Whatever the Mess You Are, You're Mine, Okay?
Whatever the Mess You Are, You're Mine, Okay?
HELLO, Dames Nation! Dame Sophie— in the wake executing of a highly successful work conference - is taking a well-deserved week off, meaning that Dame Margaret is joined by an Extra Special Guest Dame: Her best friend of 17 years standing, Kerry— the Ann Perkins to her Leslie Knope.
Wherein Margaret-Leslie is just a hair too extra, but Ann-Kerry is-- after years of exposure-- into it. (We had to retire our previous go-to when Margaret realized she was actionably bisexual.)
Kerry is a middle school teacher who loves Margaret, reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay for the three hundredth time, and chatting with her students about the CW drama Riverdale. To date, her greatest accomplishment is that she got Margaret to read both Little Women and Anne of Green Gables - an important cultural trade, since Margaret introduced her to both Casablanca and Aimee Mann. She has a Twitter but honestly, she is mostly just on there to see what Margaret and Paul F. Tompkins are up to. It’s okay, though: Margaret is really sufficiently Online for at least two people, so Kerry’s comparative abstinence is merely helping to assure balance in the universe. We decided that, thanks to shared obsession and also the timing (only 5 more days until VALENTIME’S DAY!), we would dedicate this issue to the greatest of all movie genres: the romantic comedy!! And boy, do we have a lot to say about them. But before we dive in, a reminder!
Live Tweet Announcement, MOONLIGHT, February 10th
Live Footage of We Your Dames contemplating watching Moonlight with you.
Dames Margaret and Sophie are leading a livetweet of Barry Jenkins’ breathtaking romance MOONLIGHT this Sunday night at 7:30 EST.
When: Sunday, February 10th at 7:30 PM EST
How: Either streaming for free from Amazon Prime, or renting it from the digital platform or library of your choice!
Where: With the hashtag #MoonDames on Twitter.
27 Dresses Scale: Origin Story
Everything’s gotta start somewhere.
Hello faithful Two Bossy Dames readers (of which I am obviously one) - this is Margaret’s BFF Kerry here, reporting live from my bed where I am surrounded by a heating pad, chocolate, and a cup of tea because apparently I can’t write about romantic comedies without cosplaying as the temporarily forlorn lead in one. I am subbing in for the lovely and amazing Sophie this week because romantic comedies have been an important bedrock for one of the most significant relationships of my life.
Margaret (left) and Kerry (right), 1997-2000
Margaret and I technically met in seventh grade, but in true romantic comedy fashion our love affair didn’t start off particularly smoothly. Not going to lie, I thought she was sort of a pain in the ass. She had this thing about insisting on using sparkly gel pens in class even though it drove our Ancient History teacher crazy and for some reason, I could not HANDLE it. Perhaps this was because deep down I knew someday I would be a teacher too, and that nothing would drive *me* crazier than kids insisting on using the hardest to read pens in the world. Meanwhile Margaret just wanted things to be sparkly.
Kerry (facing camera) to Margaret (turned away from camera), in Madame Brun’s French Class (Academic Year 2000-2001)
Despite these obviously massive differences we eventually fell in love and have been each other’s better halves since we were about sixteen. And a major factor of our developing love - was love stories. We had a deeply fun shouting match about Sliding Doors in my attic during a snow day. She took me to see Amelie. She made sure I finally watched Casablanca, people! Watching, loving, and debating romantic comedies became a huge part of our lexicon with each other and increasingly how we interrogated our feelings about love, relationships, and what it means to be a woman. And everytime we do it becomes more and more obvious that no matter what other nonsense goes down, we have both had a tremendous love story in our lives. Last weekend we were at a concert together for one of our favorite bands and I looked over at Margaret just as the lights came up on her face, smiling and singing along with her eyes closed and I SWEAR, it was like that part in movies where the girl is looking at the moon or whatever and is like, isn’t it beautiful? And the guy is like, yes - but he IS TOTALLY JUST LOOKING AT HER. Sparkly pens be damned, this will be an everlasting love!
Cut to 2013 (ish?) ---- Margaret, do you want to sub in here to present the birth of our baby aka the patented 27 Dresses Romantic Comedy Ratings scale?
Margaret and Kerry, 2001-present
OH SURE, KERRY, ONCE MY TEARS HAVE DRIED ENOUGH TO LET ME TYPE!
