Just Friends

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I hate anything that could remotely be construed as a date movie. If you look at the movies that I’m prone to reviewing, you won’t see many there because it takes some sort of extra-ordinary act (read: free tickets) to get me to see one. In fact, I only went to see this movie because I thought my wife might enjoy it (read: I owed her a date movie). So naturally I expected—no, wanted—to hate this movie. But I found that I simply couldn’t. Examining the power/trap of men and women being friends, I found that Just Friends wants to be this year’s When Harry Met Sally.

Just Friends starts off seeming like the fantasy movie that too many of us can relate to and would like to make. Chris Brander (Ryan Reynolds) is trapped in the most painful of adolescent traps: high school best friends with the love of his life, Jamie (Amy Smart). Sadly for Chris, he’s overweight, socially awkward, and terribly unsure of himself. After a series of unfortunate incidents, he vows to get even with everyone by leaving his loser image behind. (By the way, did I miss the memo stating that we are already nostalgic for the '90s?)

Anyway, fast forward to Chris, the man, suddenly living the life that he always wanted. As a record label player, he now has the looks, money, women, glamour, yet still can’t find himself in a relationship worth staying in. Probably because, having learned his lesson with Jamie, he now operates under the theory that friendship precludes a dating relationship. He will not be trapped in the friend zone again.

Through circumstances beyond his control, Chris—now saddled with bubblegum pop icon Samantha James (Anna Faris)—has to revisit his hometown. The time has arrived to show off the man he has become and have a second shot at the woman who was his true love. His competition is another guy doing a lot of pretending—Dusty (Chris Klein), once another acne-scarred nerd—to be the nicest guy imaginable. And the hijinks ensue (what kind of romantic comedy would this be if no hijinks were to be found?).

“Is your life everything you’d thought it’s be.� —Jamie

What is it about high school that makes us fall back into the roles we had when we were there? The secret dread of high school reunions is that either you hope to get “revenge� on those who tormented you during that time by you being a success and them an utter failure or that you are forever trapped with the persona you had then. Nerds and outcasts will always be nerds and outcasts. Jocks and cheerleaders will always be vacuous (um, no bitterness here, move along). Or family, for that matter? Big brothers will always be big brothers. Sons will always be their mother’s little boy.

Immediately upon his return, Chris finds himself reverting back to the teen he was in high school: unable to do anything right, smothered by his mother, and fighting with his younger brother, played by Chris Marquette (Joan of Arcadia). It’s as if, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t escape who he really is. So the question becomes, “who are you?�

“I don’t want to be myself.� —Chris

Chris wants to show off the man he has become, only ending up putting on a show of the man he thinks Jamie wants. In the process, he becomes every bit the jerk he despised in high school. At the heart of the movie is a battle between what could be described as Chris’ “true� self and his “false� self.

M. Basil Pennington, the Trappist monk at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, defines the false self as "made up of what I have, what I do, what people think of me." Thomas Merton, another Trappist monk, often wrote often about the battle between the "false self" (the one we so often hide behind in order to shield ourselves from pain and painful truths) and the "true self" (the self God created for union with himself).

A lot of the humor of the movie stems from the fact that despite his efforts to show off the new cool him, Chris keeps reverting back to the dork he used to be. Jamie, however, wants the guy she knew. The real him. The dork. His inner dork.

“Are you in love with anyone besides yourself?� —Jamie

You see, Chris struggles with a self-centeredness, a preoccupation with himself that clouds every other aspect of his being. As Merton puts it: "All sin starts with the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered" (New Seeds in Contemplation). This self-centeredness needs to be countered. This starts with reassessing what is at the heart of our identity. "The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God ... If I find him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find him ... The only one who can teach me to find God is God himself, alone." We must take seriously the need for transformation within us.

I don’t know if you people feel me: I really didn’t want to like this movie. It’s not a movie concerned with character development or even a well-told story. However, how can you hate a movie that’s a cross between The Wedding Singer and Say Anything? Just Friends is breezy entertainment, funny, with a crass streak through it—a laugh-at-any-expense mentality—to keep guys entertained. Aimed at an undemanding audience, the movie is every bit the pop confection that Samantha James personifies and will probably prove as popular.

—Overview

Get Rich or Die Tryin'

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“You can pray for a miracle and God may be hearing you.�
—from “I’ll Whip Ya Head Boy,� 50 Cent

One of the most over-used lines about hip-hop came from the lips of Public Enemy’s frontman, Chuck D, when he described rap music as the CNN of the streets. The thrust of his point was that if one truly wanted to know what was going on in the hearts of the inner city, all one had to do was listen to the music the inner city produced. Unfortunately, there was profit to be made in what would become known as “gangsta rap,� and soon the music spawned endless imitators, many of questionable talent, bordering on becoming a caricature of itself.

Enter 50 Cent.

