Mr. and Mrs. Smith vs. Wedding Crashers

The latest trend in Hollywood in post-PC Hollywood movies is one I can really get behind: loving evildoers. Even as someone who’s been around for countless eons, it’s felt like forever since the halcyon days of celluloid anti-heroes: Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry, Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange -- these were men a demon could admire. But then the ‘70’s passed, and we entered the irony-free era of good guys; Willis, Schwarznegger and even Steven Seagal all wanted to be sympathetic, likable, tough yet sensitive. Frankly I was glad when the Pokemon movies came out and threatened to kill me right there in the theater. (I survived, but it was a true test of my invincibility.)

Now, however, the executive worm has finally turned. Former assistants and go-fers who can’t pronounce Scorcese’s name, but can recite the Nick at Nite afternoon schedule from recent memory, have taken the zeitgeist in hand and are ready to throttle it until it tells them they’re hipper than the room. And what better way to prove that than to show that the ticket-buying public is more than willing to abandon their moral sense in return for two hours of blissful distraction from mortgage payments, chest pains, bothersome parents, and/or dental problems from that pesky crystal meth addiction? (This is what is meant by “appealing to the widest possible demographic”.)

Two fabulous examples of this wave of neo-nihilism are Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Wedding Crashers. In the first, the genetically blessed (and possibly connubial) Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt star as two married murderers who, being slaves of high concept, are naturally sent to kill each other. Much property destruction ensues, but that’s only foreplay to the true amoral twist of the movie: when they realize that they’ve been set up by people that are -- gasp -- even worse than they are, and so the likable killers set off to kill the nasty evil killers. The last act of the movie then kicks into a body count that would make Quentin Tarantino drool in his seven dollar Diet Coke, after which the two leads walk away scot free! I gave it a standing ovation, for relegating at least four of the Ten Commandments to the dustbin of history.

And the other six, by my calculation, went down the tubes in the first half-hour of Wedding Crashers. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play two of the most amusing sex addicts since James Mason’s comic turn in Lolita. They lie their way into the panties of so many attractive young women that director David Dobkin has to resort to a perky montage to fit in all the naked breasts! (You can see why the entertainment industry would be so eager to hand Dobkin the nation’s moral compass if you’ve caught his first big screen endeavor, Ice Cream Man, in which Clint Howard grinds up small children. Make mine two scoops!)

I see the step in this trend as being a romantic comedy featuring two terrorists. I think this could be a fantastic opportunity for another pairing of America’s aging sweethearts, Tom Hanks (who could be from that same vaguely East European country he was from in The Terminal), and Meg Ryan (or perhaps just her lips, which are now approximately the same size as her body). Suggested titles, which would translate well into Arabic, Persian and North Korean (to reach that all-important Axis of Evil audience), could be: “Sleepless In Seattle, Because We’re Going to Blow Up Their Nuclear Power Plants”, “You’ve Got Mail, and There’s Anthrax In It”, or possibly “Joe Vs. The Volcano Of Islamic Bitterness.” What greater way to increase our acceptance of our fellow Man, than to show us that suicide bombers can be romantics too? C’mon everybody, group hug!