Movie – The Ugly Truth (2009)

The Ugly Truth is an R rated romantic comedy starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler.  If you’re one of those people who hates Heigl then this movie will not change your mind about her.  If you’re one of those people who hates romantic comedies, this will also not change your mind.  The movie holds little surprise for people who know how romantic comedies work, but what it does have is some refreshingly frank, funny dialogue and some great chemistry between the leads.  And you know what?  Sometimes it’s a good thing to know where a movie is going before you start to watch it precisely because it’s going to show you what you want to see.

Movie – The OH in Ohio (2006)

The OH in Ohio is yet another in the line of somewhat offbeat independent films that seem to attract actress Parker Posey like a moth to a flame.  Notice that I did not call this movie a comedy.  While it was certainly marketed as a comedy, it probably has as much drama in it as it does laughs.  The poor marketing, combined with the offbeat humor that is in this film, seems to be the biggest cause of dissatisfaction among viewers.  They were expecting something like Wedding Crashers and instead got something like, well, I’m not sure what other movie this would be most like.

Movie – Wedding Crashers (2005)

Wedding Crashers is not the kind of movie that anyone would mistake for highbrow.  The Oscars did not come calling.  It did win a number of People’s Choice, Teen Choice, and MTV Movie Awards, though.  It also did pretty well at the box office, especially for an R rated comedy.  This was due to a combination of a mostly appealing cast and some good humor.

Movie – Bruce Almighty (2003)

What if you were given God’s powers?  What would you do?  Maybe you’d have fun for a while.  Maybe you’d even turn evil.  After all, Lord Acton famously wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  On the other hand, Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  Having God’s powers means having to deal with all the issues that come to him, too.  This is the premise of the film Bruce Almighty.  It’s a movie with some good laughs in it, but also a bit of a message.

Movie – Pleasantville (1998)

Pleasantville was an unexpected pleasure for me.  I had watched it figuring it might have some decent laughs, but that was it.  As it turns out, it’s one of those rare movies that starts out as a comedy and turns into a drama part of the way through.  The transition is very gradual, just as the characters in the movie are also gradually changing.  The result is a movie that turned out to have a lot more depth than I expected it to, and I enjoyed that quite a bit.

Movie – Rain Man (1988)

At the time it won the Oscar, Rain Man was the highest grossing Best Picture winner of all time.  (It has since been surpassed by Forrest Gump and, of course, Titanic).  Rain Man actually won four of the five major Oscars – Picture, Director, Actor, and Original Screenplay.  It was nominated for four other Oscars.  It was also the highest grossing movie of 1988.  It’s not often that a film is both popular with movie audiences and critically acclaimed, but Rain Man was.

Movie – A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

The movie A Fish Called Wanda opened in the U.S. to not much fanfare in July of 1988.  By August it was getting such great word of mouth that its box office was increasing each week, not decreasing.  By mid September it actually became the number one movie at the box office.  When Awards season came around it received three Oscar nominations (including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay), and had a win for Kevin Kline as Best Supporting Actor – one of the very few times a comedic performance has won an Oscar.  Over the years this movie has been named one of the top comedies ever made by such entities as the American Film Institute (AFI), Premiere magazine, Bravo, Total Film magazine, and Reader’s Digest.  I consider it one of the funniest films I have ever seen.

Movie – Porky’s (1982)

Porky’s was only the second R rated film I ever saw.  My brothers-in-law took me to see Semi-Tough when I was 13, but it really wasn’t that bad in regards to content.  Porky’s, on the other hand, was raunchy from beginning to end.  I saw it at a drive in and my sister, my female cousin, and I all laughed our asses off.  I’ve seen the film a couple of times since then, when I was more “mature”, and I still found it to be very funny.  When American Pie came out and everyone was talking about the raunchy humor in it, I kept thinking to myself that those people really needed to see Porky’s if they wanted to see what raunchy humor was all about.

Movie – Private Benjamin (1980)

Private Benjamin was the first script ever written specifically for Goldie Hawn and it was also the first film she ever executive produced.  She collaborated with Nancy Meyers (who co-wrote the screenplay) and the results were good.  Not only was this film one of the biggest box office hits of 1980, it also received three Oscar nominations – Goldie Hawn for Best Actress, Eileen Brennan for Best Supporting Actress, and Meyers (and others) for Best Original Screenplay.  In 2000 the American Film Institute (AFI) listed this as one of the 100 best American comedies, and in 2006 Premiere magazine listed it as one if the 50 best comedies of all time.

