Thoughts on The Ugly Stepsister

     On Hulu, I watched The Ugly Stepsister, a 2025 Norwegian black comedy/body horror film written and directed by Emilie Blichfeldt. The film is a take on the Cinderella fairy tale, told from the perspective of Cinderella's stepsister Elvira (Lea Myren), an average looking girl who is pitted against Cinderella's beauty, and is forced to undergo painful and archaic methods of plastic surgery to be seen as beautiful enough to win the Prince or any other rich man. Agnes' (later named Cinderella derisively) father Otto (Ralph Carlsson) marries Elvira's mother, Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), but dies quickly afterwards, and each family thought the other had money, but they are broke, and Rebekka is spending money on finishing school for Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess) and Elvira, where the teacher favors the pretty girls, including Agnes, to be at the front of the class and sends Elvira to the back row with the "ugly" girls.

    Elvira is very romantic, and reads love tales supposedly written by Prince Julian, and dreams of being swept up by the Prince, and being made "beautiful" after her braces are taken off and that her nose has healed post-nose job, for which she wears a strap on her face as a bandage for the majority of the film. The nose job is just the doctor breaking her nose with a chisel, causing immeasurable pain to her. She has false eyelashes sewn onto her in a particularly gruesome sequence, and is advised to swallow tapeworm eggs to become thinner, which leaves her with a grumbling stomach sound periodically throughout the film, as a foreboding warning sound inside of her. 

    Elvira is routinely told by her mother and the headmistress that she isn't beautiful and needs to marry a rich man, and Elvira grows envious towards Agnes, whose natural beauty gives her more ease in the world, as well as more suitors, like a stable boy named Isak (Malte Myrenberg Gardinger) who she has a secret romance with. Agnes starts out a little haughty towards her stepfamily, but is otherwise a nice girl, and is forced into servitude by Rebekka, seeing her as competition for the Prince's affections. Agnes is also angry that Rebekka keeps spending money on material goods, and refuses to have a funeral or a burial for her late husband, so his body is rotting in a forgotten room in the home, with flies around him, and Agnes will visit him with flowers, only to be horrified by the sight of her father's decaying corpse.

    Elvira's younger sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) witnesses all of this pain and abuse that Elvira goes through, is horrified that Elvira ingested a tapeworm and is mutilating herself, and is hiding that she got her period and started bleeding, afraid that her mother too will put her through the same torture cycle to be a "woman" and pimped out to a man.

    The film takes the pain and bloodiness of the original fairy tale, like the lengths to which the stepsister will go to to fit the shoe after the Prince's ball, and is a commentary on the restrictive beauty standards of then and today, punishing girls for not fitting the beauty standards and shaming them for going through the painful efforts, and still not getting it as easy as those who are "naturally" beautiful. 

    I really loved how twisted this film was, taking the darker origins of the fairy tale, and creating a sympathetic character in the "ugly" stepsister, while not turning Agnes/Cinderella into the villain and showing how she was victimized too. The ending is at both bittersweet and heroic, as Elvira suffers for her quest for beauty and love, but finds safety with Alma to escape their mother's cruelness at the same time. It's a really fantastic film, and I heard of it through the YouTuber Yhara Zayd on her list of her favorite films of 2025.

Favorite Movies/Performances of 2025

I didn’t think about writing a “Favorite Movies of 2025” list because I didn’t really have much favorites. I watch movies a lot, but didn’t feel like I saw a lot of new stuff that I really loved or adored, so it’s a small list of liking movies or certain performances:

David Jonsson has been a rising talent and standout actor in movies like Rye Lane and Alien: Romulus, and I liked him a lot in The Long Walk. The movie is depressing to watch, but he holds the screen with a lot of ease and star power, and he and Cooper Hoffman had good friend chemistry together.

Rose Byrne was fantastic in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, in an incredibly tense and uncomfortable drama, and I’m happy she won a Golden Globe for her performance.

Sinners was an excellent film that combined a blues musical with vampires, and was an experience to watch in theaters.

She Rides Shotgun was a fantastic thriller featuring Taron Egerton and the young Ana Sophia Heger, and I was gripped into this film in the theater.

Sentimental Value was a stunning family drama centered on a Norwegian filmmaker (Stellan Skarsgard) and his estranged relationship with his daughters (Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), and I liked how layered and interesting it was.

While I was mixed on the storyline for The Testament of Ann Lee, I loved the dance choreography by Celia Rowlson-Hall, and the soprano singing by Amanda Seyfried. Those two elements made the film more memorable and stunning to me.

