I went to the movies on Christmas day and saw the movie How Do You Know.  I don’t do chick-flicks and the way I ended up at this movie was a text message gone wrong.  It wasn’t horrible, but it’s really just not my type of movie.

While waiting for the movie to start, after the 15 minutes of commercials, there must have been no less than 10 previews for upcoming movies.  I guess they figure if you’re at a chick-flick / relationship type movie, that you want to know all the similar movies coming out soon.  Not so much, but hey, I’m not their target audience.  And that “don’t make your own soundtrack” commercial?  My soundtrack might have been better.

I guess sex sells, as this movie, the previews and even some of the commercials were all about it.  I think the question asked in title of the movie is asking, “how do you know if you’re in love?”  I have no answer for this, and not sure I ever will, but the way they’re showing relationships is not going to answer any such question.  Maybe they were asking something else.

I talk a lot on this blog about the excess in our society, and relationships seem to be no exception.  People are entertained by all kinds of sexual situations.  I was highly disturbed to see in Toy Story 3 that Ken, who just met Barbie 10 minutes earlier, asks her to move into his dreamhouse.  She said, “yes,” after getting the okay from Mrs. Potatohead.  Does anyone else see a problem with this?  This is not what I’m teaching my kids, but it is what they’re learning in our society.   Way to go Pixar.

Just Go With It is about a guy that wears a fake wedding ring to have no-strings-attached relationships with women, that is until he meets one that he wants to start a monogamous relationship with, but she finds the ring in his pocket.  So instead of telling her the truth, he says he’s separated and has a friend of his act like his soon to be ex-wife.  This is great until the girlfriend realizes the fake ex-wife has kids, which means he has kids.  Again, he chooses the lies and stupidly his friend allows him to rope her kids into this lie, allowing him to act like their dad.  Seriously?  This is what we call entertainment?  If healthy relationships are so boring that you can’t make a movie out of them without it being a complete failure, then why would anyone want one?  It gets better…

Hall Pass is a movie about a bunch of guys that get a week off from marriage.  What kind of insane women would agree to something like this?  Sure honey, go out for a week, have a great time, sleep with anyone you want, then come back (hopefully free of STD’s) and we’ll pretend it never happened.  Do they think this will make the guys happy or make them appreciate the marriage more?  Do the women get the same one week hall pass?  Maybe this is what people do and that’s why I’m not married anymore.  This is entertaining?  I really don’t get it.

The Dilemma is another movie where two guys, who are best friends, supposedly both have great marriages, but one of the wives is cheating and the husband of the other couple catches her.  The dilemma is whether or not he should tell his best friend.  When he confronts the woman having the affair, she says if he tells her husband, she’ll tell her husband and his wife that he made passes at her.  I just don’t see the entertainment value here.

You might call me cynical, and I am, so I’ll gladly accept the label.  I’ll keep fighting against the culture norm, which I learned from an early age, living in a household that would be considered entertaining if it were made into a movie.  I hope my kids fight it too and look for something bigger and better in this world.

Stepping down from the soapbox…