Another Point of Personal Privilege: Nitpicking "Pretty Woman"

Back in my salad days (no, I don't know what that means either- I just know it's used in situations like this, so there you go) I used to manage a video store in downtown DC.  It was a fun job (when I wasn't being robbed at gunpoint, which happened twice- you get used to it) in which I got to watch a lot of good movies and (it being the 80s) even more really bad ones.  For every E.T. and The Verdict there were many, many more Look Who's Talkings and Police Academy flicks.  But hey, it was a job which involved watching movies, and it paid my way through Graduate School.  So no complaints here.

Pretty Woman was one of the biggest hits of 1990, my last full year working in the video rental business.   It is also one of the most ludicrous, disgusting piles of maggot dung ever assembled by Hollywood.  I could write many pages about how it basically plays out the Beautiful Clean Hooker fantasy which had already been hashed out in countless movies and television shows long before this putrid mess hit the big screen (I don't need to remind anyone my age that Brooke Shields, Phoebe Cates, and Jane Seymour- possibly the three most stunning women of the generation- all played prostitutes at one point in their careers.)  Instead, I'd like to just skip all that and take a moment to just laugh at one scene which always really bugged the hell out of me.

When Julia Roberts' prostitute character meets Richard Gere's businessman character, he's driving a Lotus and looking for directions back to his hotel.  Gere hires Roberts to get him there, and then strikes a deal for her to come up to his penthouse suite for what she figures will be a quick, lucrative toss in the hay.

So she gets to his room, which is of course massive and lavishly furnished.  Gere orders champagne and strawberries, but instead of realizing that this guy could be an easy mark and clearly has money to burn, Richards acts as if she's kind of anxious to get out of there (wait, this makes sense compared to what happens next.)  Gere then suggests that to ease her mind about all the opportunities to get screwed by other total strangers she may be missing out on, he just pays her to stay the night.  And here's where it get really stupid.

Roberts replies "The whole night?  You couldn't afford it."

Um, seriously?  Lotus-driving, penthouse-dwelling, champagne-and-strawberries ordering businessman "couldn't afford" a hooker for the evening?  You don't want to think this over before making that statement, Julia?  Not even for a moment?

Guess not, because when Gere insists that she name her price, she replies "Three hundred dollars."  Which he accepts, instantly (no duh.  I seriously can't believe he doesn't burst out laughing- or begins to wonder if this woman has a problem she's not telling him about.)  Three hundred dollars? For an entire night?  What did Roberts' character usually charge for her normal hour or so?  $20 and car fare back to the alley?

And Gere's quick acceptance doesn't teach her a thing about negotiating- the next day, he asks how much she'd charge for entire week, and she comes up with the figure $3000.  Jeeeeeeshh......for the 1990 version of Julia Roberts?  Come on.....who wrote this dialogue?  At LEAST add a zero to that figure, PLEASE.  I know it's 1990, but give me a break.

By the way, did you know that the original ending for this flick had Gere dumping a devastated, sobbing Roberts- who goes right back to being a prostitute?  Proving that, briefly, the writers intended to infuse a LITTLE reality.  Maybe they should have stuck with it- because "rich guy buys beautiful woman on the cheap" should never be the "feel good romance of the year," ever.  Not even in 1990.

Because you were "raised" to be helpless- here's your Hyundai

I guess the message here is that this kid would have had his skull smashed in, badly burned, and basically mauled in a hundred ways if Dad had not been standing right there to keep him from doing really awful damage to himself.

The more disturbing message is that by doing so, Dad raised an obtuse knob who as a young adult is living as if someone will always be around to pull his ass out of the fire just before it touches him- or before he uses it to do injury to someone else.  This kid with is cruising around in a two-ton vehicle fully capable of ending someone's life in an eye blink but lets himself get distracted by the cute girl with the cell phone*- but no problem, now his car will remind him that there are other people on the planet before he kills them with his Learned Asshattery.

An even more disturbing message- Hyundai thinks it's audience will think it's kind of cute and endearing to watch a little boy come within an inch or a second of being really badly hurt, over and over again.  I mean, seriously- that brick wall looks deadly, and crashing into a grill filled with white-hot coals?  That's years of reconstructive surgery.  Not really anything to chuckle about.  And I don't even have one of these little mammals.

*Why does Cute Girl have a cell phone?  Does this seem a bit gratuitous to anyone else?  Is it that the makers of this ad couldn't conceive of a girl walking along without a cell phone in her hand?  Or did the Extra hired to play the girl refuse to put hers down for her 2-second part?

Thanks, Doctor Obvious

Personally, whenever I go to the dentist, by the time the ordeal is over I'm just glad to get the hell out of the chair and be on my way.  People in these ads always look so damned delighted to be there and so interested in their freaking teeth, I wonder if my dentist skimps on the happy gas.

As for this bubbly airhead--

"My teeth feel so good after a cleaning!  I wish there was some way I could make them feel like this all the time!"

"Well, I suggest you brush twice a day and use this Crest rinse...."

