Monday, February 16, 2009

Say Anything

I don’t like these kinds of movies about teen angst over girls who just seem to be in a world of their own, far removed from logic or wisdom that is needed to carry them farther than the next half hour.

The guys in these movies are always thoughtful and caring and are played for suckers/losers/crutches/idiots by the girls that they show devotion to through gifts, acts of selflessness and too-long pathetic messages left on answering machines. Meanwhile, Little Miss Airhead is falling for the football player with an IQ of 87 or a future prison inmate.

(Years later, it was explained to me that girls like danger. I drove a 1978 Renault Le Car with a bad alternator and no hi-beam headlights. What could be more dangerous than that?)

Some of the movies (not all of them though), the girls wise up and end up with the nice guy. But by then (as I’m watching it), the damage is done to my psyche, having triggered memories of my teenage years wondering why, for example, Angela went to the prom with the pothead who drove a 1978 Pontiac Trans Am instead of me.

And while I’m over the rejection, it still doesn’t make any sense.