Sunday, October 17, 2004

Unrequited Love

Okay I did something slightly batty on Saturday night. I called my uni friend and asked her how long it had been since she bawled her eyes out at the movies. After a highly drunken night on Friday, and the subsequent punishment on Saturday morning, all I felt like doing was sitting in a dark room shovelling popcorn in my face.
And so it was that we found ourselves at the 9.10pm session of "The Notebook", two girls, a big bucket of popcorn, and a fistful of Kleenex.
Now I usually have a problem with books that I've read (and loved) being made into movies. But the film version of "The Notebook" just pulled out all the stops and did everything it could to be an ultimate tear-jerker. Superb casting (Ryan Golding plus beard, where have you been all my life?!) made the romantic characters a great joy to watch for a few hours. But when the film-makers changed the books ending, as viewers scrambled for the last crusty tissue at the bottom of the handbag, I was disappointed. For where the book ended hopefully, simply, and beautifully, the movie just did the abrupt bawl-fest ending and my poor Uni friend was left blubbering like a baby.
Still, I had promised her a tear-jerker, and in that way I delivered. She has promised to get me back though, so that's something to worry about.

It takes a bit for me to cry in movies. I did cry in the ABC's episode of "Australian Story" on Saturday, but I think that's because the walloping hangover made my eyelids hurt. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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