This newsletter is either late for last week or earlier than usual this week. Every good holiday leaves you not knowing what day it is. Normal Thursday postings will resume from next week.
We have been on holiday with our 12 year old granddaughter, and it was part of our routine to watch a family movie in the evenings. Always selected by Caitlin, the granddaughter. Grandma and Bob did not get to choose. First up was Heartstopper Forever, a spin-off from, and a coda to the Netflix series Heartstopper. I suggest the series. I suggested the series to Caitlin some months ago, and she loved it. She had already watched the movie once before our holiday, but wanted to see it with me. Bob, not having seen the series, was not as invested, and while he was in the room, he dipped in and out of the film. Whilst not one for younger family members, it's a movie that we all enjoyed.
Following the fortunes of teens at Truham Grammar School, it focuses on a friendship group of gay, bi, trans and asexual teens, the movie being mainly about Nick and Charlie who are having a blip in their loving relationship. I felt truly emotionally invested, having seen Charlie go through treatment for an eating disorder during the series, and Nick struggle with coming out as bisexual. I cried when they split up during the movie, and begged Caitlin to tell me if they got back together, but she made me wait. It did end happily. I also cried at Elle's speech asking all her friends to join her at Pride, as she's been feeling unsafe as a young trans woman, particularly with government legislation denying that she is a woman.
Until the final series, Nick and Charlie had stuck to hugs, kisses and touching. In Heartstopper Forever, there is a lot of sex. Whilst not explicitly shown, it's clear that they now go ‘all the way’. I was a bit embarrassed about watching this with Caitlin, but she didn't seem concerned. I said afterwards, ‘There's a lot of sex,’ and she giggled. I'm so glad that there's a series like Heartstopper for the young people of today and their grandmas.
Not quite as progressive were the following three movies. We had a Lindsay Lohan-a-thon, beginning with the remake of The Parent Trap, where Lohan plays 11-year-old twins. Caitlin wondered whether she had to audition from both roles. We imagined the casting director saying, ‘You are fine to play one twin, but not the other.’ For those of us that remember Hayley Mills in that/those, role/roles, it's a good fun movie. However, why in the Lohan trilogy are they from such wealthy families? Annie, brought up by her mother (Natasha Richardson) in London, lives in a mansion, shops at Harrods and dresses like a member of the Royal Family in the 1950s. Hallie lives with her wealthy father (Dennis Quaid) who owns a vineyard in California. Both have ‘help’, a butler and nanny, who inevitably pair off and fall in love, along with the divorced parents who, of course, remarry at the end. All rather Shakespearean: mistaken identities, comic relief minor characters, and it ends in a wedding.
There are also weddings in Freaky Friday and Freakier Friday, both starring Lindsay Lohan and the fabulous Jamie Lee Curtis. Freaky Friday is a remake of the 1976 original, which starred Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris. A battling mother and daughter swap bodies on the eve of the mother's second marriage to Ryan (Mark Harmon). Daughter Anna isn't keen on the kind and handsome stepdad-to-be who will never replace her father who died a few years back. Mother Tess, a wealthy (of course) psychologist and author, can't relate to her truculent daughter, always in trouble at school and bolshie at home. The mother of the owner of their favourite Chinese restaurant gives them matching fortune cookies and casts a spell that will swap the youngster into her mother's body, and vice versa, until they can see things from the other's point of view. Of course there are hilarious complications. The wedding is very nearly called off, but the reverse swap takes place just in time, and it ends in a wedding. No surprise there. It's very entertaining, and recognisable for those of us who have lived with teenage daughters.
In Freakier Friday, Lohan's character, Anna, is now a mother of a teenage daughter and Tess is a grandmother. And yes, there is a wedding in the offing. Anna has raised her daughter as a single mother, but has now met the man of her dreams, a wealthy chef and restaurateur. These lavish weddings in Lindsay Lohan movies! This time, the husband-to-be has a teenage daughter, and it is the two daughters that don't get on, united in their quest to stop the wedding. Even more complicated than in the first film, there is a four-way body swap this time, the youngsters into the older women's bodies, facilitated by a flaky tarot and palm reader.
Again, there is a lesson to learn before they can swap back. The wedding is nearly called off, but goes ahead in the end. Everyone has learned a lesson, and it's a happily ever after ending. For me, Jamie Lee Curtis is the star of both movies. She so reminds me of the comic genius of her father, Tony Curtis, in Some Like It Hot, a movie my own daughters loved when they were teenagers.
In the first two Lohans we watched, an absence of actors and characters of colour is noticeable. They are very white privileged settings. Even the butler and nanny are white. This changes in Freakier Friday where Anna's fiancé is played by Manny Jacinto, who plays Jason in the series The Good Place, and is from the Philippines.
The last of our holiday family films was Mrs Doubtfire, well-beloved by all, but it does tug at the heartstrings. Especially for Grandma and Bob, each of us having been through divorces with children involved. I remember Mrs Doubtfire coming up in the discussion when my first husband and I told our two daughters that we were splitting up. A painful memory. And for Bob, who became a weekend dad, it was especially poignant. It's a terrific movie, though dated in its attitude to dudes who ‘look like a lady’, and its total lack of recognition of same-sex parenting. Mrs D gives a powerful speech during a TV broadcast at the end of the movie, about families who live together or don't live together, families with just a dad or just a mum, but no mention of families with two mums or two dads. We talked afterwards about what would change if it was remade, not least Mrs Doubtfire's ‘English’ accent actually being Scottish, and their idea of a 60-year-old woman looking like that. Even in 1993, 60-year-old women were not sporting shampoo and set style hairdos, or dressing like that.
We all decided that Mrs. Doubtfire could never be remade, as no one could match Robin Williams' comic genius in the role. So: three Lindsay Lohan movies ending in weddings; a teen LGBTQ+ movie with romance, separations and reunions, but no weddings; and a 1993 classic in which the divorced remain divorced, no one marries, but a family finds a way of communicating and carrying on. My favourite? Mrs Doubtfire, with Heartstopper Forever a close second.
I am guest writer at SaveAs and Dead Hoarse Writers this Sunday, 9 August, at the Cosy Club, Canterbury. Hope to see some of you there.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.