"I brush my hair every morning, doctor!  Can't you see the shine?"

"No, I mean your teeth.  You should brush your teeth twice a day with..."

"Brush my TEETH?  Seriously?  I don't think my brush would even FIT in there!"

"Um...no....you see, there are these special instruments called 'tooth brushes.'  You apply this minty cream to them and then you..."

"Brushes for teeth!? What a world we live in!  I'll give it a try...what's this rinse stuff you were talking about?"

"Never mind.  Let's start small."

You can't spell "Loser" without "Samsung"

If you are the narrator of this awful 60 seconds of brain-dead stupid, I know several things about you::

1.  You have way, way too much time on your hands.

2.  You have have a severe shortage of friends.  Go make some.  Because- well, see No. 1

3.  In case No. 1 and No. 2 aren't clear enough- seriously, get a freaking life.  There's more to it than this.

4.  You aren't from Cleveland.

Vonage joins in the fun of racist advertising. Aren't these people just adorable?

It's the same rule used by every radio advertisement- when you have very, very little to say, pretend it's very complicated and needs to be repeated over and over again.

The difference is this:  you can't picture the people mechanically repeating the name of the webpage over and over AND OVER on the radio- "what was that again? Findmoney.com?" "Yes, Findmoney.com.  That's Findmoney.com.  Findmoney.com" or making absolutely positively sure that everyone has that toll-free number burned into their brains.  On TV, we actually get to know and hate the douchenozzles who treat us like little children who need to have everything spelled out for them- over and over again, because Seriously We Really Didn't Get It The First Four Times.

In this ad, the delightfully ethnic tools won't be convinced that whatever deal Vonage is selling here covers both their home phone (seriously?  People still have home phones- with cords and everything?) and their cell phone (the phone they actually use in real life) until the hipster doofus who looks like he just crawled out of a dumpster or a 70s porno movie repeats assurances to every. Single. Person. who asks.

In real life, spokeschoad would just throw up his hands and say "oh to hell with you knobs, you are way too stupid to get what I'm saying."  I also kind of hope that in real life, there are plenty of Indian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans who are more than a little pissed at the condescending nature of an ad which features a white guy patiently explaining a very simple concept to non-whites who Can't Quite Seem To Grasp The Concept.

"Crazy Generous?" Gag.

Not the efficiency required to land the Glengarry Account. Alert Alec Baldwin!

Their clients "need a lot of attention" and "we're working deals all day," yet all five employees of this real estate agency decided to drop everything and spend the afternoon at the local AT&T store to negotiate a phone deal.  Yeah, that's practical.

BTW, are Real Estate Agents still easy "go-to's" when commercials want to stereotype zombie, fast-talking, money-obsessed habitual liars and cheats?  Actually, I'll buy that.  I've never met a Realtor who hadn't gone through a very obvious soul removal surgery.  I rented a basement apartment from one who objected to turning the heat on when it was more than 60 degrees outside and tried to withhold my security deposit because the rug got ruined by flooding caused by torrential rains (this was my fault, somehow.)  So yeah- realtors are scumbags.  I get it.  But they generally aren't time-wasters.  I just can't see the entire staff of CenturyGoToHell piling into the company SUV for a field trip to the AT&T store, sorry.

I still don't think that it takes five to work out a phone-sharing deal, though.  The woman who does all the talking looks perfectly capable of "closing" all by herself while the other four are back in the office fucking people out of their money, like a good Realtor should.

What did I say that sounded like "tell me about your medication, grampa?"

 

What is WITH this guy?  For absolutely no reason I can see, he suddenly launches into a monologue concerning the amazing Voyage of Discovery leading him to adding yet another very expensive, side effects-laden drug to his regular routine.  I don't see anyone ask him a question about his medication, or show any interest at all in his decision to add yet another set of chemicals to the pharmacy that is coursing through his veins in a sad attempt to keep his non-life going for a few more years.

I can only imagine that his long-suffering spouse gave a hopeless little sigh and eyeroll when her self-absorbed twat of a husband started his totally uncalled-for story with "...but I wondered: Could I Up My Game?"  Uh huh.  Know the difference between me and you, buddy?  I don't wonder out loud.

Apparently not getting that he's already broken the Shut Up Nobody Gives A Damn meter, he proceeds to read off his Not At All Personal He Doesn't Mind Sharing Hey Where Are You Going reasons for convincing his doctor to prescribe Eliquis in the clunkiest, most unconvincing manner possible:  "One.....Two.....Three......." Is Spouse supposed to be taking notes here?  Will there be a quiz later?

Mercifully, this guy has a son who convinces Dad to stop with the Commercial-within-a-Commercial and shoot hoops before mom totally loses it and runs off with the slightly less insane jagoff from the Crestor ad.

In another ad for the same product, a woman bleats pretty much the same speech, except her tagline is "Change my focus." Hmmm....not quite as effective as "Up my game," but we can't expect the people who write this crud to actually put thought into the stilted lines they have these "actors" bleat now, can we?