#single all the way jennifer coolidge

[ryanwithanr]

These two lines will live rent free in my head for the rest of my life.

[suimovies]

“Single all the Way”

directed by Michael Mayer

[mikereads]

“Yeah, the gays, they’re real mad at you.”/“These gays, they’re trying to murder me.”/“The gays just know how to do stuff. For some reason, they’re always obsessed with me.”

[bodyhate]

I just realized that the title to 2021's romantic Christmas gay comedy 'Single all the way', is a play on words to Jingle Bells

Sometimes I'm very slow

[byneddiedingo]

Single All the Way (Michael Mayer, 2021)

Cast: Michael Urie, Philemon Chambers, Luke Macfarlane, Kathy Najimy, Jennifer Coolidge, Barry Bostwick, Jennifer Robertson, Madison Brydges, Alexandra Beaton, Dan Finnerty. Screenplay: Chad Hodge. Cinematography: Eric Cayla. Production design: Guy Lalande. Film editing: Adriaan van Zyl. Music: Anton Sanko. 

It's hard to know who the sexless gay romantic comedy Single All the Way was made for: people who think Will and Grace is too raunchy? It certainly wasn't made for a gay audience. It even seems to have inspired a backlash with such gay romcoms as Fire Island (Andrew Ahn, 2022) and Bros (Nicholas Stoller, 2022), in which gay men are having sex with one another and enjoying it. Single All the Way is mostly set in an idyllic New Hampshire town, to which Peter (Michael Urie) returns for Christmas accompanied by his roommate, Nick (Philemon Chambers), with whom he is not having sex. They are greeted by his large, boisterous family who seem to want Peter to have sex, especially with Nick. Except, that is, Peter's mother (Kathy Najimy), who wants him to have sex with the only gay man in town, her hunky spinning instructor, James (Luke Macfarlane). At this point, you're probably asking yourself what gay man wouldn't want to have sex with Luke Macfarlane, but Peter is reluctant to be pushed into any such thing. Of course, the word “sex” is never mentioned. The idea is for Peter to find himself in what these straight people consider ideal: what they would call a “committed relationship.” Chad Hodge's screenplay leaves no romcom cliché unused as the movie proceeds toward its obvious conclusion: Peter and Nick declaring their love for each other. (Maybe they even have sex, but the film is too squeamish to suggest that.) Gay icon Jennifer Coolidge is there for what fun the movie provides, as Peter's addle-brained aunt who is directing the town's Christmas pageant. The absence of chemistry between Urie and Chambers is only one of the film's problems, and given the apparent squeamishness about gay sex, perhaps its least. 

[rationalisms]

You mentioned that you don't think legally blonde is progressive and I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on that if you don't mind.

i mean, in the first place (and i promise i'm not trying to sound condescending i just genuinely don't know how else to say this) i think it's important to like... let go of the binary "progressive/oppressive" model of thinking about media, and instead pivot to talking about analysing e.g. films through different theoretical lenses instead.

so instead of trying to make a definitive declarative statement on whether xyz mainstream hollywood romcom IS or ISN'T feminist, fullstop, it's much more useful and conductive to actual productive discussion to analyse it from a feminist perspective instead.

because when you're no longer limited to ones and zeroes, that'll allow you to, say, in the case of legally blonde, both talk about the way that it takes some steps forward in terms of e.g. letting its protagonist succeed at things that are traditionally seen as male, such as academic success (aside: extra ironic bc in most countries women are better students than men but when has propaganda every cared about that), or choose academic success and her career over her erstwhile romantic partner, but also many steps backward.

like the fact that marketing that brand of hyperfemininity/beauty rituals/etc to women as So Empowering Akshually is part and parcel of misogynistic industries owned by men that prey on women's self-image, time, and money to sell them products that they at best don't need and that at worst are actively bad for them. like, they have caught on by now that shaming women for failing to uphold standards of femininity doesn't work nearly as well as selling them as part of a Feminist Identity in which your 50 step skincare routine that you spend 2 hours a day on so as not to show a single sign of aging is actually just Getting In Touch With Your Body and Expressing Your Womanhood. i honestly do not have the time to get into it right now but i recommend reading "femininity and domination: studies in the phenomenology of oppression" by sandra lee bartky, "beauty work: individual and institutional rewards, the reproduction of gender, and questions of agency" by samantha kwan and mary nell trautner, and/or "choosing to conform: the discursive complexities of choice in relation to feminine beauty practices" by avelie stuart and ngaire donaghue.

and so like, the fact that her Grand Crowning Moments in this film (like her win in court or helping jennifer coolidge's character) actually almost all revolve around those beauty practices and how well she manages to uphold them and not, say, the knowledge she's gaining in the incredibly difficult university course she's taking.