Jessie Buckley’s guttural screaming and moaning in childbirth and in grief in Hamnet was raw and palpable to my ears.

Austin Abrams’ performance in Weapons made a junkie homeless dirtbag character into an unexpected sympathetic hero, and being better at finding missing kids than the cops were. And Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys the witch looked like 1970s Bette Davis and was captivating to watch as this weird character.

Sally Hawkins in Bring Her Back was incredible, in taking a character who was obviously disturbed and gaslighting people, speaking in a pleasant voice while being driven insane by grief to hurt others.

I liked how The Mastermind felt like a quiet take on a heist film with a 1970s-set story, with Josh O’Connor as a protagonist who ignores the social news of the day with protests and the Vietnam War, coasting through life, and his lack of awareness catching up with him.

Black Bag was a really tight spy film in 90 minutes with an excellent cast led by Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, and just felt fascinating to me.

Mickey 17 went on for too long, but I did like watching Robert Pattinson play clones and put on affected weird voices and look like he was having fun with the roles.

Final Destination: Bloodlines was stupidly fun to watch, and had a touching and heartfelt sendoff for the late Tony Todd in one of his final roles, in a speech about enjoying life and accepting death.

Sister Midnight (technically from 2024, but in theaters last year) was a really fun, weird dark comedy centering on Radhika Apte's performance as a young Indian woman miserable in her arranged marriage and spiraling into a feral force.

Thoughts on Pearl

     On Tubi, I watched Pearl, a 2022 horror/dark comedy film directed by Ti West, co-written by West and Mia Goth. The film was the second in West's X film trilogy, beginning with X in 2022 and ending with MaXXXine in 2024. X focused on a group of people making a porn film in 1979, renting the farm of the elderly couple Howard and Pearl, and becoming the victims of the couple's serial killer depravity, with Goth portraying both the aspiring young star Maxine and the elderly Pearl. Pearl is a prequel, set in 1918 when Pearl is a young woman, living with her German immigrant parents on a farm, and she is married to Howard (Alistair Sewell), who is overseas fighting in WWI. She resents being stuck working on the farm, when all the farmhands are off in the war, and living with her strict mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) and her paralyzed father (Matthew Sunderland). As the Spanish flu pandemic is ongoing, Pearl's mother insists that she stay close to home, stay masked when going to town, and stay isolated. Pearl wants to be a chorus girl or a movie star, to be a star and travel and live a life of adventure, and her mother, who is also stuck with taking care of her husband as if she is his mother, shuts down Pearl's dreams, wanting her to get her head out of the clouds and be more realistic about life.

    Pearl shows signs of being violent and expressing rage, through killing animals and feeding them to an alligator (named Theda, likely after the silent film star Theda Bara), dancing with a scarecrow in the field and masturbating with it, and bathing naked as a grown woman in front of her infirm father, taking advantage of his lack of speech or movement to express her more disturbing side in front of him.

    On her visit to town to pick up medicine for her father, she goes to the movies, and meets the unnamed projectionist (David Corenswet), who flirts with her and invites her to come by again. She also finds out from her sister in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro), a more upper-class dainty lady compared to Pearl's working-class farm life, that there will be dance auditions at the local church for a traveling troupe, and Pearl is determined to make it into the troupe as a ticket out of her hellhole of a life.

    As the film progresses, Pearl becomes more mentally disturbed, which becomes more evident to others, and the film spirals into Pearl becoming a serial killer and destroying everybody in her life. Despite the film being labeled as horror, I thought the movie was hilarious in a dark way, mainly due to Mia Goth's excellent performance in throwing herself into Pearl's deranged actions. When she dances with the scarecrow, she goes from romantic playful dancing to throwing the scarecrow down and yelling "I'm MARRIED!" When she visits the projectionist, his idea of seduction is showing her an illicit underground porn film (the real-life 1910s stag film A Free Ride), and it felt reminiscent of Taxi Driver, where the character Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) is trying to woo a woman he likes and takes her to a porn film on their first date, and she's disgusted by it. But it works on Pearl, and they later sleep together off-screen.

    The film was shot in New Zealand, and the use of the pandemic as the backdrop came from the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21. The film opens in the style of a Technicolor film, with big names in old movie trailer script font, and echoes The Wizard of Oz in the farm setting with Pearl dreaming of escaping and exploring a bigger world. The film's final shot of Pearl holding onto a pained smile as the credits roll over her and the music reaches high strings that go from sounding like a romantic triumphant ending to sounding more sinister and horrific was fantastic. The film's cinematography Eliot Rocket looked gorgeous, and I loved how in the finale, Pearl switches from her overalls to wearing her mother's red Belle Epoque dress, looking more old-fashioned and out of time.