Movie – When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

The story for When Harry Met Sally had a hodgepodge of sources.  It originally grew out of a disagreement eventual director Rob Reiner and eventual screenwriter Nora Ephron had about whether men and women could be good friends without sex getting in the way.  Many of their points ended up coming out of Harry’s and Sally’s mouths.  This is fitting because those characters were loosely based on the two of them.  No, they didn’t have a romance, but Reiner was dark and depressed sometimes and Ephron was upbeat and very precise when she ordered things.  Reiner, lead actor Billy Crystal (Harry), and lead actress Meg Ryan (Sally) also contributed quite a few ideas that made it on the screen.  The result is one of the very best romantic comedies ever made.

Orgasms Are Funny, Especially in the Movies

“YES!...YES!...YES!...YES!...YES!...YES!...Oh God!...YES!” – Sally Albright, When Harry Met Sally…

Hollywood seems to be kind of uptight about showing an orgasm at the end of a sex scene, but they have no problem throwing in an orgasm if it’s humorous, especially if it’s one where there are witnesses.  The pinnacle of these kinds of scenes is, of course, Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.  When later movies had a funny orgasm gag they were invariably accused of ripping off When Harry Met Sally.  The thing is, it was hardly the first movie to have a scene like that in it.

The oldest movie I can think of is 1973’s Sleeper.  I saw it on broadcast TV way back when I was too young to even understand what those big silver balls that people were rubbing were doing to them.  It was only years later that I remembered that and realized that rubbing them were probably giving them orgasms.  It’s been far too long since I saw that film for me to review it, though, and I could be wrong about whether there was an actual orgasm scene.  Another film that predated When Harry Met Sally that had a scene like this is 1981’s Modern Problems, but it’s not good enough for me to recommend.

I’m going to do something a little different with this category header.  I'm listing all the movies I'm going to review ahead of time.  I am doing this so you can see which movies I thought of.  If you can think of a movie older than 1980’s Private Benjamin, or even other movies with funny orgasm scenes that I may have forgotten, please let me know in the comments.  If I’ve seen the film and like it enough to recommend, I may end up reviewing it.

American Pie and Amelie have been previously posted, but I did not refer to the scenes in my reviews.  In American Pie Tara Reid’s character is receiving pleasure from her boyfriend.  Her parents call her down to dinner, but she doesn’t hear them.  Her father goes up to her room, but just as he is about to open her door and catch her, she yells out, “I’m coming!”, and he figures she means down to dinner so he leaves.  In Amelie the title character imagines how many people are having sex in Paris at that very moment.  This is followed by a very quick montage of a bunch of couples in the throws of orgasm.  It comes back to Amelie, she smiles and then says, “Fifteen”.

As I post the reviews, I will come back and change the movie titles into links to the posts:

Private Benjamin (1980)

Porky's (1982)

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

Rain Man (1988)

When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

Pleasantville (1998)

American Pie (1999) - (posted August 16, 2012)

Amelie (2001) - (posted May 4, 2012)

Bruce Almighty (2003)

Wedding Crashers (2005)

The OH in Ohio (2006)

The Ugly Truth (2009)

Meanwhile, this video is very fitting for the topic of funny orgasms.  I saw it way back before there ever was a Youtube.  I figured it had to be there now, because pretty much every video seems to end up there sooner or later.  I had a hell of a time finding it, though.  I hope you like it.  (Don't worry; there's nothing explicit in it.  Watch it all the way to the end.  There’s a big payoff, so to speak.)

On to the reviews…

Movie – American Pie (1999)

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Movie – Amelie (2001)

I have saved the year ending IMDB Top 250 lists since 1998 (more on that in a week or two).  I have used them over the years to get suggestions on films I might want to see.  Back in 2001 a film named Amelie showed up on the list.  It sounded interesting, so I rented it.  I absolutely loved it.  To this day this film still remains one of the very best finds I have ever had from a list of recommended movies.