OR such as the fact that there's a whole character who's just there to be the frumpy, masculine, feminist lesbian who's suuuuch a killjoy and combative to our poor protagonist for seemingly no reason and just Hates Feminine Women sooo much, and who we are meant to jeer and laugh at when the Right Kind of Woman (read: feminine and heterosexual) wins against her. or how the protagonist's happy ending still has to include a man anyway. or how you can count the people of colour that even just appear in this film on one hand.

this is at this point definitely already long enough lol but i hope you get what i mean? anyway. there's absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying this film obviously but it's good to be critical of the way these narratives are presented to us, as always.

[franklymyqueeridontgiveadamn]

Queer Christmas movie recs

Breakfast with Scot (2007) An absolutely delightful feel-good movie about a retired NHL player and his partner reluctantly taking in an effeminate boy they are extremely not equipped to handle, and eventually becoming a family. One of my favorite movies of all time. Content notes: homophobia, sexism, mild violence, bullying, brief vomit, shitty parenting but I promise they learn their lesson.

The Christmas Setup (2020) The first gay Lifetime Christmas movie, and it's exactly what you'd expect based on that. Big-city attorney visits his hometown for Christmas, falls for his high school crush, saves the beloved local train station from demolition. There's a really sweet element of queer history involved, and Fran Drescher is great as the nosy matchmaking mom. Content notes: dead dad backstory, hilariously inaccurate depiction of computer algorithms.

Single All The Way (2021) Another home-for-the-holidays romcom with a nosy matchmaking family, this one with a fake-dating premise and a Black love interest. Jennifer Coolidge makes a good kooky aunt, and the main character's love of plants is very true to the queer experience. Content notes: infidelity (not committed by the main characters), looks like I didn't take notes on this one while I was watching so there might be more I'm not remembering but nothing too major.

Carol (2015) Oscarbait '50s period drama with Rooney Mara as a young saleswoman and Cate Blanchett as an older divorcee. I actually didn't love this one the first time I saw it, but last year I got an urge to watch it again and if you're in the mood for cinematic eyefucking it will come through for you on that front. It's a little bit of a downer, lots of homophobia and societal obstacles and ennui, but it's a very pretty film with a... maybe not happy, but at least cautiously optimistic ending. Content notes: homophobia, custody conflict, blackmail, mentions of infidelity.

Happiest Season (2020) I do recommend this movie BUT you gotta go into it with the right expectations. It was billed as a feel-good Christmas romance and it is not that! It's the coming-out story of a closeted lesbian (Mackenzie Davis) who treats her wonderful girlfriend (Kristen Stewart) like crap instead of telling her family they're dating, and you will come out of it screaming about how the wonderful girlfriend should have ended up with Aubrey Plaza's character (which, by the way, Aubrey Plaza wholeheartedly agrees with at 3:36 of this video). But it's well-made, it's really funny, there are a lot of good characters and good moments—it's worth watching as long as you know what you're getting into. Content notes: homophobia, bullying of an autistic-coded character, and honestly I think a lot of the shit Mackenzie Davis's character pulls counts as emotional abuse.

Tangerine (2015) A low-budget movie filmed entirely on iPhones, set in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, centering around a day in the life of two trans sex workers of color. Rough and gritty, hysterically funny, a little dark at times but not tragic. Content notes: transphobia, lots of infidelity, racism/slurs, mild violence, drugs, one very brief scene involving the death of a pet (not shown).

[trungles]

esteemed trungles, i come with an important question. What is the best romcom to watch in winter?

ESTEEMED omg incredible. I don't think I've ever been esteemed before, so I'll do my best to live up to it.