    I really loved this film, and Mia Goth should've gotten an Oscar nomination for this incredible performance, especially for her standout monologue scene in which she tells Mitsy, as a practice stand-in for Howard, everything she wants to tell him about why she is the way she is, making a disturbed heroine much more understandable and sympathetic in her difficult circumstances as a character study. While I've heard that X and MaXXXine aren't as good as this film, I would still check them out to complete the trilogy.

Thoughts on 100 Yen Love

     On Tubi, I watched 100 Yen Love, a 2014 Japanese sports drama directed by Masahara Taku and written by Shin Adachi. The film stars Sakura Ando (Shoplifters, Godzilla Minus One) as Ichiko, a 32-year old woman who lives with her parents above the bento shop the family runs. She is slovenly, with long two-toned hair in her face, barely works at the shop, and stays in her room playing video games in sweats. Her sister Fumiko (Saori Koide) has moved back in with her young son after a divorce, and resents Ichiko for her immaturity and laziness, and their bickering comes to a physical fight, and the mother makes Ichiko move out. She finds a night shift job at a discount store, where she is continually pestered by her talkative co-worker, gives food to a dumpster-diving ex-employee, and on her walks, she passes by a boxing gym, checking out Yuji (Hirofumi Arai), a boxer training for his last bout at 37 years old. She develops a shy crush on him, and they eventually meet, go on an awkward date where they walk around a zoo, and has a sort of relationship where he stays with her, they have sex, but aren't an official couple.

    But through his influence, and then being sexually assaulted by her co-worker, she decides to take up boxing, because she wants to feel power and control in her life, and not to be seen as a loser by everyone. So she trains more, and gains more self-confidence in her focus as an athlete, and pushing her coaches to book her a fight so she can prove herself more. The title of the film comes from a pop song that she uses as her entrance song for her big fight.

    I liked the film, especially Ando's performance, and how her character as Ichiko grows throughout the film from being a bored, lazy person coasting in life to finding motivation through her sport and getting out her rage in focused ways. She's really great in this film, and was excellent in Shoplifters as well.

    I really hated that this film put an unnecessary rape into this film, it felt like an ugly punishment for her character, and did not help the story at all, and the story could have been the same without it, it just really pissed me off.

    I felt for Ichiko that she wanted a connection with Yuji, but his character was a loser, too. Not just that he loses his final fight, but that he was clearly taking advantage of her for sex, being rude and dismissive to her, staying in her place while clearly seeing another woman, and he just came off like a douchebag that she should've just dumped.

    Also, when looking up Hirofumi Arai, I saw that he recently served time in prison for raping a masseuse in 2019, so not only is his character scummy, but so is the actor.

    I thought it was a decent film, mostly anchored by Ando's performance than the rest of the story, and only becomes more of a sports film in the second half of the film.

Thoughts on I Am Not a Witch

    On Criterion this week, I watched I Am Not a Witch, a 2017 U.K./Zambian drama written and directed by Rungano Nyoni, centering on a nine-year old Zambian orphan (Maggie Mulubwa), who wanders into a new town and is brought to the police station because she scared a woman and made her drop a bucket of water, thus leading to accusations that the girl is a witch. People crowd outside of the police station, with one man climbing in through the window to make an accusation, even when he gets called out on it being false. The police officer holding her doesn't really believe she is a witch, but has to appease the angry mob who see her as an outsider and a threat. So she is brought to a witch doctor to determine if she is a witch or not, and made to go into a shed to decide if she wants to be a witch or a goat, told that if she decides that she is a goat, she will be killed for meat. She gives in to their accusations, likely out of fear and shame, declaring that she is a witch, and is owned by the government, taken to a camp made up of elderly "witches," who are all bound to posts with long spools of white ribbons (to "prevent them from flying away," but really keeping them captured by their male guardians) and forced into field labor, working during a drought and praying for rain. One of the women names her Shula, which means "uprooted."