Live footage of Margaret in the wake of the VICIOUS ATTACK on her emotions above.
Now, Margaret here: sometime in 2013, we did one of our very favorite things: we put on the same movie in our separate apartments in the same city and texted one another throughout the viewing thereof. This time it was the Katherine Heigl romantic comedy 27 Dresses: Katherine Heigl plays a woman named Jane who has two loves: her dumb boss (desperately, but unrequitedly) and WEDDINGS (profoundly, and with an almost absurd degree of requitedness-- she’s been a bridesmaid, at the movie’s opening, twenty seven times, and has the [titular!!!!!] dresses to prove it).
To create the movie, two key things happen: first, Jane’s Spoiled Baby-of-the-Family Sister (Malin Akerman) waltzes back into her life and immediately gets engaged to Jane’s boss/Secret Love Object (played with pitch-perfect blandness by Ed Burns) and second, Jane meets Kevin (played by James Marsden, a man so handsome that modern-day Hollywood can only explain his existence by pretending he’s a fairytale prince or a sex robot), the deeply cynical reporter who-- SURPRISE TWIST!!!!— secretly writes the “Vows”-type wedding column with which Jane is obsessed. From thence, things proceed quite predictably. BUT ALSO, 2013 Kerry and Margaret agreed, with a lot more nuance and depth and chemistry and solid jokes than the movie ever got credit for. It was hard to imagine it being anyone’s ABSOLUTE FAVORITE romantic comedy, we both agreed, but it was so much better than its silly premise and hot pink DVD case would suggest to an average cinephile. This realization that romantic comedies were deemed generically unworthy of serious consideration in a way that, say, thrillers and horror movies were not did not bear fruit immediately. But when, a couple days later, Margaret watched the extremely silly romantic comedy The Decoy Bride...
Primarily because it featured David Tennant as the romantic lead
… and needed to express to Kerry that it was fun and satisfying in a certain undeniable way, but also a bit ramshackle as a film, what immediately popped out was “I’d give it about 25 out of 27 dresses,” everything clicked into place, and our scale was born. This was our task. To develop a language for appreciating the generic conventions of the romantic comedy by ranking all the ones we could get our hands on, especially the Neglected Middle of romantic comedies: too good for scathing take downs but too unambitious for awards. Movies that, like 27 Dresses, might never make it past 27 on a scale out of 100 for PURE QUALITY, but nonetheless possessed a visual language, quality of conventions, and capacity for pure generic gratification that was worthy of loving, engaged critique. And thus, our 27 Dress Scale of Romantic Comedies was born. We recorded (but never released) four episodes of an extremely long podcast breaking down some Key Texts, further clarifying the scale, and now, with written words, we’re going to unpack our scale for you, sharing just what we love (and sometimes loathe) about the genre, and recommending some worthwhile movies to check out along the way.
Uranium (Movies Too Toxic Even For Us, 0-20 Dresses)
Us, to the movie Leap Year, each of the THREE TIMES we’ve watched it to SPECIFICALLY document its shortcomings.
This category is the least populated on our scale because we truly love nearly all romantic comedies, even when they’re silly. Sometimes especially when they’re silly-- that’s what happens when you’re all in on a genre. But everyone once in a while, you encounter something that’s not merely bad, but contemptuous: to its genre, to its viewers, and— worst of all— to its female characters. Some of these are unmitigated toxic sludge— your Bride Wars, your Basically Any Romantic Comedy Starring Gerard Butler— but perhaps none gets our dander up worse than 2010’s Leap Year, perhaps because, in the immortal words of Tyra Banks:
This movie has no excuse to be bad! Amy Adams should be able to crush a rom com in her sleep, especially opposite Matthew Goode with an Irish accent, and with Ireland itself as a stunning backdrop. What a shame, then, that the movie’s primary animating impulse is to shame, degrade, and denigrate her character. It even manages to find a way to criticize her absurd plan— traveling to Dublin, on leap day, for the express purpose of proposing to her Obviously Not The Guy For Her boyfriend (played by Adam Scott, likewise wasted) because that’s the one day women are “allowed” to propose per an Irish tradition— in a way that’s misogynist (if he really wanted to marry you he’d ask you himself, you haridan) rather than feminist (you know you could propose to your boyfriend literally any day, literally any place, because no one gender actually has the exclusive right to proposing). This one will be controversial because, truly, its surface charms are so substantial (Amy Adams! MATTHEW GOODE!!!) that plenty of people can enjoy it despite its lackluster script. But, for us, all the potential it squanders only sours our feelings toward it more completely— so it goes, sometimes, when you’re really invested in things being good.
