Friday, April 15, 2016

Post 150: What Big Picture? How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

This is a plot hole that has annoyed me for quite a long time. In the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Andy (main character) justifies her writing for a fashion and beauty magazine and basically "selling out and writing fluff pieces" (she doesn't say that exactly but implies it) is all in hopes that the editor will like her work and give her free reign to write whatever she wants.

Her idea of what she wants to write is serious, hard-hitting pieces on political and social current events. So, my question is, is she an idiot? It's the only way this idea makes any sense.

I took one and only one journalism class in University but I still know this is stupid. A main idea we discussed is 'audience'. It is important to know your audience. So how is it that someone in the industry, who supposedly went to University for this career and has an interest in it, would actually think that there was any way at all that the editor of a fashion and glamor magazine would let her write any of those kinds of articles?

People who pick up those kinds of magazines may be looking for health and dating tips, but what they are really looking for is light and casual reading. Not something that will make them think about the political turmoil people countries away are suffering. There is no way Andy would have actually thought she would get the choice to write those articles for the same magazine. Unless she was an idiot. And it does seem at first like she is thinking of it as paying her dues where she can go somewhere else with this experience but when she is talking to her boss and her boss says she has free reign with in reason for the material that fits with the magazine, she is shocked. She wouldn't have been shocked. It's a fashion magazine, not the Times. It would be like someone working at Disney being surprised when their boss said they couldn't show the kids Saw.

And what makes it seem even more ridiculous is that she has friends at the paper and clearly has worked there awhile and been in the meetings hearing topics discussed, does she really think that the reason those kinds of articles were never suggested or brought up was due to lack of interest by writers alone? How did she not realize it wouldn't fit in with the magazine?

I feel like this is simply a matter of the person writing the movie not actually having any real background knowledge of journalism and a lack of common sense in the matter OR a desperate need to make sure that she was 'different' because heaven forbid she actually enjoy writing about fashion or dating. No, no. It needed to be beneath her in order for her to be deep. I mean, it's fine for her friends, one who we rarely see or learn anything about and the other who is clingy, over-emotional, and insecure. But Andy needs to want a "serious" job. There is really no other reason her character needed to want to write about other things. It doesn't really affect the plot much. And as it is, it actually hurts the plot more than it helps. 

Rating Hallmark Christmas Romance Movies

'Tis the season for some Christmas movies. This post will focus on Hallmark Romances. Next I might do Christmas Romances that are like H...