    Shula is taken under the guidance of Mr. Banda (Henry B.J. Phiri), a government official who profits off of the women's labor and exploits Shula in police lineups to find thieves, making her point out who she thinks is the culprit, and going by on that. She is bound by the ribbon, with others carrying the spool as she travels by bus on government field trips. Mr. Banda is a talkative character who makes excuses for his exploitation of Shula, including when he brings her onto a talk show and avoids questions from a call-in listener about not enrolling Shula in school or making money off of her with eggs using her name. His wife, Chasity (Nancy Murilo), is revealed to have once been considered a witch, also having worn a ribbon like Shula, but claims that marriage made her "respectable," and telling Shula that if she follows directions and is always obedient, and that she finds a good man to marry her, that she will be "free," too, never mind that she is also being trapped by her husband as well, who seems very comfortable profiting off of women.

    Shula doesn't speak a lot throughout the film, often being cowed into silence or being talked over by adults, and when tourists come to take pictures of the women, tied to ribbons with face paint on, one of the tourists finds Shula hiding and, in trying to cajole her to come out, suggests they take a photo together, still taking advantage of her even when she is clearly in despair. It's clear on Shula's face that she feels trapped, and despite the warmth of the elder women, her face often shows fear and loneliness, with fantastic acting from the young Mulubwa.

    Despite that, I Am Not a Witch is a dark comedy, that shows the conflict between old traditions and modern-day life, like when Shula's trial is repeatedly interrupted by the "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" ringtone that someone didn't know how to mute, or when the elder women receive brightly colored wigs with misspellings on the labels like "Beyancey."

    Film Obsessive's review goes into much more detail about the depiction of Zambia and globalization, and I will excerpt their part here: 

    On the other hand, despite all of his smarmy tone and bossy attitude, Banda isn’t a complete monster. Learning from his talk show debacle, he decides to send Shula to school. She seems very happy among her peers but doesn’t end up staying there for long. The local female tribal leader sees her education as a waste of money and scolds Banda for allowing it. She was visibly afraid that Shula would give her and Banda less revenue while staying out of the camp.

The presence of the female tribal doesn’t show only that higher-class women can be as selfish as their male counterparts. It also touches on the unusual political system of many African countries. In theory, the official recognition of the authorities sanctioned by tradition seems like a good step toward decentralization in post-colonial reality. Zambian chiefs sometimes advocate for progressive causes like the fight against child marriage or the promotion of sustainable agriculture. I Am Not a Witch show the negative side of this phenomenon: the possibility of corruption and cultivating old prejudices. Although news items depict Zambian state officials in a bad light, recent history shows that there are valid reasons for such.

However, it must be noted that Nyoni researched I Am Not a Witch mostly in Ghana, not Zambia. This is one of the reasons why we cannot take the film as a completely accurate picture of Zambian society. It is easy to check that threatening others with witchcraft or accusing people of such practices is a crime in that country since 1914. Certainly, the reality is more dire. Not so long ago, one of the local chiefs complained that courts demand proof of witchcraft from plaintiffs, and some individuals make good money from creating such proof.

    I found this film really interesting to watch, combining folklore, sexism, and modern-day attitudes together in Zambia, with a young female protagonist who is observing everything and feeling powerless to stop it, being surrounded by immature adults controlling her life, and figuring out how to survive it.

Thoughts on Language Lessons

    On Tubi, I watched Language Lessons, a 2021 dramedy directed by Natalie Morales and co-written by Morales and Mark Duplass. The film was produced while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Morales and Duplass, who had worked together on the TV series Room 104, and made the film in the style of "screen life," where the POVs are all from webcams on computers and phones, and the characters interact with each other through video chat and video messaging. It's a style that is experimental, and varies on quality. I liked it a lot in Searching as a detective story, using social media and saved desktop files as clues, but found it boring and stale in Open Windows. Here, due to the charming and warm performances of Morales and Duplass, I enjoyed it a lot, and got into the story.

    Adam (Duplass) lives a wealthy life in Oakland, CA with his husband Will (Desean Terry), and by surprise, Will got him Spanish lessons via online videochat with Cariño (Morales), who lives in Costa Rica. Adam is confused and taken aback, but goes along with the lesson, speaking in advanced beginner/intermediate Spanish, saying how he had lived in Mexico as a child and missed speaking Spanish, and is a little embarrassed by his wealth with his large house and pool, making the common mistake of saying he is "embarazada," which means "pregnant" in Spanish. Will wanted him to get back into speaking Spanish, and signed him up for 100 weekly lessons for $1000. Despite his hesitancy, he promises Cariño, who finds the whole interaction amusing, that he will return in a week.