Bronze (Movies by Which to Fold Laundry on TBS But Never Own, 21 - 26 Dresses)
There’s a non-zero chance that we accept this movie exclusively because of how much we love this yellow dress.
This category is the second-least populated on our chart, because it’s rare for a romantic comedy to fulfill its basic generic responsibilities and not be something we’d want to own. But every once in a while something like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days comes along. The premise is beautifully silly, the soundtrack is popping, the costumes (like the above dress) are enviable— but for whatever reason, we just are not transported by it. Usually, it’s because the love story between the leads isn’t believable (has Matthew McConaughey ever been in a good romantic comedy?), and the world surrounding them is insufficiently delightful to distract us from it. The only other movie in this category that comes immediately to mind is Knocked Up.
SPLIT DECISIONS, Classics Upon Which We Cannot Agree
Even though we love nearly all the same songs, and love stories, we still manage to disagree from time to time, and we think it’s important to own that before we go much further. Taste in everything is subjective, but especially in romantic comedies— the tropes that light us up like Christmas trees might feel to you like a bucket of ice-cold water dumped on your head. And so: we debate.
The Case in Favor, by Kerry
Look, I get it. When you come right down to it the events in this movie would in real life make me alert every authority possible. It has stalking, it has child endangerment, it has a completely adorable Bill Pullman getting his heart broken - perhaps the greatest crime of all. But my darlings. It has so many other magical things. Tom Hanks and Rob Reiner talking about the quality of Hanks’ butt, for one. Where else is something that odd going to happen? It features a lot of antiquated technology (that computer Meg Ryan types on!) which for some reason is a real delight of mine. And a stuffed bear named Howard (pictured above). I am a sucker for a few (million) romantic comedy tropes and this movie has about 99% percent of them. And beyond all that, it has real emotional stakes, genuinely funny writing, and— with only about two minutes of screen time together— a warmth between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan that as a kid, watching this with my Mom, definitely made me squeal. My face at the end was Jonah’s as the elevator closed, is what I’m saying. And honestly, it still is.
The Case Against, by Margaret
I realize, truly, that disliking this movie is about as close as you can come to romantic comedy heresy. AND YET! It does…. less than nothing for me, despite my complete veneration of Nora Ephron’s other acknowledged masterpiece, When Harry Met Sally. Some of it is for the reasons Kerry alludes to above— Annie’s behavior, free of the rose-colored glasses of romantic comedy, is terrifying (in re: Sam and her stalking of him) and callous (in re: slow motion jilting poor Walter); the structure of the film prevents us from spending any time with the two of them actually together; and large parts of the movie (chiefly the stuff with HOW ADORABLE it is that the kids are SO PRECOCIOUS!) have aged quite poorly. But all that is stuff I’ve easily put aside for other movies, even ones on this list, so those shortcomings alone would not be enough to explain my reluctant but deep-seated dislike of this one. What does explain it, I think, is the movie’s judgmental streak, which maybe I only mind because, as woman who’s never been moved by An Affair to Remember, I know that I either don’t exist in these characters’ world, or am beneath their contempt. But the way the everyone in the movie talks about Victoria, the woman who (sensibly!!!) wants to fuck Tom Hanks even though maybe he’s not her One True Love, and the way it papers over Annie’s mistreatment of her poor Walter, whose only documented flaw is insufficiently robust sinuses, communicates a level of disdain for all people outside Sam and Annie’s charmed circle that really rankles me. True love being something you can know just by the sound of someone’s voice I can truck with, but not true contempt being something you can feel, justly, on the basis of nothing more than the sound of someone’s laugh. I am a deeply judgmental person, and I traffic in shorthand like this all the time, and sometimes I’m right. But sometimes, also? I’m a huge asshole. This movie seems only to acknowledge the possibility of the latter, and it sours my whole experience of the love story.