SO I'm a little late on this question for Holiday rom-coms, but it's still winter here right now, and I love rom-coms. In no particular order:

The Holiday (2006) - Kate Winslet! Jack Black! Cameron Diaz! Jude Law! John Krasinski for some reason (he shows up for like three minutes)! Kathryn Hahn (also in the same scene as John Krasinski)! Also there's a little, itty-bitty A Knight's Tale reunion because Rufus Sewell shows up and so does Shannyn Sossamon, which I find to be very sweet. Jack Black is cute as Christmas and hot as breakfast in this movie, and he somehow did this straightforwardly sweet rom-com AND Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny in the same year. The man has RANGE. You get two romances in this movie, and I think the Kate Winslet one is much more of a high-budget Silver Screen romance while the Cameron Diaz one is much more a Hallmark Channel romance, which I think is great because I love both kinds of romances.

When Harry Met Sally (1989) - This movie is iconic, and I love it to bits. I always have it saved to my phone so I can watch it on literally every plane ride just in case I get stressed out. Meg Ryan is incredible in it as a neurotic and incredibly self-assured woman who develops a friendship with Billy Crystal's character over the course of about a dozen years. Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher play some hilarious supporting characters. This movie is also lovely in that the most dramatic character arc belongs to the male love interest. Like, yes, Meg Ryan's character also grows, but there's no change to her world view or her wants and desires because she's not hurting anyone with the way she navigates those things, and Billy Crystal's character grows into someone you could imagine having lunch with, a far cry from when we first meet him. It's also very well-written. I downloaded the script just so I could pick it apart and learn from it.

Single All the Way (2021) - KATHY NAJIMY AND JENNIFER COOLIDGE ARE BOTH IN THIS MOVIE. I don't know what I was expecting, but this holiday rom-com charmed the thermal socks off me. Michael Urie and Philemon Chambers play best friends who fake a relationship so Michael's family will stop badgering him about there being no romance in his life. It's a fake dating movie, and it is also a delightful subversion of the Hallmark romance. Michael Urie escapes his big city life back to his small hometown where he meets an extremely hunky local spinning instructor (lol) played by Luke McFarlane, who is a literal mainstay of many actual, literal Hallmark romance movies. It's great. I enjoyed it immensely.

Moonstruck (1987) - Cher and Nicolas Cage star in this movie, and it's sort of difficult to describe. It's very funny, and it's heightened by how every single actor plays their character with the seriousness of a prestige drama. Olympia Dukakis and John Mahoney are also in this, and they're both delightful. I still occasionally yell, "I lost my hand! I lost my bride!!!" out loud at random intervals in the year. Keeps my loved ones on their toes.

While You Were Sleeping (1995) - This movie is a charmer and a half! Sandra Bullock stars as a lonely woman who works at the L in Chicago who falls in love with one of the passengers. One day, he falls victim to an attempted mugging and falls onto the tracks. Our heroine saves his life, but he winds up in a coma. A series of misunderstandings leads his entire family to believe that she's his fiancée, and polite shenanigans ensue (except in the case of one testicle-inspection, which might be regarded as pretty impolite, but it's very sweet in context). I also find Bill Pullman extremely blandsome and regular-looking to the point of being sincerely erotic. I don't know how this happened.

And I think that covers my wintry rom-coms! I watch all of them year-round, but these ones all vaguely take place in the winter-time and sometimes have a little bit to do with the holidays season.

[not100bees]

like single all the way like. you've got to have more than jennifer coolidge. i was also going to say shirtless luke mcfarlane but he's only in it for like five minutes. how do you make michael urie unfunny?

[adamwatchesmovies]

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003)

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde is the Anti-Matter Universe version of Legally Blonde. The story follows the same broad strokes with the same characters - it's practically the same movie, down to that one bad cringey comedic scene in the middle - except this time, none of it works. At all.

Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) is now engaged to Emmett (Luke Wilson). To have the perfect wedding, she wants her chihuahua’s mother to attend. Unfortunately, the dog’s mother is owned by a cosmetic company that uses her to test products. Having found a new calling, Elle leaves Boston and goes to Washington, D.C. to work on a bill that will outlaw animal testing in the United States.

Two things made Legally Blonde an unexpected treat: Reese Witherspoon’s portrayal of Elle and the way the character was written. As before, Witherspoon is terrific in the role. She fully commits and is so bubbly you instantly fall for her. You side with Elle right away, even if the incident that’s prompting her crusade for animal rights is pretty stupid. Witherspoon's charms count for a lot but not enough, not when the screenplay by Kate Kondell is this awful.

