Last night I watched 28 days, where Sandra Bullock plays a women who goes to a rehab clinic for, suprisingly, 28 days. I'd seen the movie before, and I was again annoyed by the scene where her character, Gwen, decides to do something special for Andrea before she leaves rehab. She puts on an incredibly lame parody (or perhaps that's not the correct word, since they essentially just act out some moments from the show, rather than changing things and making a funny derivative work) of Andrea's favorite soap opera, which they end by having characters put signs containing "meaningful" messages around Andrea's neck.
Since the soap opera seems to be about the only thing in life that makes Andrea happy, I don't understand how putting on a skit that makes fun of the show is going to make Andrea feel better. Sometimes, people actually feel worse when you trivialize something that means a lot to them. I'm not saying that Andrea should be obsessed by a soap opera; I'm just saying that, as she is, making fun of it doesn't seem like the best way to make her feel like life is worth living.
Also, I was irritated by the pseudo-profound sayings the people gave to Andrea at the end of the skit. "Make love, not war." "Don't ever be someone's slogan, because you are poetry." What the heck? I mean, sure, it sounds nice, but what's the point? How would Andrea be in danger of becoming someone's slogan? How will this advice help her cope with life? Once again, how is this going to make her feel better? Sure, it does show that they thought of her enough to perform an embarrassing skit, but there doesn't seem to be anything substantive about the whole shebang that would actually make someone in her position feel better. And Gwen had to stay up all night working on this! It was about 2 minutes long, and any intelligent person who'd ever seen Santa Cruz could have come up with just as funny of a parody in about 5 minutes. Apparently Gwen killed a lot of brain cells with all that partying, since her ideas aren't all that bright.
Yeah, I was really irritated by that scene. It could have been something sweet and meaningful, but it ended up just being lame. Lameness annoys me.