The Case in Favor, by Margaret
One of the things that, for me, distinguishes the great romantic comedies from the merely good is the richness of the world created around the characters, and that is where, independent of the searing hotness of young James Stewart, this movie truly excels. Obviously, the premise— two bickering coworkers, unbeknownst to themselves, fall in love via anonymous letters— has eternal appeal, as it’s one of the only ones that can give A Star is Born a run for its money as far as remakes are concerned (spawning not just the well-known remake You’ve Got Mail but also a middling movie musical and a terrific Broadway one), and Jimmy Stewart and his real-life crush Margaret Sullavan do a fine job with it. But what makes this particularly iteration of the story so perfect is the incredible, loving detail with which the world around those bickering coworkers is lavishly rendered. From the imitation leather cigarette box over which Albert and Klara first fall out to the new errand boy hired by their shop, on screen for less than three minutes, tiny things are granted a level of profound emotional significance that only a romantic comedy can create— they are small and light enough to make you smile, but possessed of sufficient emotional weight to bring you to tears. Because the genre promises, to a certain extent, that it will never break you with true tragedy, you can relax enough to feel the real heft tiny victories and defeats can possess, and few movies make more of that middle range of feeling than this one.
The Case Against, by Kerry
This causes me (and Mags) considerable pain, team. Because actually I love a lot of things about this movie! Jimmy Stewart is my ideal man in this as in all his films (except I guess Vertigo and that one Nick and Nora movie where he was a bad guy, and even then I bet I could be persuaded), and he is as charming and swoon inducing here as ever. I love the shop. I love the mini drama with the shop’s owner and his cheating wife. I love that this story has been reinvented both as You’ve Got Mail and She Loves Me (an adorable musical we both saw [albeit separately] on Broadway with Laura Benanti and Zachary Levi, please and thank you!). And you will never see me turn away a love story that involves letter writing. However. I’m dragging out the issue. Because I’m not 100% convinced to this day that this isn’t the result of some strange internalized misogyny. But I can not STAND Margaret Sullavan’s Klara Novak. She is just so frustrating to me. Klara, you are in a workplace. Your flirting method of just being deeply mean all the time is not only confusing and ineffective, it’s also unprofessional! I realize this will also come across as hypocritical given my Sleepless in Seattle feelings, but it also annoys me that you see so little of the leads actually getting along. I like my lovers to seem like they could also have a pleasant conversation while waiting in a long line at the DMV, you know? Passionate letters are all very good but I really struggle with the notion that these two would get through one plane delay without killing each other.
Silver Basic (Text a Friend from Target Because It’s $5 on DVD, 27-60 Dresses)
This category is defined be a real action Margaret took almost every time she visited a Target for approximately five years— she’d go to the DVD section, see what glories were deeply on sale, and text Kerry if anything looked particularly good and she wasn’t sure if she owned it. And it’s definitely how we both ended up with the first of these two movies in our DVD collections.
Kerry’s Pick: Reality Bites
Highly appropriate dialogue given our ambivalent feelings towards the romance in this romantic comedy.
Here is a not-entirely joking theory I have: I think that a key ingredient to growing up as an American girl is to watch this movie approximately every eight years. You have to watch it first when you’re about fourteen (as I did, in my case with my glamorous and cool as hell big sister) when the idea of falling in love with someone who is simultaneously dreamy, in a band, and your best friend is almost paralyzing in its perfection. You absolutely need to revisit it when you are twenty-two, freshly flung into the real world and making a series of foolish decisions that, while usually not fatal, are definitely ones you will be cringing over when they pop into your head for years to come. And you must return to the shitty Houston apartment of Winona Ryder and Janeane Garofalo’s Lainey and Vickie when you are thirty, so that you can triumphantly bask in the fact that you no longer wonder if their gas card scam is a viable option for you when the bills are due. PLUS, you are now officially old enough to learn one of the great truths: Ben Stiller’s Michael is by far a better guy than Ethan Hawke’s brooding and downright mean Troy. What did Michael ever do except opt not to sue Lainey for causing their car crash when it was clear she couldn’t afford it, treat her with affection and respect, take her career ambitions seriously by working to get her film produced, and try his best to fix the situation (which isn’t even his fault) when his weird bargain brand MTV channel shreds her navel-gazing documentary? Growing up is learning to value the kindness in a person like that, perfect or not. Dreamy hair and “you pierce my soul” gaze notwithstanding, Troy is still the guy who spends most of the movie mocking her and who abandoned her after their first, long-awaited night together. All this being said, Troy and Lainey’s first time is an honestly moving love scene, and, during the extended mournful montage of their separation set to one of the best U2 songs ever, I still find myself cheering when Lainey decides to hop a flight to be with him. I’m happy when he shows up on her front lawn to apologize in his ill-fitting suit, even if I am also pleased that this means she won’t have to pay for a flight to see the punk.
