Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012): After I had my fill of lady’s roller derby, I got in the mood for a movie on the way home. I already had the enormous pleasure of seeing Expendables 2 yesterday, so I went with this— I didn’t really know anything about it going in other than it was about divorce or something.
But man, I really liked this movie. This came out of nowhere for me— why didn’t this get a wide release? I thought Andy Samberg and Rashida Jones were both famous…?
It’s this romantic comedy set in Los Angeles. I like romantic comedies, but they’re usually so badly made. This just worked for me— I’m not sure why really, what made this one work where I’ve hated stuff like … I don’t know, 5 Year Engagement or that horrible, horrible Friends with Benefits (horrible) or Crazy Something Something (the Steve Carrell-Ryan Gosling one).
I just bought into it. I thought it was funny and I was rooting for the main characters, even while they were doing shitty things or making mistakes, and the whole thing, the whole not caring about the parts that didn’t quite work, the whole … I had the whole “going to the movies” thing with this. I think it helps that it never gets too BIG and WACKY CRAZY, which is where I think a lot of those movies go wrong— they’re supposed to be movies about really basic human shit and so many of them just have people doing crazy insane things in them. This just felt smaller and … it was just a nice movie.
Rashida Jones didn’t hurt— it’s probably been mentioned before, but she is, you know… foxy? She’s a very good looking person in this movie, in life generally from having seen her in person, etc.— so, that might’ve helped; I should cop to that. She co-wrote this and it’s very much a showcase for her, but … I don’t know, I felt like she earned it, by the end of it. She gave herself a lot of different things to do and I thought she did them all really well. Samberg’s better than I would have expected— the two of them have chemistry. On the other hand, I would probably think Andy Griffith and Rashida Jones would have chemistry, and he died this year— I just think she’s that foxy and/or Andy Griffith’s that virile, that death can’t stop those trains from running. You know: Andy Griffith’s Sex Trains. Yay, it’s 1 am…
(I like this review from Time that talks about how 2012 is apparently the year of “neutered males” in romantic comedies. Wee!)(also: here’s the trailer)(i liked this one).