Now that Elle Woods has graduated college and moved onto the big leagues, her brain has shriveled. It’s that scene where she walks into class with nothing but a pink, heart-shaped notebook and a fuzzy pen all over again. You’d think the years of studying and school would’ve trained her for the real world, but no. Over and over, she proves herself who everyone thinks she is: clueless, totally out of place and unfit to perform the task at hand. I feel so sorry for any young girls (or boys, I suppose) who saw "Legally Blonde", admired Elle's ability to be both a capable lawyer and a woman who dressed fashionably, became inspired and then went to see this follow-up. Why such a drastic change? Because of Amanda Brown, or rather, the lack of. The first movie was based on her experience studying at Arizona State University. It was both funny and although exaggerated, had just enough basis in truth to be relatable. Red, White & Blonde is science fiction.

Even if you’ve never been interested in politics, you can tell all of this is plastic. The Congressmen who pose an obstacle to “Bruiser’s Bill” are just a single conversation from doing a complete personality 180. The villains are either never adequately addressed or taken down with such ease you’ll roll your eyes.

Another layer of artificiality hangs over the entire movie: the plot itself. Not the wedding; Elle’s quest to abolish animal testing. In the real world, that stuff still happens so what does it matter if she succeeds on the screen? It’s a pointless victory. Even if you ignore the dated and embarrassing gay stereotypes (let’s be fair to the movie, as it was released 12 years before same-sex marriages were allowed in the U.S.), you won’t be able to dismiss a cheerleading scene so misguided it makes you want to die or the fact that the stakes are just too high for Elle to lose. I mean, is anyone wondering whether the film will end with Bruiser's mother still getting cruelly used in a lab with all the pink and the gags surrounding that colour?

Though Luke Wilson only makes a brief appearance, most of the other characters you liked before (such as Jennifer Coolidge’s Paulette) return. Notably absent is Selma Blair’s Vivian, who has been rebooted as Grace (Regina King). More attention is given to the legal case and less to the romance, which makes it a poor man’s version of the original movie or a gender-swapped even poorer version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Legally Blonde 2 is a profoundly disappointing follow-up. We're talking Bridget Jones' Diary 2 kind of letdown. The conclusion hints at a sequel which you’re unlikely to have any kind of appetite for but I’m sure if it ever happens it’ll be better than the next actual chapter in the series, Legally Blondes. (June 26, 2020)

[pwuh]

mahonia, chia, sage, chamomile, aloe vera :] ik it's a lot, but i'm interested!

mahonia ⇢ what place, thing, activity inspires you most and how do you express yourself when it does?

hmm libraries and bookstores and museums never fail to inspire me. for thing, i think books, so reading would also fit as an activity. expressing myself usually means i find myself creating something or researching more on what i find that interests me. i hunger to learn.

chia ⇢ what’s an inside joke you have with someone else?

ahh!! "staaaaare." "arrrgh [jennifer coolidge voice]" "fart fart fart...you hate me you hate me!" "me in fortnite me in overwatch" "boogerjoe" "fish and pea pods" "hard working mama spider and her thankful wife" and so so so many others. i love my friends so much.

sage ⇢ what ‘medium’ of art (poetry, music, fiction, paintings, statues etc.) is the most touching to you? why do you think that is?

oh...this is a tough tie between music, fiction in all its forms ie films television literature etc, and paintings. music specifically is a full body experience. i adore sad songs with all my heart but i also enjoy belting out to a musical number or a pop song and both end with me putting on a performance. i also love dancing [i did ballet when i was younger] so perhaps that is why music is a very profound and moving experience to me. fiction allows me to connect with my emotions in a way that i am usually unable to do in my day to day life, and for once i am actually able to express and let out what i am feeling. paintings carry a piece of the artist in them and tell a story in an incredibly special way. everything from the medium to the brushstrokes to the color palette to the subject matter is so unique and never fails to strike a sort of awe in me.

chamomile ⇢ what kind of things do you like receiving as gifts?

books, video games, stuffed animals, sweaters, and anything cute or quaint. honestly i am not a picky person and am very easy to please with regards to gifts. every single gift brings me to tears.

aloe vera ⇢ what’s something (mundane) you really want to experience in life?

something mundane i'd like to experience in life hmmm. oh! i'd like to fall asleep with a cat in my arms.

