Layman movie review BONANZA: Shopgirl

So, if there is one thing I've learned about parenthood (other than it sucks), it's that you watch a lot of TV. You can't really read when you are holding a squirming, squealing baby, or play video games, or write --but you can sure as hell watch TV, and so we've been giving the old Netflix service a hearty workout. Not only that, me and the babymama splurged and bought ourselves a 32 inch flat HDTV, to enhance the kick-assedness of our newly embraced life of couch-potato-ousity. Anyway, as a public service to you, I thought I'd offer my opinion on some of the movies I've either enjoyed or suffered through.

First up, the absolute antithesis of couch-potato-ousity kick-assedness: SHOPGIRL



This is the short of shit that happens when I am not vigilant about maintaining the Netflix que. Somebody comes in and orders very lame movies that am tortured by, and most of the time they sit for several weeks before we work up the courage to watch them.

It's yet another LA-Centric Steve Martin movie, about a nice girl from Vermont who sorted has to choose between a rich old fucker and a young uber-eccentric weirdo. It drags in places, but that's what captions and the double-speed button are for, so it went at a breezy pace for Ol' Layman. And by-in-large the entire movie just seems like creepy old man wish fulfillment on behalf of Steve Martin, who wrote himself as a completely bland insanely rich dude who has enough money to get any young hottie he wants --assuming Claire Danes is your definition of a "hottie."

Remember when Steve Martin was actually funny? Man, that was a long damn time ago.

Anyway, the strangest part of this movie was Martin's nose, which I could have sworn has some sort of Roxanne-style phoney prostesis attached to it. The whole time I was watching the movie, and, since it was set in LA, I was waiting for some subplot where Martin went in for plastic surgery and got a new nose. But that never happened. So, mostly, I walked away from the movie wondering why the hell Steve Martin was wearing that fake nose-- or if the resolution on my new TV was so good I never noticed how weird and screwed up Steve Martin's nose actually is.


So, yeah, it was watched pretty consistently on double speed. Quadruple speed when gross-ass old-fart Steve Martin got kissy-face with Claire Daines. Nonetheless, it was reasonably watchable. I'll give it two and a half Jennies.