Rumor Has It

My wife asked me the other day if I had any New Year's resolutions. There weren't any I could think of until I was laying in bed that night, thinking about my blog and how I could make it better. Then I realized, the only way to make it better would be to have content in it that people could read on a regular basis, which would require me to add content to it on a regular basis. So, I decided that my New Year's resolution should be to write in my blog every day.

That was four days ago. Nothing. What I've been doing is coming down from a hectic holiday season and relishing my reduced role in the consumer industry. In other words, relaxing. But that's enough of that already. I've got big plans in 2007, and I need to get them started now.

For instance, I want to watch more film this year (and more movies ;) ). I just hope that most of them are better than this one. I'll be catching up a lot on DVDs this year, as I don't get out to the cinema as much as I used to. This one was out in the theaters last year, and I thought I might be interested in sharing it with my wife. Apparently not.

Rumor Has It stars Jennifer Aniston as a woman who discovers that she is the progeny of the real people that the book and the film The Graduate was based on. Shirley MacLaine assumes the Anne Bancroft character and Kevin Costner is the Dustin Hoffman character, both 30 years older now. The problem is that Aniston's character, like many 28-year-olds, does not know who she is. This, stated plainly at the beginning of the film, may account for the film's lack of focus. She wanders around looking for something to give her meaning. It's not her fiancee (Mark Ruffalo), and it's not her family. Her grandmother (MacLaine) only confuses things when she blurts the main secret of the film. Aniston then blindly seeks out the Costner character, thinking that he may hold the secret to her meaningfulness.

This aimlessness inspires a distinct lack of structure, and instead of being taken along for the ride, we instead are living Aniston's joyless life along with her, where she puts herself in stupid situations and makes stupid decisions, throwing life's lessons against the wall to see which one might stick and define her. Since it's quite clear she doesn't know what she's looking for, we as an audience don't catch any of the road signs that this narrative is coming to an end, and instead, we just hope that it ends soon.