    A week later, Cariño logs on to find Adam depressed and despondent in bed, and he tells her that Will died the night before, having been hit by a car while jogging, and he is grieving and in disbelief, at one point vomiting off-camera. Cariño is saddened by the news and is trying to comfort Adam, but doesn't know what to do since they only just met through videochat and don't know each other in real life. When Adam begins panicking about having to tell people about Will's death and handling logistics, Cariño calms him down by switching the perspective on her cameraphone to show him the gardens where she lives, speaking to him in Spanish and describing the plants and flowers, lulling him to sleep.

    Cariño, in her limited capacity but deep empathy, offers homework assignments to Adam as a way to busy him and distract him from his grief, and while at first he declines them, he gets into it, and they develop more of a friendship, speaking mostly in Spanish with some English, playing guitar and piano with each other, and she helps him to be able to connect with another person after Will's death, sharing stories about Will, and learning more about Cariño's life, though she wavers between being a friend and wanting to keep a professional relationship.

    I turned on this movie because I've always liked Natalie Morales, and felt like she's a comedic actress who is warm and beautiful and funny, but didn't have the luck of having a breakout role or being a standout star, more so the supporting actress in various TV series (Dead to Me, Parks & Recreation, Santa Clarita Diet), and any show she was the lead on didn't last more than a season, like The Middleman or Abby's. In recent years, she has been on The Beast in Me, The Morning Show, and Grey's Anatomy, so she has been busy in TV work. She not only directed this film, but she directed Plan B, a 2021 teen comedy about two teen girls going on a road trip to get the Plan B pill from the nearest Planned Parenthood a state away after being denied at their local pharmacy. I really liked that film a lot, and thought Morales was a really empathetic director in her portrayal of the girls.

    I went through a long period where I couldn't stand Mark Duplass as an actor, because I didn't like him as a romantic lead in films, and I wasn't a fan of the shaky-cam zooming in and out style of filmmaking that he and his brother Jay would do in films like Jeff, Who Lives at Home and Cyrus. It felt like this irrational dislike I had for someone who seemed so inoffensive, and who didn't seem bad as a person, but I found it hard to get past my dislike. But in this film, I liked him much more, and the fact that he spoke good Spanish made him more likable, and even through the screens, he and Morales shared a lovely friend chemistry that made the film really enjoyable to watch, getting past the video chat gimmick to be connected to the story and characters. 

    The film is definitely a relic of the pandemic era, which already seems so far past from nearly six years ago, but since video chatting is very common, and Zoom and Teams chats are still being conducted long past the lockdown days, I didn't mind that the characters became friends online, across countries and cultures and shared languages. This was a sweet movie to watch, and I'm glad I came across it.

Thoughts on The Testament of Ann Lee

    At the Village East Cinema last week in New York City, I went to see The Testament of Ann Lee, a 2025 historical drama musical directed by Mona Fastvold and co-written by Fastvold and Brady Corbet. The film centers on the origins of the Shaker movement, particularly focusing on Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), the founding leader, who formed the religious sect in Manchester, England. In 1758, she had joined an English sect founded by Jane Wardley (Stacy Martin) and her husband, preacher James Wardley (Scott Handy), in an organization that was a precursor to the Shaker sect. This sect was called the Shaking Quakers because of its similarities to the Quaker movement, but also the practice of "removing sin" through dancing and chanting.

    The film follows Lee's life, from her childhood in poverty to finding religion with her friends. Throughout Ann's childhood and early adulthood, she is repulsed by sexuality, associating it with sin (likely with sex work), as well as viewing it in close proximity and finding it vulgar and unattractive. She married young, to Abraham Stanley (Christopher Abbott), and never enjoyed sex, and experienced trauma with losing all four of her babies during infancy, none of them surviving to one year old. In her development of her religious beliefs, as well as a hallucination she had while imprisoned, with vision of Adam and Eve and original sin, she declared that the Shakers take a vow of celibacy, even within marriage. She also believed herself to be the second coming of Christ, and in 1774, the Shakers moved from England to New York, where they continued practicing, but were accused of treason and witchcraft, although they were neutral pacifists during the American Revolution.

    I was mixed on this film. I loved the dancing, choreographed by Celia Rowlson-Hall, that had a mix of praise dance and modern dance to it, with movements like hand percussion on the body and swaying and undulating, and the dance sequences were stunning with fluid camera dolly work by William Rexer capturing the movements, and how rapturous the Shakers would be in feeling cleansed of sin through dancing and chanting. In a Q&A I attended after the screening, writer-director Mona Fastvold spoke of how the costumes and corsets were designed for more freeing movement, and that the costumes were created for the film, because renting period costumes wouldn't allow for that same time of dancing.

