“. . . The stadium I bought the other day surprisingly has a little draft heading out to right field.  So I have the receipt right here . . . can I get the $1.5 billion put back on my credit card?”

*** WARNING: SPOILER ALERT ***

If you are concerned about ruining the movie, don’t read this blog post!  But be forewarned, the director already ruined the movie.

*** SPOILERS BELOW ***

Plot: This is a movie about two childhood girls, Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Liv (Kate Hudson) who grow up wanting nothing more than to get married at the Plaza Hotel in June.  Not to each other, of course, because that might have made this movie interesting.  So both girls get engaged to their boyfriends within a day of each other, and they both go to Murphy Brown, who has left they dying field of journalism to become a wedding planner.   At first, everything is fine.  But then (at what felt like 4 hours into the movie) Murphy Brown’s secretary screws up and Liv and Emma can no longer have their weddings on different days; they must either share a wedding date or one must give up her dream of having a wedding at the Plaza in June.  So the two women play a game of bridal chicken, hoping the other will surrender her dream.  When neither does, they proceed to try to ruin each others lives.  Some two hours of blue hair and orange skin later, Emma realizes her fiancee is a douche, but not before she tackles Liv in the aisle.  Emma marries Liv’s brother, and they all live happily ever after.  Except for the audience, who wants to die.

What Made It Suck: First and most importantly, Kate Hudson ruined this movie.  The one thing that made me think this movie might be bearable is the fact that I’d get to watch Hudson for two hours.  That was before I realized that she had some kind of liposuction accident.  Her face was monstrously fat; it was like watching Rush Limbaugh’s head on Natalie Portman’s body.

Second, perhaps I was expecting too much, but the plot made no sense.  In theory, the audience should think poorly of Emma’s fiancee and cheer her decision to dump him.  But, in fact there was only one scene in the entire movie where her fiancee seemed like a creep — he said that Liv’s fiancee would never be able to control Liv.  The other attempts to make him seem evil (yawning while he and Emma were shopping and saying that Emma was acting ridiculous by trying to ruin Liv’s life) fell flat, in part because shopping is boring and Emma was acting like a lunatic.

How I’d Improve It: First, I’d replace Kate Hudson with the more attractive Keira Knightley.  Then I’d set the movie in England during the Middle Ages.  And then I’d add in some beheadings and epic battle scenes where Emma and Liv’s fiancee’s fight each other.  In the end, Emma and Liv would both die when the Norman’s invade.  Throw in Dame Judi Dench as a duchess, and this movie would have Oscar written all over it.

Grade: F-.  Your $10.25 is better spent buying stock in the New York Times.

Frankly, I can’t offer any particularly good reason why I went to see this atrocious movie.  I think it involved me seeing the preview for the movie and sarcastically muttering out-loud ”this looks like a good movie.”  The wife of my roommate of several years then said “ok, we’ll go see it.”  I think she wanted to go because she thought it would be so bad that it would be funny.  At least that’s what I hope she was thinking; God forbid she actually wanted to see this movie for the merits…

Anyway, it was a painful experience, but it was an isolated incident.  Or was it?  Lately I’ve been going on a lot of bad dates.  But one of these times, I’ll go out with a girl who isn’t a total psychopath and whose first words to me aren’t “can I run my hands through your hair?” (True story.)  And when that time comes, it’s almost a certainty that I’ll be dragged to additional movies like BrideWars.

Thus, the thought occurred to me, “how can I make something positive out of my lamentable cinematic fate?” And then I realized that I can offer my own movie reviews of sorts.  So soon I will post my review of BrideWars.  I hope this doesn’t become a regular feature, but if it does, at least something remotely humorous might come of it.

“Your old friends failed to score an offensive touchdown in 24 consecutive quarters.  Not only could they not find the end zone with two hands a flashlight, they couldn’t find the history book either.”

TKC: It looks like, yet again, the Browns will be waiting for next year.  It’s a tad ironic since a billboard near downtown Cleveland read “There’s always this year.”  Apparently they meant that there is always this year for more heartbreak and disappointment, which is like putting up a billboard that reads “This is the year that Michael Jackson gets weird.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t work this year.  With the terrible economy, starting Christmas earlier than ever just couldn’t save this Christmas shopping season.  But perhaps we’ve been thinking in the wrong direction.  If we act quickly, there’s still time to save our retailers: we should postpone Christmas.

I know it’s hard to imagine Christmas on any other date.  But think of the upside!  A few more months of Christmas shopping might be just what the retailers need to pull through this recession.  Is it the retailers fault that our Founding Father’s stupidly put the inauguration after Christmas, depriving retailers of the benefit of the Obama stimulus package?  (How could Alexander Hamilton not have foreseen that a lame duck President would never pass an $850 billion stimulus package?) If Christmas were to come after January 20th, however, then our fellow depressed American citizens might have some fresh government cheese to spend on Tickle-Me-Elmos and PS3′s.  Can one think of a better way to celebrate the birth of The One than by placing a Christmas after the inauguration of The One?

But this is about more than helping retailers.  Between Halloween and the date formerly known as Christmas, people are kinder, houses and storefronts look prettier, and we have something to look forward to through the beginning of winter. And in past years, once the date formerly known as Christmas passed, all we were left with was snow, minimal sunlight, and gifts that you can’t return because you Aunt Matlida didn’t give you the gift receipt.  But we don’t have to be staring down 4 months of empty, cold winter.  Under my plan, we could be eagerly aniticipating 4 or 5 months of listening to “Feliz Navidad” in elevators and looking forward to that warm spring day when we’ll all sit under our trees and unwrap the presents.

We wouldn’t even need to bring our trees indoors because it would be warm enough to stand under a real tree!  How could the environmentalists not love that idea?!?

It won’t be easy.  I know what you’re thinking, “But Christmas is December 25.  It says so on my Cathy comic calendar.  How can we postpone Christmas?”  But in this time of national crisis, I think we must all make sacrifices, including not celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ on the fictional date that was arbitrarily assigned and instead celebrating it on another equally fictional and arbitrary date.

For the good of our country, let’s forget a white Christmas and let’s just keep shopping.

You know what I miss?  The days when people in my generation knew about Google, but older people didn’t.  In that six-month to one-year sweet spot of technology, adults would always be so impressed with our ability to research . . .  until they learned how to Google on their own.  Why did Sergey and Larry have to ruin Google for the rest of us by taking it to the masses?  All it got them was a sweet plane.

“. . . Your boss totally doesn’t know you’re checking this blog at work.  Good job keeping it from the IT-filters.  Good thing this blog doesn’t discuss things you shouldn’t do at work like VIDEO GAMES, PORN, INSTANT MESSENGER, SEX,GAMBLING or OPERATING THE MEAT GRINDER WITHOUT PROTECTIVE GOGGLES.  It’s also fortuitous that it doesn’t discuss addicting things like DRUGS, BOOZE, and KRISPY KREME DOUGHNUTS.  Nice work.”

” But don’t waste the stamp on your MENSA application, having neither youth nor beauty doesn’t get you in “

TKC:  In celebration of the loss of both my youth and beauty, TKC wishes himself a very happy birthday.

Thank god.