The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project is the movie LOL, starring Miley Cyrus. It's a remake of a movie that won a Cesar in its native France. It was directed by the original director, and is apparently largely a shot-for-shot remake of the original. And yet, it ended up going from an Oscar-winning film to a film so poorly recieved that it ended up in the Deep Hurting Project.  And so, since I don't have access to the original French version, I ask, probably more earnestly than in any previous entry in the Project:




Well, here's what TVTropes had to say: "All the funny moments of the original have the humor sucked clean out and replaced with gratuitous obscenity - which is odd, as other parts of the script were Bowdlerised. It's loaded with padding, and panders nonstop. The plot is mangled, and the dialogue never gets better than trite aphorisms passed off as profound." Apparently, the original film was made after Lisa Azuelos noticed there weren't many teen movies being made in France, so she made her own. And so, she wound up remaking it for a film market with a glut of teen movies, and as a consequence, it doesn't seem like there's much differentiating it from any of those films. It'd be like remaking The Class for an American audience; a true story about a teacher (playing himself) inspiring his students to rise above their stations and excel, and it's not like we haven't seen dozens of versions of this story, even if they make it as realistic as that Palme D'Or-winning film.

Well, here's some extra notes for the rare things that distinguish this movie from every other teen movie ever made:

• In the original film, LOL is a double entendre, meaning both the famous acronym, and Lola's nickname. In her opening narration, Lola says that everyone calls her "Lol." In reality,to quote IMDb's Goofs page, "In the beginning of the film, Lola says her nickname is Lol and that everyone calls her that, but throughout the course of the film, nobody calls her Lol - only Lola." To be fair, that flaw seems to have come from the original film, since the same goof entry is included verbatim in the goofs page of the original version's IMDb page.
  
• I can only assume that there was some cross-cultural dissonance that Azuelos didn't bother to smooth over, and the first big hint is five minutes in when we see Lola's mom and her sister (who looks about six) bathing together. Lola sees this and disrobes. Her mother notices she's had a Brazilian wax. Also, a minute later, in a brief shot that may or may not be an imagine spot, they're spooning.
  
• Also, on that note, while Lola's disrobing, she's got dirty feet like she goes barefoot regularly, but she barely gets any other barefoot scenes. Well, one scene where she's vacuuming, but that's it. It's a minor point, but I expected more from the girl who brought us this:
  
• A love montage reveals that this movie is supposed to be set in Chicago with them on the El Train and playing at Millennium Park. Unfortunately, a lot of the movie was shot in Detroit and sometimes you can see the Renaissance Center outside of one character's apartment, because of fucking COURSE a movie set in Chicago doesn't have the balls to actually shoot in Chicago.
  
• Demi Moore and Thomas Jane are divorced, and having an affair with each other, and Demi Moore still has the gall to chew Thomas Jane out for potentially screwing around with other woman. WHILE BOTH OF THEM ARE DIVORCED.
  
• I legitimately had no idea that Marlo Thomas was that much of a lightweight for her to get falling-off-her-ass-drunk off a single glass of Scotch and Coke!
  
• Somehow, this movie, based on a French movie, directed by the same Frenchwoman who made the original French movie, has an absurdly stereotypical view of France, especially given that they serve Escargot to the Yanks going to Paris at the first opportunity. To be fair, this seems to be based on the original French version, where they go to England and get served white bread, pasta, and marmalade.
  
• What the fucking hell was happening with Fisher Stevens around this time that he appeared both in this and United Passions?
  

In the end, the movie was filmed in 2010 and ended up being released two years later, and apparently only got a theatrical release because of a contractual obligation requiring it be released in 100 US theaters. So it ended up released the same day as The Avengers in 105 theaters. BoxOfficeMojo is failing me on actual numbers, but apparently, that first weekend, its total domestic gross was less than The Avengers' AVERAGE PER-SCREEN GROSS. And given that that was only $47,698, I can only assume the take was abysmal.

Honestly, this is probably the most generic film I've seen for the project. Seriously, most of the bullet points I've written are just cliches and not outstandingly dumb filmmaking or storytelling.