Sickbed Movies II

When it comes to sharing germs, my kids are very generous. This past week it was the sniffly-stuffy- running-nose germ and the dry-bark-sandpaper-throat bugs. I decided this was the perfect combination for a run to the video counter at Albertson's in the vain hope of finding something I've not seen that is worth seeing.

Needless to say, I failed miserably, and believe it or not, The Prince and Me II wasn't the worst of the rentals. The worst was a new release with big Hollywood box office names (Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn). It was filed under "comedy" and I was hoping for a romatic Phoenix-from-the- relationship-ashes story. It isn't.

In fact, I'd like to ruin the movie for you specifically so you don't rent it yourself. Vince and Jenny start out happy, but things get worse and worse and worse and worse.

The title isn't lying. They break up. They don't get back together. I spent last night mentally trying to rewrite the ending so I could go to sleep. I would have pulled the plug halfway through, but for the erroneous belief on my part that you can't label a film a 'comedy' without a reasonably perky ending. I was wrong. They did it.

Don't rent it.

I will share the only redemptive moment in the film right here, and you can spend two hours investing in a relationship you care about rather than watching the wheels come off one you don't. Near the end, the narcissistic and self-absorbed character played by Vaughn does come to his senses and realize that he loves his now ex-girlfriend. And he tells her this only to have her inform him she no longer feels the same way. He asks for the chance to change, to be less selfish, but she never gives it to him.

Yet rather than get angry and retreat into justification and recrimination, he tells a friend he would say the same thing again because it was true and it was the right thing to say it. That I liked... a man risking his ego and image for a relationship on the rocks.

I don't particularly like Vince Vaughn, and I despised the movie, except for the change he undergoes at the end. That seems credible because it touches on a deep truth.

50/50 relationships fail spectacularly. "Those who seek to save their lives will lose them," Jesus once said. He wasn't speaking about marriages or relationships headed that way, but what he says about scarifice applies quite well. Unless I'm gravely mistaken, the sweet spot for relationships is someplace between 100/100 or 110/110.