• The Heartbreak Kid

  Posted Tuesday, March 03, 2009 5:08 PM | By Hanna Rosin
  
  
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  Meghan, I just watched the THe Heartbreak Kid, a terrible Ben Stiller movie that came out last year. Stiller plays a 40-year-old who finally meets the woman of his dreams, but then she turns out to be a nightmare. The movie is unbearable because the dream girl's antics are so over the top. It's like There's Something About Mary filtered through a sick, twisted mind. She turns out to be not just a flake, or annoying, but an ex-addict in debt who likes to be smacked in bed. Here, we are way outside the boundaries of your average rom-com, and because I wasn't expecting that, I found it difficult to watch. But it's taken me days to realize how subversive it is. The movie is a cynical commentary on exactly the type of rom-com structure you so aptly describe. It flirts with the possibility of blissed-out love once, then twice, then a third time, and instead of a happy ending, it opts for the darkest final twist possible. I can't say I recommend it, but it does effectively rip through the genre.
  Filed under: rom coms, heartbreak kid, ben stiller
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