    The music was composed by Daniel Blumberg, drawing from original Shaker hymns, and complements the film beautiful, setting it in its period well.

    Amanda Seyfried was great in this film, throwing herself into the dancing and physicality, as well as singing with her gorgeous soprano voice, and portraying Ann Lee with the religious fervor and conviction that borders on psychotic.

    In the supporting roles, Lewis Pullman played William, Ann's brother, and it's an understated role, but he was good. Thomasin McKenzie played Mary, who narrates the film and has one blind eye, and is often on the sidelines watching the action, with an eerie presence. Tim Blake Nelson appears as Pastor Reuben Wright in the New York scenes.

    I felt lost in the last third of the movie, where I didn't feel like I could connect with the Shakers as much, especially when they receive criticism from others that their night chanting can be heard from miles away, and I didn't agree with the vow of celibacy or equating sexuality with sin, that felt more controlling and more on the sanctimonious Evangelical side for me. I lost connection with the story as it felt like the movement had been trying to convert people when moving to New York, and seeming incredibly naive. I didn't agree that they deserved violence from angry mobs or to be imprisoned, but I wasn't liking them very much, either.

    Overall, I loved the dancing and the music and the uniqueness of the film as a period musical that felt more unusual and unconventional, and focusing on a female religious leader who was strange and controversial. I wasn't as into the later storytelling as much, but I still found this to be a very interesting film to watch.

Thoughts on Lost in America

     On Criterion, I watched Lost in America, a 1985 comedy written and directed by Albert Brooks, starring Brooks and Julie Hagerty as David and Linda, a yuppie couple in L.A. who feel bored with their bourgeois lives. David works at an advertising agency, and Linda works at a department store. David is expecting to get a promotion to senior vice president after having been at the agency for eight years, while Linda, despite getting promotions, is bored at her job and doesn't like the house they've lived in for seven years or the house they've just bought. When David doesn't get the promotion and is instead offered a transfer to their New York offices to work on an account for Ford, he throws a fit and curses out his boss and is immediately fired. He convinces Linda to quit her job too, and that they should sell their house, liquidate their savings, having $150,000 to their name, and go get a motor home and live out on the open road, living out David's Easy Rider fantasies. They do all of that, and go to Las Vegas with the plans of renewing their vows, but then Linda loses all their money in gambling at the roulette table, and they are dead broke and have to figure out how to manage from then on, not being prepared for being poor without their nest egg.

    What is hilarious and smart about this film is how good Brooks is at making fun of Reagan-era yuppies who fantasize about the 1960s counterculture movement, but still want the security of their massive nest eggs. When David is talking about wanting to "drop out," but still having a lot of money, and Linda says how the guys in Easy Rider dropped out but weren't rich, David counters by saying they sold cocaine to get by, insisting that they still had a high income.

    Brooks nails the entitlement of these characters, especially David, who keeps trying to bribe people or wanting special treatment at every corner. When they go to a Vegas hotel, he bribes the concierge $50 to check again if the bridal suite is occupied, then bribes another $50 when the concierge tells him his price is $100. Then the "bridal suite" turns out to be the "junior bride suite" with double heart-shaped beds instead of a single, and no tub for their bath fantasy.

    One of the standout scenes of the film is when, after Linda loses all their money, David meets with the casino manager (Garry Marshall) to try to get their money back, and continually acts as if he is different than other Vegas tourists who lost at gambling, insisting that he and his wife are the "bold" ones who just made a mistake, and aren't like the "schmucks to come to see Wayne Newton." The manager: "I like Wayne Newton. That makes me a schmuck?" He tries his angle of offering advertising tips for the casino, to make them seem more welcoming and open to giving money back to tourists who lose, and keeps trying to act as if he's better or more special than others, to which the casino manager stays professional about their policy but is clearly annoyed by David's hubris.

    Another wonderful scene is when David goes to an employment office, and to the employment agent (Art Frankel), after listing his white collar resume with his past job of $80K yearly salary and a bonus of $15-20K, is asking if there are any jobs in the $100K salary range, which is ludicrous to ask of an employment office that mostly have minimum wage jobs and low-level secretarial jobs at best. David goes "I wanted to change my life." The agent "You couldn't do that on $100,000?"

    I really liked this movie a lot, and I liked that it wasn't so much of a fantasy of them living on the open road, but about them immediately not being able to handle financial challenges or setbacks and wanting to run back to their old lives as soon as possible. It's a great film, and I'm glad I checked it out.