Margaret’s Pick: The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy
This movie is both (1) extremely silly and (2) dated to such a degree that it’s definitely problematic. It’s so largely (and perhaps justly????) forgotten that the above gif was one of only two I could find from the movie at all, despite the fact that it features an astonishingly deep bench of early aughts dreamboats playing gay men— Timothy Olyphant! Justin Theroux!! Zach Braff!! Andrew Keegan!! And even, wait a second— is that Dean Cain? And some of that could be due to the fact that in a movie exclusively concerned with gay men, only one of the leads— the incomparable Billy Porter— is played by an out gay actor. But the script is full of such delightful throwaway lines that it’s also, despite its dated believe that the slur f*ggot was one that could be reclaimed, completely irresistible. From Obviously Gay Traits to Meanwhiles to being unwilling to be “someone’s Rice-a-Roni”, the movie manages the trick of making fetch happen (at least for me) with all its slang simply because it was conquering cinematic territory that, up until that point, no mainstream movie had attempted: a movie centered on the lives of gay men who were neither tragically dying of AIDS nor sassily accessorizing some misguided straight woman’s life. The love story is not especially believable, the fashions are laughable, the didactic streak is roughly 8 miles wide, its depictions of queer life are Problematic, but I watch it at least once a year.
Other Silver Basics We Love: 27 Dresses (of course), The 40 Year Old Virgin, But I’m a Cheerleader!, For a Good Time Call, Friends With Benefits, It Could Happen to You, Just Wright, Love, Simon, The Matchmaker, Much Ado About Nothing, Sixteen Candles, Sweet Home Alabama, What’s Your Number?
Silver Plus (Text a Friend from Target Even Though It’s $10 on DVD, 61-80 Dresses)
Margaret’s Pick: What’s Up Doc?
It’s hard to know which did more of a number on Margaret-- the idea that she was supposed to reward any man who worked hard enough for it with her affection, or the idea that she could annoy indifferent men into loving her.
If Bringing Up Baby were dragged forward into the 1970s and jazzed up with a dash of Bugs Bunny and a hint of Mad Magazine’s Spy vs. Spy, this would be the zany result. Four identical plaid suitcases get mixed up, leading one staid engagement between a hilariously bespectacled Ryan O’Neill and an early career Madeline Kahn to be sidelined by Barbra Streisand at her most beguiling, all while top secret files are on the loose somewhere in San Francisco. There is never a moment when this film is not doing The Most and I couldn’t love it more if I tried.
Kerry’s Pick: Love & Basketball (2000)
Guys, this movie is sexy. I am still Catholic enough that I hesitated writing that, but it can not be denied. I watched this movie in high school at the house of my oldest friend in the world, whose parents were definitely more chill than mine about what we watched. And holy moley, that strip basketball scene? Their night after the prom? My eyebrows are doing a little dance just thinking about it. Sanaa Lathan is a powerhouse in this movie; her Monica is tough and stubborn and extremely sensitive to criticism, but also passionate and ambitious about her life and dreams outside of her relationship with Omar Epps’ character Quincy in a way that is so satisfying to see in a young woman. As such, it also did tremendous things for me as a budding feminist who was all ready to get mad about the differences between the two leads’ prospects at a professional basketball career. She had to take a job at a bank at one point, guys! But all ends happily, with a man and his daughter cheering on her mom at her first WNBA game, hyphenated name jersey and all.
Also: 13 Going On 30, Bringing Up Baby, Crazy Rich Asians, Down With Love, Friends with Kids, The Lady Eve, Legally Blonde, The Palm Beach Story, Practical Magic, Roman Holiday, Say Anything, Sliding Doors, While You Were Sleeping
Gold Standard (81 - 100 Dresses)
First, some classics (new and old) about which we knew. We knew the way you know about a good melon.
And of course, the pinnacle of all romantic comedies - Hot Fuzz.
