worst movie EVER

Well, a couple friends and I went to _Mona Lisa Smile_ tonight in hopes that it would be hilariously bad. It was, and unfortunately I could have killed fewer brain cells and spent less money drinking heavily and then at least I wouldn't have to remember those three hours. It's really that bad.

It's bad on several levels. First, it's heavy-handed. "Heavy-handed" needs no qualifiers, because the heavy-handedness of _Mona Lisa Smile_ does not admit of degrees. It was unrelentingly heavy-handed. It was heavy-handed in the way that one is either pregnant or not pregnant. There were lectures (and not the ones in her art history class, although those lectures sometimes - surprise - turned into lectures) - real lectures. In a movie. The script could've been written by an 8th grader who had just read a feminism primer with some ads from the '50s in it. It was like a creative 8th grade English paper for the assignment, "write a _Dead Poets Society_ for girls."

Its badness was funny at first - there's actually a line of dialogue in which Kirsten Dunst (who did a TERRIBLE job, by the way) says "You're just saying that because you're subversive."

You're just saying that because you're subversive. Okay, first of all, who talks like that? And second, that's the worst logic ever, because one does not start off being essentially subversive and then that essence causes one to say things. You are made subversive by saying and doing subversive things.

I could go on about the dialogue, which was wooden and stilted, and the plot points which were endless and clumsy, but no - I will not. There's so much more ground to cover.

The movie was set in the fifties. Several points about Julia Roberts here. Maybe I was just conscious of this because I read the salon review this morning, but there was the "chubby" girl, who was "chubby" because she was not movie-star thin, and the "chubby" (yes I will continue using the quotation marks) girl was made fun of and had no self-confidence because she felt fat. Which is a complete anachronization, considering that back in the '50s, she would've been a pinup. Because that was before the trend of "beautiful women" needing to look half-dead by starvation.

That anachronism was not even the half of it. I suppose Julia Roberts's character would not wear the typical skirts and do the typical hair-styling because she was a "Bohemian" (as we find out from the voice over in the first scene) "subversive" woman who firmly believed that a woman's sole purpose in life is not to serve her husband (got that everyone?). But Julia Roberts looks like a stylish woman pulled out of 2003 who tends toward conservatism in dress. Seriously. She had her hair clipped in a barette most of the movie. She was wearing a t-shirt (or sweatshirt) in PUBLIC at one point. And also what on first glance looks like a PolarTec fleece from Old Navy over it.

In fact, that's the main problem with the content of the movie. The premise could have been "we pulled a woman out of 2003 and put her back in the '50s! wackiness and lessons learned ensue!"

I'm getting angrier by the second. I need to stop.

But one more thing. With the cast that they put together for that damn movie, it would've been better if they'd just let them improvise.