Directed by Jim Sheridan (In the Name of the Father, My Left Foot), Get Rich or Die Tryin’ is about coming to a crossroads, seeing two divergent paths in front of you, and choosing the best path for your life. The movie can’t escape the inevitable comparison to Hustle & Flow; too bad for Get Rich or Die Tryin’ that it isn’t as well done. The still-compelling story details the less-than-secret origin of 50 Cent (Curtis “50 Cent� Jackson), portraying Marcus aka “Young Caesar�: a young man with a drug-dealing mother, who never knew his father, who chooses to sell drugs on the streets, then survives a nine-gunshot-wound attempt on his life to become a multi-million album-selling rap artist. One of the problems with this movie is its own identity crisis, as it couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to be Scarface/King of New York or 8 Mile.

The heart of the story revolves around Marcus trying to figure out how to be a man without a role model. He grew up without a father figure though he couldn’t escape his need for one; growing up as his girlfriend Charlene (Joy Bryant) fears for their child as “another little black boy with nobody to look up to.� Pretty much de rigeur for a world where the revered options of how to make it seem to be reduced to being a rapper, an athlete, or a drug dealer. Marcus can’t escape the lure of the streets, despite the love of family (from the grandparents who had taken him in). The questionable-at-best message at the heart of the movie depends on how you feel about the glorification of the rules of the street, especially done in so lackluster a fashion.

“Respect is the most important thing in life.� —Majestic (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje)

Besides the quest for a father, the other major theme within the movie is the endless search for respect. “You don’t need family. All you need is respect,� Majestic preaches, because when all you have is your name and your rep, your pride becomes of critical (if not overwhelming) importance. Following in the footsteps of his mother, Marcus chooses to enter the family business, surrounding himself with a crew dedicated to “getting paid and getting laid.� The street hustle—the rules of the game having changed with the influx of crack and real money—into the community provides whatever tenuous bonds of family he feels to offset the rage of the streets. So when his Grandpa (Sullivan Walker) asks “Who are you?�, the answer Marcus proudly proclaims is a “gangsta,� the ideal/hero of the streets. Or, to quote Bill Duke’s Levar, “God, Buddha, Allah all rolled up into one big nigga.� The gangsta has become the main image and role model that children know.

“Rule number five: Don’t show no love. Love will get you killed.� —Majestic

There are rules to the game, the street hustle, rules reflecting the self-hatred that comes from living a nihilistic existence. Ghetto life is a reality, a cauldron of pain, anger, poverty, and injustice, where people live in conditions with limited opportunity, limited education and extreme poverty. And too often, a survival by any means necessary (take what you want, prey on whoever you need as long as you get yours) mentality pervades. There is a wholesale buy-in to a different set of modern, American values. Individualism, this “me first� narcissism which fragments community, is only one such value. “You a man, you don’t need nothing to see you through,� Majestic advises. Rampant materialism that shrivels peoples souls and empties their lives. Wanting the cars, the house, the clothes, the jewels, the gear, people have bought into a life not realizing that they chase illusion.

All the while forgetting that gold chains are still chains.

I’m reminded of this quote from C.S. Lewis (from Weight of Glory): Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

“You saved my life. Why?� (Marcus)
“I don’t know. It looked like it needed saving.� (Bama, Terrence Howard)

Marcus had it all, by street measurements, but he recognized that there was still something missing. Sadly, his epiphany arrived as he faced the moment of his death. When he knew he was about to die, he realized that he still expected his father to save him. The problem was that he was looking for the wrong father. The conclusion he comes to was that his life was every bit the tomb—much like the one his mother had created for herself—and he had to find his way out. His escape came in his ability to express himself, to make his mark: a kind of salvation through music. His “I'd rather die like a man than live like a coward� ethos aside, Marcus best summed that self-salvation scheme this way: “I’ve been looking for my father my whole life. And I realized that I was looking for me.�

The rules governing the streets makes sense if you don’t have God, the Father. Qoholet, the Teacher (the author of the book of Ecclesiastes, not to be confused with KRS-ONE) would call this lifestyle “vanity of vanities.� Put another way, if we pursue the things in this life "for merely human reasons, what have [we] gained? If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’� (I Corinthians 15:32) We all need to see the need to walk away from our old lives and embrace a new one. We have to opt out of a worldview of selfishness, one that promotes the death cycle. We esteem prison life and values. We devalue women, sex, and relationships with hip hop values marketed as videos. A fascination with a death culture where one can sell poison, settle disputes with gunfire, in order to subsidize empty life on the way to an inevitably bloody demise. Instead, we ought to buy into a worldview that promotes dignity, work, marriage, family, and healthy community.

50 Cent is not an actor, but he is a charismatic figure. Get Rich or Die Tryin' is too long, with an often meandering script showing surprisingly little heart, as if it can’t quite reach its emotional core. Too often the movie felt like it was going through the cinematic motions (I won’t even comment on the ridiculous Rocky-like montage). However, there’s a good story somewhere in this mess of a film and themes very much worth wrestling with.

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