The Man in the Moon

I didn't even know The Man in the Moon was in my queue til I got it, and I can't imagine why I would have possibly added it. According to Wikipedia, Reese Witherspoon's first movie "is notorious for a glimpse of the actress's underage, naked rear end." Hah. Anyway, it wasn't bad. It really made me want to move to a farm in the South. Reese, who I generally like, plays 14-year-old Dani Trant, who falls in love with an older guy who moves in next door (played by Jason London-the twin from Dazed and Confused and that Aerosmith video, not the one from Mallrats). He falls in love with her older sister, a girl who everyone spends the whole movie talking about how beautiful she is, which is kinda weird cause she has a mustache. There is lots of skinnydipping in the local pond. The dad is played by a guy from Law and Order I think. There is a really creepy scene where the older sister goes to a dance and gets groped by her date's father, then by her date. Anyway, eventually Dani finds out that the guy and her sister are sneaking around behind her back, but then Jason London is killed falling off his tractor, and then the sisters forgive each other. It was a pretty decent coming-of-age type movie--the acting was good, and it wasn't overly sappy, but it was kind of boring. It has that ubiquitous teen movie scene where a tomboy type girl gets disgusted when she finds out that you kiss boys with her tongue, and then she practices on her pillow (or in this case, her hand.) At one point, Jason London tells Reese "someone's gonna get your cherry one of these days, but it ain't gonna be me." Hah. The tone and setting and themes reminded me of Inventing the Abbotts which was a lot trashier and thus, much more entertaining.

In the Land of Women

First Netflix sent me The Man in the Moon instead of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, then they sent me Heavy Metal Parking Lot cracked into three pieces, so I was stuck watching In the Land of Women, which seriously had no point. Adam Brody from the OC plays this kid who writes soft porn movies and gets dumped by his actress girlfriend so he goes to live with his grandmother and gets friendly with the family across the street--the mom (Meg Ryan), a teenage daughter, and a younger, annoyingly precocious and child-actressy daughter. He kisses both the mom and the daughter. Meg Ryan's face looks weird. Adam Brody is all smug. The mom gets cancer. She doesn't die though. But the grandmother does. Nothing else happens! That's the whole stupid movie. Actually, to be honest, I couldn't even make it all the way through. I watched for an hour and then just read what happened on themoviespoiler.com. And when I found out that nothing happened, I just put it back in its red envelope. Ugh.