saggy man having a bandage removed post-surgery. A floating head that bounces around like a DVD load screen. I have no idea what’s going on.
• And then Mother Nature gets all tiny and shows us “A pal of hers in her forties trying to moisturize her way back to thirty.” And it’s Michelle Pfeiffer. You know, that famously old-looking woman.
• We’re four minutes in. This is gonna be a weird watch.
• Michelle Pfeiffer and her daughter are fun together. And her daughter is played by a very young Saoirse Ronan, which is cool.
• I have so many thoughts about this movie. So many. But if I keep pausing to write them down, I’ll never finish watching. Random observations: There’s a discussion about using the term ghetto to describe clothes, and a ken doll in an air vent who was said to have wandered off with Alzheimer’s. We are now seven minutes into the movie. I don’t know why I’m doing this.
• So apparently Michelle Pfeiffer writes TV shows and she’s working on some sort of African-American romance TV show that seems so racist this is the only time I’ll mention it. Unless it’s a big plot point, I guess. Every new Paul Rudd movie I watch confuses me more and more somehow.
• Michelle Pfeiffer is friends with Mother Nature??? Ugh.
• So Michelle Pfeiffer’s daughter has now gotten her first period. It’s being celebrated and now she’s showing her daughter a book from her childhood called Mindy Menstruation. It’s been 12 minutes. There’s an hour and 24 minutes left. Paul Rudd hasn’t even shown up yet. I’m definitely gonna have to cut some of this.
• The TV Show is called You Go Girl.
• OH THANK GOD PAUL RUDD IS HERE. HE’S AUDITIONING FOR THE SHOW. THANK YOU, PAUL.
• The line “You have a much deeper, darker wedgie on your soul” was just uttered.
• He just said he’s never thought of himself as good looking. Shame on you, Paul.
• Oh cool, Stacey Dash is in this. She played Dionne in Clueless. It’s a reunion.
• Saoirse Ronan is falling in love with an idiot.
• Paul Rudd is ridiculous and funny in this. Everyone else is the worst.
• He has an extended dance scene which is so far funnier than every other second of this movie.
• Paul Rudd was 38 when this movie came out. His character is 29. It checks out. He looks like it. And Michelle Pfeiffer is 40 and people in the movie think it’s really weird for some reason.
• This movie would be terrible if Paul Rudd wasn’t so charming.
• There’s a pretty funny scene where Saoirse Ronan and her friend prank call Henry Winkler and say “Ayyy” and then he tells them they have to say it slower.

After that I don’t remember having many thoughts. It turns from a really weird romantic comedy to a slightly weird but pretty normal romantic comedy. It’s a little odd that the premise of the movie hinges on the audience acknowledging that Michelle Pfeiffer as a 40 year old is gross and nobody would ever want to be with her. Despite the fact that she’s Michelle Pfeiffer, and was nine years older than the character she was playing. But Paul Rudd is very charming.

Overall Rating: 7.5/10(I liked this movie. I’ll never watch it again, because that plastic surgery scene haunts me in my sleep. But it’s good.)
Rudd Rating: 11/10(I was so happy when he finally showed up. He kind of plays a manic pixie dream girl type character: a goofy guy who just wants to make Michelle Pfeiffer happy. I love it.)

Over Her Dead Body(2008)
An important thing to remember before watching this movie is that a lot of other great movies came out in 2008. I’ll name a few: Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Mamma Mia!, and Definitely, Maybe. Some apparently great movies that I never saw came out like Gran Torino, The Hurt Locker, Pineapple Express, Step Brothers, Baby Mama, and Twilight. There was some crap I did see, like Hancock, High School Musical 3, Hancock, Camp Rock, Hancock, Yes Man, Hancock, Speed Racer, Hancock, Get Smart, and also Hancock. Don’t watch Hancock. A really depressing movie called Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released. As were some modern comedic classics like Tropic Thunder, The Happening, Adam Sandler’s Bedtime Stories, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas(I know I’m a horrible person, you don’t need to tell me.) Role Models even came out this year!!! My favorite Paul Rudd movie. Anyway this is a lot of build-up and avoiding.

I actually didn’t hate this movie. It’s about a man who loses his fiancé on the day of their wedding to a giant ice sculpture that I think might be of her? Oh and his fiancé is played by Eva Longoria. A few months later Paul’s sister takes him to see a psychic. You know, one of those people that pretends to talk to the dead. Not the Long Island Medium though. This is a fictional character with hair that doesn’t look ridiculous. The Psychic is played by Lake Bell, who’s in Children’s Hospital and the animated Harley Quinn show and a bunch of other stuff. And she obviously can’t talk to Eva, but she pretends to and accidentally summons her soul for real. And the movie is then about Lake Bell falling in love with Paul Rudd while Eva Longoria tries to intervene from beyond the grave. And it’s not bad. There are some good jokes, and despite being a little whiny, Paul Rudd is always good.

Overall Rating: 7.7/10(This movie is actually pretty good. I know it seemed like I was gonna hate it, but I had so little to say and just ended up listing movies to pad for time. Which is also what I’m doing here, I guess.)
Rudd Rating: 7/10(His character is really whiny in this. He is really only in it to sit there and look pretty, which he does well. But he could be used so much better.)

So that was my review of some of his weirder stuff. Next week I plan to take on the daunting task of reviewing the 17 episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. that Paul guest-starred in. And if you’re a big fan of that insanely popular show, I would recommend not reading. I don’t have many positive things to say.