Manohla Dargis reviews the interracial romantic comedy Something New and manages to annoy me right off the bat by describing screwball comedy pairings as "playfully sexy and 'artless.'" I thought screwball comedies were highly refined art that reveled in artifice, as opposed to say the "artless" posture of a Cassavetes film.
She annoys me at the end by saying the Oscars "with its pathetic lineup of nominees for Best Actress and a specialty division frontrunner about two men in love, offers further proof of just how inconsequential distaff stories are now to the majors." Does Dargis seriously think major studios aren't interested in "distaff stories," by which I assume she means films with heterosexuals in the leads and which describes 99% of all movies the studios release every year, including such massive hits as The Wedding Crashers, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Constant Gardener and just about every big studio film released every weekend of the year? Dargis says "plausible straight romances are as rare (and tiny) as gemstones." Tiny? Whatever. But rare? Good movies are always rare, but straight romances are a dime a dozen.
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