The Broadway Melody

The Broadway Melody

1929

This isn’t fair.

One person should not have to go through so much suffering. I am beginning to wonder, were any of the Best Picture winners actually any good?! The occasionally wonderful movie (Annie Hall, The Godfather, or On the Waterfront for example) do give me some hope that whoever decides that a particular film wins this award actually has some taste in movies. But a lot of the time I think they are completely off their rocker.

My other theory is that they blindfold a drunk monkey and have it throw darts at the nominations to determine a winner. It could be the case.

I am sure you have guessed by now that I did not like The Broadway Melody. I am sure you would not either. It was simply depressing. And boring. And made me want to rip out my eardrums. And burn them.

This is a tale about two dancing sisters, Queenie and Hank (yay I actually remembered their names!) who are trying to make it big in New York. These are such terrible names. Why on earth would anyone name their daughter Hank? It’s seems so obvious that they wished she was a boy. Poor Hank. This is reason number one I feel bad for Hank. Hank’s boyfriend Eddie works for this huge theatre producer named… Mr. Z. We will go with that. Anyway, Eddie shows Mr. Z the girls’ act and he likes it. Well, sorta. Mr. Z only likes Queenie. This is reason number two I feel bad for Hank. But since Eddie is a great boyfriend he convinces them to add in Hank.

As the show goes along, Queenie starts seeing someone. This makes Hank mad. This makes no sense. Maybe I shouldn’t feel bad for Hank, since she is a hypocritical over protective loony pants.

As Queenie keeps seeing this man, Eddie becomes jealous. He realizes he loves Queenie. Queenie realizes she loves him.

…What? What about Hank?! Does anyone in this movie care about her at all?! I mean, she’s the smarter one! The prettier one too. She makes all of the sisters’ business plans. But no. Everyone wants dumb ugly Queenie. This is reason number three I feel bad for Hank, the most underrated character in film history.

And isn’t this breaking like, a number one sister rule? You can’t go after your sister’s dude? I feel as if Queenie, even if she was dumber than a bag of hammers, should have known this.

So Eddie ditches Hank, and then he and Queenie get married, leaving Hank to figure out an act for herself. The end.

Even if you had offered me a million dollars and a pink monkey that sings, one that is hopefully not drunk, I wouldn’t be able to come up with a worse ending than that one. I feel like this was a complete attack against Hank. What did the makers of this movie have against her? Why did they hate her so much? She’s not even real! But they had to go and make her life miserable anyway. Never have I seen such cruelty towards a person in my life. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hank just went and offed herself now. It’s not like anyone wants her. Not even her parents, who wanted her to be a boy! Poor Hank.

Besides the tragic treatment of Hank, this movie sucked hardcore. The songs were just awful. As was the dancing. Not a single character had a personality. Except Hank. I guess the writers were decent enough to give her that, since they ruined her entire life. Goodness. Poor Hank.

This movie was also just boring. It didn’t have all that much of a plot. It moved very slowly, like a molasses river in Maine in the middle of March. I nearly fell asleep many times. That had nothing to do with the fact I was all snuggled up on the comfiest bed ever. Seriously. This bed is like sleeping on a cloud. Memory foam is the most fantastic thing in the world. I want it on my bed. Like now.

…Anyway. This movie is dumb. Poor Hank

Gigi

Gigi
1958

Once upon at time, not too long ago, there lived this very sad, young, and might I say attractive, girl. Why was she sad, you may wonder? Because it seemed like lately all she had been watching were movies that made her want to poke out her own eyeballs with a blunt stick, just so she would never have to suffer through an excruciating film again. I can assure you; these movies were really that bad. But this girl seemed to find a glimmer of hope. A light at the end of the tunnel you could call it. She was very excited to watch this movie, and be so entranced with it that she would soon forget all the horrid movies she had seen in her past. As she sat down to watch Gigi, her dreams and hopes for a good piece of cinema came crashing down at an alarming rate.

First of all, she thought this movie was extremely hard to understand. As it was set in Paris, understandably everyone had a French accent. This is not always a bad thing, but when it makes a film so that you can’t hear what the characters are saying unless you have subtitles on, these accents become something of the devil, or so the young and attractive but sad girl thought.

Besides the speech, the story made little sense as well. Gigi, the main character (dur) is being raised by her grandmother because her mother is off her rocker. She is an opera singer, and a very bad one at that. So poor Gigi is forced to live with her grandma, whose ideas are bizarre. She doesn’t seem to like the idea of marriage and would rather train Gigi, with the help of her equally odd sister, to be a courtesan. But once a guy nearly twice Gigi’s age starts showing interest in her and asks to marry her they suddenly change their minds and marriage is alright by them. This made the girl sadly watching this movie’s brain hurt quite a bit! Why would they change so suddenly? Why didn’t they like the idea of marriage in the first place? Why are they all so hard to understand? These must be added to the many unanswered questions the girl had about life, such as why cats always land on their feet or why there is only one shoe out of a pair on the side of the highway. These questions are enough to keep people up all night.

Finally, the two hours of torture were done. The young and attractive but sad girl sighed a great sigh of relief as she remembered she would never have to watch such a strange and uninteresting movie again. But as she realized the next film on her list was likely going to be just as terrible, she collapsed on the ground and cried for three days straight. Thus ends this tragic tale I have told you today.