Specifications
This movie was released in 1999. It stars Julia Roberts and
Richard Gere, and was directed by Garry Marshal.
Status
I first saw this movie on TV well after it came out. Since then,
I have purchased a DVD copy.
Significance
This movie is significant in that it depicts a woman with a
particular psychological problem. That is, she simply becomes
whoever she needs to be to be liked. The result is even she has lost
track of who she is.
Although the movie is a comedy, it treats this problem seriously,
showing that, at some point, she can find happiness, and the
acceptance she craves. Therefore, this movie is significant in that
someone can learn about human behavior if they want to.
I can relate to this somewhat in that I have a tendency to do the
same thing. That is, I will alter myself to fit what other people
want to see to the point where I have at time lost track of who I
really am.
I will point out that this movie also depicts a man who has
trouble relating to women. He goes through a growing process as
well, and discovers some of his own failings.
Review
This movie starts with Ike Graham
(Richard Gere) trying to write his column for a newspaper. An hour
before deadline he gets the lead on a woman in "Hale, Maryland"
who always runs from her weddings, so he writes it up in his column,
naming names, etc. The woman is Maggie Carpenter, who is offended,
and writes a letter of complaint to the newspaper, which results in
Ike getting fired. His former wife's (who happens to be his editor)
current husband suggests he write a more detailed story to vindicate
himself. That is, while his story had some factual errors, the
conclusions he drew were correct.
Therefore, Ike goes to Hale,
Maryland, where he meets Maggie. They start out as adversaries, with
Ike confidently saying Maggie will run from her upcoming wedding.
Maggie says she won't. Ike interviews Maggie's family, her former
partners (one of whom turns out to be the guy that started Ike in
this line to begin with), and members of the community. What he
finds is that Maggie has problems. Her father is an alcoholic, and
has been since her mother died. Maggie flirts with all the guys,
even the husbands of her "friends," even as she is engaged to get
married.
One question he asks all her
former partners is "What type of eggs does she like?" The
answer, in every case, is that she likes whatever type the man likes,
even though there is no relationship between them. She says she has
the right to change her mind, Ike says it means she has no mind to
change.
In the course of Ike's
interviews, Maggie talks the desk clerk into allowing her into Ike's
room, where she looks through his notes. Since, as she says, he's
getting it all wrong, she decides to allow Ike to follow her around,
and interview her. Then the breadth of her problems becomes more
clear. The person selling the wedding dresses refuses to let her
have the dress she wants because it too expensive, and she'll only
run anyway. He father jokes about her running, which is really
humiliating, but she hasn't had enough of a sense of self to realize
it. There is a community dinner, where the people of the community
just start making fun of her. Ike is there, of course, and, seeing
this, expresses some real concern for her. While the community is
just teasing Maggie, Ike offers a toast, addressed to her friends and
family, "My your faces be rubbed in all of your bad choices," is
the gist of the toast.
Maggie is upset because she
didn't have enough of a sense of self to realize they were making fun
of her, so she is upset with Ike, who pointed out the truth to her.
Finally, Ike has been around
Maggie so much that he is used in the wedding rehearsal. First, he
stands in for the minister, but later the groom decides to walk with
Maggie, so he stands in for the groom "so she'll know how far to
go." At the end of the rehearsal, Maggie and Ike kiss, and it
becomes obvious that the groom is now the odd man out. At Ike and
Maggie's suggestion, he bows out, but not before slugging Ike. They
decide to go through with the wedding, except Ike will now be the
groom.
The wedding goes fine until
someone snaps a picture, and Maggie runs away again. (Her former
groom finds someone else from the women who sit on the friend of the
groom side. She may have been a news person, as the wedding was a
media event.)
The movie continues. Maggie
starts selling her wares in New York, as Ike suggested. In reality,
Maggie needed some more time so that she could actually get to know
who she is. She experiments with different types of eggs, for
example, to determine what type she really likes, so she can say what
she likes independent of who she is going with. (The eggs is, in
reality, a metaphor for Maggie's problem - she doesn't know what
type of eggs she really likes just as she really doesn't know who she
is. Therefore, the eggs at the end illustrate that she is
experimenting, finding out who she really is, independent of anyone
else.)
In the end, Maggie and Ike get
married, but Maggie is able to say that part of the problem is that
she wanted a small wedding, with just a couple of friends. So they
are married in a wedding in the middle of a weekday, and other people
find out about it after the fact.
This movie is a very good movie,
and I would recommend it to anyone.
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