Beyond Mars

Last night I was invited to see The Hangover at the $3 movie theater by two male friends. I was curious about this film, billed as a male wedding movie. The truth is that I was unlikely to have seen it alone. My taste in films tends to run to mysteries, historical drama, character-driven big theater movies and quirky independent films. And the films of beloved actors, that is, actors beloved by me. Will Smith. Brad Pitt. Denzel Washington. Gwyneth Paltrow. Meryl Streep. Clive Owen. Julia Roberts. Daniel Day-Lewis, among others. All of whom tend to play characters, no matter what the genre.

Wedding movies is one film genre. Films in this genre made for women, which until now was, I think, all of them, often cast brides as long-suffering, grooms as loving, clueless or both, mothers-in-law and groomsmen as challenging, the wedding day as madcap.

The ceremony somehow comes together just in the nick of time. As unrealistic as this is, women want magic and have been encouraged to think more about the wedding than about the marriage. Movies reflect this; resolutions to real human conflicts or issues are infrequent not the job of these films, most of which are comedies. Fixing people isn’t funny.

And The Hangover was very, very funny. The truth is, had I read this script, I would have had no idea, in spite of my well-honed sense of humor (!), that this movie was as funny as it is. Four men go to Las Vegas for a bachelor’s party. This cannot possibly be good, at least for a woman. But every woman in the theater laughed, full-throated laughter. It is make-your-stomach-and face-hurt, take-the-sound-out-of-your-laugh funny. And it is definitely guy stuff. Some of it is shocking. I could not, for example, have read the scene about the naked Chinese gangster making a running jump and landing crotch-first into the face of one of the main characters and known that it would be funny. But it was hysterical. He was yelling something no one could understand. Flailing. And everyone laughing in the theater was shocked that we were laughing. This was as funny as what was on the screen. Prior to seeing this film, I would have imagined that such a scene would have been foul and gratuitous. And it was. Most of the movie was. The barnyard and circus animals, lost teeth, shrill women, unexpected babies, de rigeur property destruction, stupid songs, exposed penises, geriatric bottoms. But funny.

Shock value was part of what made the movie so funny. Some things were traditionally humorous and others just caught you by absolute surprise. This is how I could tell. My mouth flew open. My hands kept popping up in an infantile “stop sign.” Once my stop sign moved with such speed I hit myself in the head. This is not recommended. “Stop signs” are something that babies do when over-stimulated to alert those around them that they need to calm down. Most infants tend to grow out of this neurologic need by the time they are six months old. Whether it’s presence during this film is a sign of my neurologic immaturity or male immaturity, I am not sure. Perhaps both. Exposed penis (stop sign!). Old man's bottom (stop sign!). Something that looked like it might be disgusting so I could not look (scream. stop sign!).

In 1993, John Gray wrote Women are from Mars, Men are from Venus. Times have clearly changed. Whether they make me laugh or not, some men are now from some place much, much further away.