[rob-pattinson]

Jennifer Coolidge in Single All The Way (2021), dir. Michael Mayer

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

[loveboatinsanity]

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

2021 MOVIES, #16

single all the way. this movie is so incredibly gay.

that’s really the only thing you need to know, the only part that mattered to me. it is christmas. it is gay. it is GAY CHRISTMAS. what more could i want?

i was sold on this one even without knowing it had jennifer coolidge and kathy najimy and barry bostwick and jennifer robertson. so many ties to queer culture! and again, the central (and only) romance in the movie is gay. 

truly still stunned this exists in my lifetime. in a good way. but onto the actual review (this turned out surprisingly long as i picked apart its few flaws so i’m cutting it here lol):

friends to lovers tropey goodness, where the classic ‘city folk discover the joys of small town christmastime’ story plays out with a gay man whose family is obsessed with seeing him partnered up.

it was a little hard for me, a queer person estranged from her family of origin, to suspend my disbelief well enough to believe the main character’s decision to prioritize family time and his hometown. in that way, this movie is kind of the opposite of every found family narrative--the unfulfilled gay man improves his life not by building a family in his lonely city but by deciding to fit his dreams and love life back into the town and family he left. 

the weird traditional bent of that, and the unanswered questions about his best friend/love interest, are probably the things that stood out for me less than awesomely. it’s made clear that his best friend misses having a family, and so is grateful to be included with the large one here...but his future partner seems oblivious to the pain that goes along with that. he thanks his friend constantly for ‘being there’ and ‘being him’ but never asks questions or offers support in return.

so, not to get too deep about a fluffy netflix christmas movie, but i’d worry about how that dynamic would play out in their future relationship. the best friend treats him as essential, going so far as to make his dream business possible--and the whole time he’s insisting that his life and work are adaptable, mobile, can totally adjust to what the main character wants. he deserves reciprocity.

when it comes to tiny quibbles about realism (though obviously i know these movies are not actually meant to be realistic) there’s also the part where we’re supposed to believe that these two best friends/roommates have no friend group or anyone else they would miss from their city lives after they completely relocate to a slower style of living? 

speaking of which, the movie makes it clear that the area has very few queer people--but once the main character decides he misses his family, i guess that doesn’t matter outside of his romantic prospects? to me it seems weird that he doesn’t feel the need for any larger gay community, just his best friend and his very straight family to spend the rest of his life with. but okay.

and we’re supposed to not find it at all concerning that half of the couple will be a young black man moving to new hampshire where the only people he knows are his partner’s family, in a state that’s less than 2 percent black? i respect shows like schitts creek that decide to eliminate homophobia, but implying that the small town we see here is free of both homophobia AND racism feels like quite a lot to ask us to believe just because it’s christmas. 

lol that’s not even touching on how far over the line his family take their meddling for the sake of pushing him toward the ‘right’ future. i was fully rooting for the two best friends to end up together, but by the time his nieces decided to ENDANGER HIS BEST FRIEND’S LIFE in order to blackmail him into a confession, with no interest in what either of the men truly wanted outside of their plan...part of me wanted him to end up with the other guy just to spite them! like, fuck your bullying and manipulation and certainty that your supposed-loved-one doesn’t have the right to make his own choices.

as a general plot point, that sort of thing doesn’t bother me in small doses, but i have never seen it be so obnoxiously over the top. Kind Dad barry bostwick was the only one trying to give them room to choose while also putting his opinion out there. i wish they could have all been like that. 

with those caveats though, i loved the romance and the cast and the lead actors i had never met before. i will never forget jennifer coolidge’s pageant or how i never considered her to be perfect casting for kathy najimy’s sister but nothing makes more sense once you see it. i wanted more story for the best friend because he deserved to be more than just support during what was a hard time of year for him too, but it was nice to love him at all--i loved both the guys, and that can be rare for me with romcoms now. it was a great little christmas movie.

[where-starsland]

Single All The Way (2021)

Single All The Way (2021) written by Chad Hodge directed by Michael Mayer