We’re two platonic friends who constantly refer to each other as “soulmate-level match” people, there was no way that this hysterically funny, dark, twisted movie about two bizarre dudes finding the perfect match in their friendship (not to mention saving the whole damn town) was going to be topped! But lest you think we’re all about the gimmick here, please consider the evidence:
Perfect chemistry between the leads. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have loved each other for a long time, and it shows. They understand each other, they make each other more funny and more real, and they bring out the best in each other. Unlike their earlier works together (including two pieces of culture we also worship, Spaced and Shaun of the Dead ) in Hot Fuzz we actually get to see Pegg and Frost, here playing Sergeant Nicholas Angel and PC. Danny Butterman, respectively, meet and slowly recognize a kindred spirit (as Anne Shirley would say) in the other. What kind of heaven-sent meet cute is this - Angel, on his first night in the small British hamlet to which he has been banished, arrests a local drunk. Who else could it be but his future partner on the police force? Poetic cinema, guys. And when they get drunk together on the couch and bond while watching Point Break? Come on now.
Their relationship is the heart of the movie. Yes, there are a series of gruesome and baroque murders, and a slowly evolving sense of dread and violence that lurks behind the perfectly landscaped lawns of Sandford. But while I am delighted, grossed out, and fascinated by that mystery, my heart only stopped once, and it was when Angel was holding a gravely wounded Danny in his arms. Real men love their best friends this deeply. They will buy you a Peace Lily and they will wail when you heroically take a bullet for them.
The SOUNDTRACK. Chosen wisely, the music in a romantic comedy can elevate the scene beyond heights generally understood by modern science. John Cusack and his boombox knew it in Say Anything (Cusack also knew this in High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank, come to that), and Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright knows it, too. Not only is there a memorable and fitting score, the songs of Hot Fuzz are also perfectly chosen to complement Wright’s unique visual language. Just listen to The Kinks and know that somewhere, Danny & Angel are still together, keeping the streets safe and looking forward to the upcoming third Bad Boys movie.
Recommended Further Viewing - in which Margaret and Kerry searched their hearts and DVD collections for romantic comedies they love but have not yet introduced to each other - so now we can pitch them to you nice people, as well!
Kerry’s pick: Baby Boom (1987)
This movie (like Sleepless in Seattle before it) is one that I watched with my Mom at an early age and it imprinted on me in some surprisingly visceral ways. Things it made me love: Harold Ramis in a face mask. Montages of women walking to work in lady power suits. Dresses with big belts. Bob haircuts with bangs. Men with crooked teeth who still smile beautifully (It’s possible that I can lay the foundation of my intense feelings about Cole Sprouse’s Jughead on Riverdale upon Sam Shepard’s Dr. Cooper). But people, let us not deny the deepest truth - Diane Keaton is sensational in this movie. She is amazing when being the business bitch of Kelly Kapoor’s dreams; when she is holding the baby she has just inherited (weird word choice I know but that’s honestly how the movie plays it) like it’s somehow both slimy and explosive; when she throws a Hall of Fame tantrum on an unsuspecting Vermont contractor; and when she is casually considering arson and insurance fraud in a country store. Keaton’s J.C. Wiatt (such an 80s name, bless) is hysterical and sympathetic throughout - and because this is a rom com of pure wish fulfillment, in the end she gets the love story three times over: with her career, with a good man, and with the daughter she mostly got because of a bad telephone connection with England. What more do you need? (streaming on Amazon Prime)
Margaret’s Pick: His Girl Friday (1940)
This is one of my all-time, top five favorite movies. Packed with enough plot to make two movies and enough dialogue to fill at least three, this story of an ace reporter (Rosalind Russell) falling back in love with both her demanding job as a beat reporter and her crooked-to-the-bone editor/ex-husband (Cary Grant at his undisputed sexiest, do NOT @ me) succeeds in 1940 at something plenty of romantic comedies STILL haven’t figured out today: creating a love story that’s about affirming the essential qualities of a difficult woman rather than one that’s about rounding her out into some kind of beacon of traditional femininity. It’s a marvel and, with a running time of only NINETY TWO MINUTES, both a rebuke to the flabby editing of present-day Hollywood movies and something you could throw on RIGHT NOW and still get to bed at a reasonable time. Watch it now (also streaming on Amazon Prime!), thank me later.
Two Bossy Dames is brought to you by:
Listening to the cast recording of the new, gender-swapped production of COMPANY more than is strictly sane or reasonable,
Fan videos from the Mid-Aughts, especially ones where someone pairs a literal image of a character crying to the lyric “When you cry/I wipe away all of your tears” in “My Immortal”,
18+ years of sleepovers,
Countless hours spent singing along to this mix specifically
And maintaining nearly all your friendships from high school but NOT in a sad, chasing-faded-glory, incapable-of-change way! Just because you met really great humans at 16.
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