Alas, my love for going to the movies only applies to going to a
movie that I actually want to see. If all that's playing is a G movie based on a board game or a bunch of robots destroying large American cities with lots of explosions, well, I'll stay at home, thank you. If I do find myself forced to sit through what I call a bad movie, I try
to rationalize that at least I get some dark and no talking for a good two
hours. In theory, it is enough time to sleep, but who can sleep with all that
exploding and jarring music and laughing or shrieking or crying or some other
loud expression of emotion? Plus, movies aren’t cheap. I don’t want to pay ten
bucks for a crappy nap, so I sure don’t want to pay that for a crappy movie.
Spoiler alert: I am going to talk about a movie now. If you
are reading this, chances are good you have either already been forced to see
this movie, or you have no intention of ever seeing it, or you have never heard
of it. In all cases, it’s not really that much of a spoiler alert. "The Fault in Our Stars" was the last movies I wanted to see, somewhere under Spiderman 2 or anything with Tom Cruise. If you are
familiar with it, you already know it’s a love story about two kids with
cancer. Someone is going to die. Duh.
My daughters were dying to see “The Fault in Our Stars,” and
I, as usual, couldn’t say no to them. They made plans to go with friends, and I begged
for the other parents to take them, but apparently I am the only mom with
nothing better to do. I picked up other people’s children and we headed to the
local theater for an afternoon of first love, melodrama, and death.
I have heard the book is awesome, and no one has anything
but glowing words to say for its author, John Green. I didn’t read the book,
but both my girls did, along with their entire demographic, so this movie was a
big deal in the under 17 girl world, which I allegedly was a part of a long time ago. I sucked it up because, shit, at least they don’t
like Justin Bieber, so the amount of horrible teenage girl crap to which I am
exposed could be hella worse.
I didn’t exactly hide the fact I didn’t want to see the
movie. Mostly, I whined like one of them. Why do I have to go? I don’t have
anything to wear. How long is this going to be? Don’t you have anybody else to
go with? Why are you making me do this? Why do you hate me?
I am sure it could be a beautiful love story for some people, inspirational
as the young lovers put aside their diagnoses for regular life experiences,
like falling in love and making out and listening to indie music and aren’t our
parents clueless? It encompasses so much of what it means to be a teenager, and if you take out the literal dying of cancer part, isn't growing up like a dying of sorts, a metaphor for the loss of childhood, of innocence? And also, the lead actress has short hair, so should we all cut our hair short for the summer? Boys will still like us, or maybe just boys with one leg, or no, wait, her hair is growing back in, so never mind.
I don’t need to pay money to see that, I live with most of
it, except the cancer part, knock wood. But watching it? Ew. I don’t want to
watch kids making out. I especially don’t want to watch kids making out WHILE SITTING NEXT TO MY
KIDS. I haven’t seen my own daughters kiss, yet, but I would equate it to
watching your parents make out. No one wants to see that. It's jarring.
What really made the movie horrible for me was the
undeniable fact that, no way around it, I would cry, and even worse, I would do
it in front of my daughters’ friends. I can’t even get through a Publix Mother’s
Day commercial at home without tearing up, so there was no way that a cancer flick
would leave me dry eyed. And once I start, I don't really stop.
So I cried. I wasn’t the only one in the theater, judging
from the very loud sniffling that surrounded us, but I was the only one in my
row that cried. The problem is, I can’t just tear up at the movie. My mind
started racing with all sorts of suppressed reasons to cry, which set me up for some significant sobbing
if I couldn’t get myself under control. I was able to bring up the memory of being
a teenager at my father’s funeral, which fit in well with the theme of the
movie and the general feelings it induced. Yes, I was a teenager once, and
cancer affected my life, and killed my father at a ridiculously young age.
Wahh.
I took it a step further, though, as much as I didn’t mean
to. I couldn’t shake the thought of watching a movie about teens with cancer
while sitting with my own teens. The idea of losing my children, of watching them
struggle with a terminal illness, of having to let go and say goodbye, those
were the worries that fueled my tears. No amount of concentrating on the lead
character’s narcissism or the awkward smiles or the hand holding or the overly
clever dialogue could stop the emotional breakdown that I was ramping up while
sitting between my daughters in the dark. Parents should not outlive their
children. Bad things shouldn’t happen to innocent young people. No one deserves
cancer, especially not young men and women who don’t even know their own
potential. Why didn't I remember to stuff some Kleenex in my purse?
I cried, for the movie, for my daughters, for people with
unhealthy children, for my father, my own loss and pain and forgotten youth, and even at what I perceived as my daughters' insensitivity for not crying. I
cried in the theater, in the bathroom after the movie ended, on the car ride on
the way home, dropping the other kids back home, later in the shower, and after my daughters went to bed.
The last thing I wanted to do was cry at the movies,
especially over a movie I didn’t want to see that I didn’t even like. It was predictable and histrionic, much like
me. Also, it didn’t make me laugh, and the lead actors played siblings in the
last movies in which I saw them, which made the whole in love thing borderline
incest.
Don't waste your money, unless you need a good cry.
