Crush (2001)
Looking for your next movie during girls’ night? Look no further than Crush, a movie that celebrates the core of women’s friendships: their pursuits of men. There’s nothing more womanly than talking with other women about men, whether it’s describing in detail every aspect of your last date, praising or insulting his skills, or swearing off the entire population and having none of your friends believe you. In Crush, Imelda Staunton, Andie MacDowell, and Anne Chanceller do just that.
The only trouble with this movie is that it’s a terrible choice for girls’ night. The first half of it is one gigantic setup of laughing, making mistakes, and drowning your sorrows in alcohol and candy bars—part of the leads’ weekly ritual. But halfway through the film, it becomes a horrific drama guaranteed to kill the mood of everyone’s girls’ night. What happens is so unnecessary, it’s as if the real second half of the screenplay accidentally got put in the shredding machine, and a well-meaning but ignorant assistant paperclipped the second half of an unproduced script behind it. Miraculously, no one noticed or protested, and Crush became a tearjerker. This movie is everything a female empowerment shouldn’t be, but somehow it thinks that it is. Each of the leads start off commiserating with each other about their lack of a love life—because without a man, they live a meaningless existence—and throughout the movie, they each think they’ve grown into independent women, but they’re really exactly where they started: letting sex dictate their happiness.
If you start out watching this movie, you’ll probably be inclined to finish it. It seems like a silly, cute flick about friendship. Andie has a harmless fling with a former student, the wildly attractive Kenny Doughty, and rather than support her hormone-induced lapse in judgement, Imelda and Anne berate her, because that’s what real friends do. In a hilarious throwback to Andie’s first film role, Kenny answers the door wearing only his underwear and Anne quips, “Evening Tarzan, Me seek Jane.” After you get past that scene, turn it off. It won’t get any better, and I promise you it’ll get worse.
More Andie MacDowell movies here!
The only trouble with this movie is that it’s a terrible choice for girls’ night. The first half of it is one gigantic setup of laughing, making mistakes, and drowning your sorrows in alcohol and candy bars—part of the leads’ weekly ritual. But halfway through the film, it becomes a horrific drama guaranteed to kill the mood of everyone’s girls’ night. What happens is so unnecessary, it’s as if the real second half of the screenplay accidentally got put in the shredding machine, and a well-meaning but ignorant assistant paperclipped the second half of an unproduced script behind it. Miraculously, no one noticed or protested, and Crush became a tearjerker. This movie is everything a female empowerment shouldn’t be, but somehow it thinks that it is. Each of the leads start off commiserating with each other about their lack of a love life—because without a man, they live a meaningless existence—and throughout the movie, they each think they’ve grown into independent women, but they’re really exactly where they started: letting sex dictate their happiness.
If you start out watching this movie, you’ll probably be inclined to finish it. It seems like a silly, cute flick about friendship. Andie has a harmless fling with a former student, the wildly attractive Kenny Doughty, and rather than support her hormone-induced lapse in judgement, Imelda and Anne berate her, because that’s what real friends do. In a hilarious throwback to Andie’s first film role, Kenny answers the door wearing only his underwear and Anne quips, “Evening Tarzan, Me seek Jane.” After you get past that scene, turn it off. It won’t get any better, and I promise you it’ll get worse.
More Andie MacDowell movies here!