I watched Green Card at the tender age of 15, and I immediately decided that it was the worst movie I’d ever seen. This is pretty impressive, as my taste in film was crappy in high school. I believe my favorite movie was Point Break (which is an awesome spectacle and I still love it, but its hardly what I’d consider quality cinema). Aside from marking the birth of my loathing of romantic comedies, it probably also marks the birth of my loathing of Gérard Depardieu. My Father the Hero doesn’t help things between Depardieu and I, and it also is one of the reasons why I hate Katherine Heigl. As far as Heigl goes, she starred in one of the worst romantic comedies in recent memory (27 Dresses), which also has Malin Akerman, who was also in, ugh!, The Heartbreak Kid… I could really go on as such and quickly end up with Kevin Bacon in He Said, She Said… but I really want to give props to Green Card and its place in my life as the first movie I truly hated. Andie MacDowell wants an awesome Manhattan Apartment, a concept which is definitely still relevant to the New York experience today. She wants this apartment so badly that she’d go so far as to marry an ugly smelly french guy she hates to get past the coop board’s “Married Couples Only” rule. Sure, why not? I probably would, too, if the apartment is awesome enough (which, in my price range, will not happen in Manhattan). Then the government swoops in to investigate, and this is where hilarity should ensue. But it does not. The two leads lacked any kind of chemistry that would convince me they could really hate each other, or fall in love.  Moreover, it had big plot holes which made the whole thing hard to swallow. The biggest plot hole is Depardieu’s character losing his U.S. residency because he couldn’t remember the exact brand of his sham wife’s face cream. He said Monte Carlo instead of Montecello. Rather than dismiss that as “close enough”, the immigration officer’s suspicions were raised. And rather than turning on his supposed frenchman’s charm and bullshitting his way out of that minor slip-up (as he had nonstop throughout the rest of the movie), he confessed to the fraudulent marriage and immediately accepted deportation.  Huh?  I’d be hard pressed to find any guy who knows the name of his wife’s or girlfriend’s face products.  Then suddenly this mismatched pair was in love.  Huh? This didn’t really contain any of the offensive elements I find in most rom-coms I see these days.  The woman is desperate for a cool apartment, not a man.  The movie doesn’t end with a happily ever after at a wedding.  I don’t remember any over-the-top gender stereotypes, but they did lay it thick on the cultural divide between the laissez faire frenchman and the uptight new york city girl.  I’d have to watch again to catch anything I usually hate, but I don’t want to sit through this again, when there are so many other shitty movies I could be watching. Next up:  The Fugly Truth (with the aforementioned Heigl). 

I watched Green Card at the tender age of 15, and I immediately decided that it was the worst movie I’d ever seen. This is pretty impressive, as my taste in film was crappy in high school. I believe my favorite movie was Point Break (which is an awesome spectacle and I still love it, but its hardly what I’d consider quality cinema). Aside from marking the birth of my loathing of romantic comedies, it probably also marks the birth of my loathing of Gérard Depardieu. My Father the Hero doesn’t help things between Depardieu and I, and it also is one of the reasons why I hate Katherine Heigl. As far as Heigl goes, she starred in one of the worst romantic comedies in recent memory (27 Dresses), which also has Malin Akerman, who was also in, ugh!, The Heartbreak Kid… I could really go on as such and quickly end up with Kevin Bacon in He Said, She Said… but I really want to give props to Green Card and its place in my life as the first movie I truly hated.

Andie MacDowell wants an awesome Manhattan Apartment, a concept which is definitely still relevant to the New York experience today. She wants this apartment so badly that she’d go so far as to marry an ugly smelly french guy she hates to get past the coop board’s “Married Couples Only” rule. Sure, why not? I probably would, too, if the apartment is awesome enough (which, in my price range, will not happen in Manhattan). Then the government swoops in to investigate, and this is where hilarity should ensue. But it does not. The two leads lacked any kind of chemistry that would convince me they could really hate each other, or fall in love.  Moreover, it had big plot holes which made the whole thing hard to swallow. The biggest plot hole is Depardieu’s character losing his U.S. residency because he couldn’t remember the exact brand of his sham wife’s face cream. He said Monte Carlo instead of Montecello. Rather than dismiss that as “close enough”, the immigration officer’s suspicions were raised. And rather than turning on his supposed frenchman’s charm and bullshitting his way out of that minor slip-up (as he had nonstop throughout the rest of the movie), he confessed to the fraudulent marriage and immediately accepted deportation.  Huh?  I’d be hard pressed to find any guy who knows the name of his wife’s or girlfriend’s face products.  Then suddenly this mismatched pair was in love.  Huh?

This didn’t really contain any of the offensive elements I find in most rom-coms I see these days.  The woman is desperate for a cool apartment, not a man.  The movie doesn’t end with a happily ever after at a wedding.  I don’t remember any over-the-top gender stereotypes, but they did lay it thick on the cultural divide between the laissez faire frenchman and the uptight new york city girl.  I’d have to watch again to catch anything I usually hate, but I don’t want to sit through this again, when there are so many other shitty movies I could be watching.

Next up:  The Fugly Truth (with the aforementioned Heigl).