Previously on TheAngryPen:

09-12-2000 2 Parties

08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance

08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice

08-03-2000 The American Dream

07-20-2000 History and Hollywood

07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule

07-06-2000 The God We Trust

06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault

06-15-2000 Bank Fees

06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements

05-24-2000 Social Security

05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions

05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies

05-03-2000 Low Fidelity

04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters

04-19-2000 Movie Trailers

04-12-2000 All Things Cuban

04-05-2000 Censorship

03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco

03-22-2000 Several Things

03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer

03-08-2000 Mission to Mars

03-08-2000 Super Tuesday

03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer

03-01-2000 Bob Jones

02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition

02-16-2000 Valentine's Day

02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties

02-02-2000 Mosh Pits

01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality

11-17-1999 Playboy

09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal

	TheAngryPen vs. Low Fidelity

The Pen knows a lot about movies. This isn't meant as braggadocio; this is simply a fact. It is his job to know everything there is to know about movies. Who's in them, what they're called, what they're about, and who's making them.

Understanding why, however, is something The Pen does in his spare time.

I see a trend developing, and I don't like it. I am currently tracking at least a dozen romantic comedies whose one-liners read as some variation of the following: On the way to his/her wedding, a guy/girl meets a girl/guy and is immediately thrown into some kind of crazy situation with them. Although they hate each other at first, our hero soon begins to wonder if he/she might be about to marry the wrong woman/man, and that this new girl/guy may be his/her true soul mate. Ultimately, the story comes down to a choice between an exciting new love and settling for what's good, but familiar.

The message? There is such a thing as a perfect relationship. And within this message, "perfect" is defined as always blissful, never difficult, and constantly exciting. Furthermore, if your relationship does not meet these criteria--if you fight, if you are sometimes bored, if every weekend is not spent on the Champs Elysées… if your relationship is not, in short, perfect--well then you must be settling for less than you deserve. And the only solution is to immediately dump your significant other and set off on a Quixotic quest for your true "soul mate."

Well.

One thing is almost universally true about Hollywood and that is, it does not set the curve, it follows it. So, is Hollywood simply reacting to the fact that one in three American marriages ends in divorce… the good ole' "we're only giving audiences what they want" argument? Or are they actively exploiting an American weakness for romantic self-flagellation in pursuit of a buck?

I don't know… but either way, they're serving us up a gigantic dish of half-truth.

The whole truth is that every new love is exciting and fresh… it's what happens once that initial euphoric hit wears off that matters. Listen to The Pen people, no matter how far you go, no matter how long you search, you will never find a woman who wears a thong 24-7. You will never find a man who puts the seat down every single time. And you will always disagree with your significant other over what to watch on that Thursday night at home. Always.

To believe otherwise is… I don't know, laziness, anger, fear of commitment… it's a different answer for everyone, but it amounts to an epidemic in this country, and it's causing a lot of pain out there.

High Fidelity, on the other hand, gets it right. HF is the story of a direction-less record store owner who surveys the sordid history of his past loves in an effort to discover what he's been doing wrong in his current relationship. John Cusack plays the schmo in question, a character who spends the full two hours asking himself over and over, how do I know this woman is the one for me? How do I know I can't do better? Is being in love with her really enough? Before finally realizing that, if you've been with someone for a long time and can still honestly say to yourself that you love them, well then there is a special kind of victory in that, and a certain power that no endless series of exciting new flings could ever match.

"You can't always get what you want… but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you'll get what you need." The Pen could sit here staring at this computer screen for one thousand years and never find a better way to say it than that.