Marriage in the Movies - 5/31/07

[Smartmarriages]

MARRIAGE IN THE MOVIES

- AWAY FROM HER
So far, I've had only positive reviews with everyone that's written voting
for the Smart Marriages Impact Award.  Maybe a few more of you will see it
this weekend and weigh in Monday. I need to hear from more of you.  Thumbs
Up or Down? I know it's reviewed as a movie about Alzheimer's but I see it
as being about the profound love, attachment, and sacrifice in a long-term
marriage.  - diane

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- WAITRESS: A WARNING

Diane, 
If I weren¹t now a marriage educator I might have just watched this one and
had a good time.  But no... I watched it for the couple relationship,
watched with interest how they tried to make the husband a jerk but not TOO
jerky so that the viewer didn¹t feel it was a comedy.  And all the affairs
in it!  EVERYONE was having an affair with someone and most of them were
friends with the spouses of their love interests.
 
Without giving away the end, I just found it a depressing movie all around.
Some education could have helped the couple.
 
Anyway, I don¹t recommend the movie if you don¹t want to be depressed at the
extent of extramarital affairs today and how they¹re portrayed as ³not a big
deal² in this highly promoted Hollywood movie.
 
Elizabeth Doherty Thomas

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- KNOCKED UP 

Send a review if you see it. - diane
 
'Knocked Up' on marriage
By Glenn Whipp, Film Writer
Daily Bulletin 
05/31/2007 

Leslie Mann and Katherine Heigl in Universal Pictures' "Knocked Up"
"Marriage is like an unfunny, tense episode of 'Everybody Loves Raymond.'
But it doesn't last 22 minutes. It lasts a lifetime."

Paul Rudd says it in "Knocked Up." But did he improvise it? Or did it come
from the movie's writer and director, Judd Apatow?

Apatow's wife of nearly 10 years, actress Leslie Mann (who also happens to
play Rudd's wife in the movie), would like to think that the author is Rudd,
not her dear Judd.

"That's Paul ... so he's unhappy in his marriage?" Mann muses. "I don't
think Judd wrote that. Maybe he did ... what does that mean?"

Mann then pauses dramatically, grinds her teeth and hurls an epithet
straight out of one of her husband's movies.

"Knocked Up" may be about Seth Rogen's slacker coming to grips with
fatherhood, but the movie also provides a painfully honest and absolutely
hilarious look at a marriage on the rocks. Initially, Apatow stacks the deck
in favor of Rudd's beleaguered, wisecracking husband, until you gradually
realize there's a reason Mann's strong-willed wife is so angry all the time.

"Watching people stuck in communication black holes is painful in real life,
but on screen it's really funny," Apatow says. "The male response is
generally to shut down. I do. I run away when there's a problem. It's the
classic conflict that people can't get past. Men wanting women to act like
men and women being mad at men for not thinking like women. It's pure
comedy."

The dynamic of this movie marriage may have already improved a few real-life
unions, Apatow says.

"I've had a lot of friends say the movie makes them either want to run home
and be nice to their wives or it made them feel very guilty about the fact
that they're like Paul Rudd and a little slow to rush home when work ends,"
Apatow says. "To which I say, 'Good. That's what I'm trying to get across.
Be there for your wife."

When Apatow's words are relayed to Mann, she says; "Good answer. Judd can
come home tonight."

http://www.dailybulletin.com/entertainment/ci_6029574


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