Filmic Measures: The Dinner Table Rule

The Dinner Table Rule came about many long years ago when I was writing a review for the forgettable Owen Wilson/Matt Dillon/Kate Hudson comedy You, Me & Dupree. In the closing paragraph of said review I noted that I thought in order for mainstream comedies to work they have to feature characters who you'd feel comfortable enough inviting into your home to sit at your dinner table. "I wouldn't invite Dupree to my table," I wrote. "I don't know if he'd make it or burn it down."

Then, yesterday, when writing about Bad Teacher, I remembered the dinner table rule again. I wouldn't invite Cameron Diaz's Elizabeth to my table either. She's too selfish and self centered. She'd simply take advantage. Now think of the comparison I made for that movie with Bad Santa. I'd be more than happy to have Billy Bob Thorton's Willy over for dinner. There's a lot of things I'd like to ask him about. There is, after all, something kind of morbidly sweet in the affection he feels for the kid who presents him with a wooden pickle covered in his own blood for Christmas.

You see the Dinner Table Rule doesn't necessarily mean that you like the person you'd invite over (although it helps). It means that there has to be enough human depth presented in a character to intrigue you to want to learn more. Thorton isn't a nice guy in Bad Santa, but he's not a bad guy either. He's just a bum who's never had an outlet to give a damn about anything before. He is, in his own special way, still capable of good. I'd like to talk to him about that.

But Dupree was a lose cannon and Matt Dillon's affection for him was inexplicable. He screwed up everything he touched. Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher simply exploited every situation she was faced with for her own personal gain. And if any of those old hags from Sex and the City ever come around my neighbourhood I'm putting the whole house on lock down.

But how fun would it be to sit down with Emma Stone in Easy A or just about every movie she's been in, or Ryan Gosling from Crazy Stupid Love, Steve Carell from Dan in Real Life or even Jason Biggs from American Pie? Would anyone reject the opportunity to sit down for a meal with any character from John Hughes' classic 80s teen comedies? And let me tell you, if Loyld Dobler from Say Anything ever swung by I'm not sure I'd ever let him leave.

The point is that a dinner is personal. It's to be shared with people we known and who interest us. We don't let any random stranger off the street into our house. We invite the people over who we want to share an intimate setting with where we can engage in fun banter as well as get to know each other better. The characters thus, that we would invite over, are the ones who have connected with something in us on the human level. We see some of ourselves in them and they've shared something personal with us through their respective films. We want to know more, maybe even be friends.

That's what mainstream comedy needs. It needs to feel like we are being invited into a world and sharing a comedic situation with someone we could see ourselves liking in real life. We want to see good things happening to good people because we're good people as well. We wouldn't invite over the hopeless cynics, the selfish morons or the guys just trying to get laid. Sure, Billy Bob might eat all the chocolate from the advent calender, try to find the hidden safe and take advantage of my kindness, but he would also not fail to get me the Christmas present that I want, even if it is covered in his own blood.

Crazy, Stupid Love

There’s a way some great actors just have of looking off into the distance that really becomes less about performance and more about finding true emotions. It’s a look without dialogue or anything more than a twist of the side of the mouth or a certain glint in the eye that hits something home, be it a man hugging his children or staring off as someone or something leaves him standing behind. It’s also a look that is most startling when comedic actors find it because it’s the moment that they feel comfortable enough with themselves to let the act down and bare some sort of true emotion. Steve Martin does it maybe better than anyone. Now Steve Carrel does it too, first with Dan in Real Life and now, in Crazy, Stupid, Love, he does it again.

It’s a look, especially now in 2011, that makes your realize that movies have become so big, dumb, artificial and ultimately meaningless, that it’s a small treasure to find on that exists at ground level and touches an audience because it deals with people and their actions instead of caricature and plot gimmicks. It’s a look, however that also, unfortunately, makes one wish it had found its way into a better movie.

And thus we have Crazy, Stupid, Love, which, despite its title, which promises insights into the strange, nonsensical, sloppy and completely unpredictable nature of love in real life, can’t muster up much more than to be a run of the mill romantic comedy. It tries too hard to be funny, not hard enough to be insightful, not much to be tightly structured and not at all to be anything more insightful than any other bi-weekly Hollywood romance. It’s good, but not good enough.

Thankfully it finds great actors to raise it into something enjoyable. Steve Carrel is warm, funny and human as Cal, long married to Emily (Julianne Moore). His blazer is too big, he wears running shoes with it, his wallet is Velcro and he’s more or less coasting through the routine his life has become. When Emily tells him she has had an affair with a colleague (Kevin Bacon who's name gets the film’s biggest laugh) and wants a divorce he doesn’t want to talk about it and instead, jumps out of the car to avoid her rambling. At least the pavement feels real.

Then one drunken night at the local haunt he comes across Jacob (Ryan Gosling) a smooth operator with the right suite, the right hair, the right shades, the right accent and the right lines. As, night after night, Jacob watches poor Cal make a drunken fool of himself at the bar he calls him over, tells him he reminds him of someone and says he will teach him everything he knows so he can get his life back together and pick up women so that he can get over Emily, his first and only love.

But then as Cal, after much funny teaching, starts to bag any woman he wants, Jacob meets Hannah (the lovely Emma Stone) who he fails to pick up but comes to him after one night realizing her relationship with her moron boyfriend is going nowhere fast. Hannah, for Jacob, is a game changer and slowly the two stories go their separate directions as Cal and Emily begin to realize their mistakes and Jacob begins to give up his ways.

All of this is nice and funny and sweet and utterly forgettable. If it wasn’t for the presence of Carrel, Stone, Moore and Gosling, the movie would be a redundant mess as it spins it’s wheels to an overblown and predictable conclusion.

But alas, in spite of unfortunate subplots in which Carrel dates a crazy grade school teacher played by Marissa Tomei and another strange and awkward one involving Cal’s family babysitter, the film is charming because it’s stars bring it warmth and humour. Carrel especially, under appreciated because he’s pigeonholed into playing morons, has a way of casting, as indicated in the opening paragraph, human glances across a screen that can either melt or lift your heart and Gosling, so very good in so many kinds of roles, finds a note for Jacob that is more about personality than caricature.

And that’s what the film offers: the pleasure of seeing the right actors come together and breathe life into an otherwise forgettable work. Crazy, Stupid, Love isn’t wholly realistic, doesn’t have any big moments of revelation like the best romantic comedies do and is more concerned with being clever and witty than about creating a full story that is engaging from beginning to end. These are intelligent and attractive actors. They know how to project humour and emotional depth in natural ways. Now that we’ve seen how good they can be in a film on autopilot let’s pray they find another one soon that is worthy of their talents.