Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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That's a Lot of Pornogrophy Don Jon (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS Don Jon (90 minutes) does itself a disservice with its advertising campaign. The coolest part about the movie is Julianne Moore and she hardly appears in the promos at all. The film is being sold as a romcom wherein Don Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) learns that to truly love Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson) he must give up porn. In actuality, this is a film that mixes up the romcom formula very successfully by first assembling the traditional love story, than revealing it for the controlling, objectifying mess that traditional love stories usually devolve into. Before we get any further, I should confess I am one of the only two people in America who did not get the whole Jersey Shore thing. My husband watched it, but I took my once a decade "opt out" of popular culture card and used it to avoid our national obsession with New Jersey. In case you were curious, I used my '90s opt out to avoid cell phones, and this decade's is still up for grabs, though I'm leaning towards pretending eBooks don't exist. The point being, I probably missed as many of the jokes as I caught. I get that Don Jon is supposed to represent something about being Italian in New Jersey, and his family and lifestyle are somehow part of the joke. Having avoided the whole New Jersey "thing" I did not find this as funny as I was supposed to. However, I did just spend at least 15 minutes Googling various permutations of the search "bikini girl arrow eye beach" to figure out which exploitation film was mixed into the clips from various pornographic films shown during the opening credits. Interestingly, there is a lot of porn mixed into the movie — and I guess Gordon-Levitt, in an effort to be subtle, flashed this one clip from some sort of low-budget horror film towards the end of the first porn clip sequence to make a point about the objectification of women. Or maybe he just likes mixing sex and violence. I'm pretty sure it was 1974's Welcome to Arrow Beach. So, Don Jon claims that he only cares about a few things, but then he lists, like, eight things, with porn at the end of the list. So maybe all that hair gel has killed off a few brain cells? He goes out to find women and have meaningless hook-ups, hence the nickname Don Jon. One night he spots Barbara and dubs her the "most beautiful thing [he's] ever seen." He pursues her and ultimately wins her over after a movie date. For the detail-oriented among you, look for cameos by John Krasinski and Emily Blunt at the movie theater. The first two-thirds of the movie focus on all the ways in which he is an immature and incomplete person, how Barbara makes him a better man, and their mutual disregard for talking like real people instead of Jersey Shore caricatures. And hey! Tony Danza shows up playing an Italian stereotype! While everyone will eventually realize Barbara is a problematic choice for the love of his life, the point at which audience members pick up on this will differ greatly. Will it be when she denies him a sexual relationship to manipulate him into doing what she wants? When she won't let him buy Swiffer pads because cleaning isn't manly? Anyway, I'd say this one is worth a look. Even if it didn't float my particular boat, it was still good for a laugh. Now showing at Wynnsong 7, Carmike 12 and Carmike Market Fair 15. HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM SEXY SAVINGS F OFES 75COSTUM ALL % C ESSO R I ES & AC ADULT BOUTIQUE 3525 Lackey St., Lumberton Exit 20 off I-95 • 910-739-4488 OCTOBER 16-22, 2013 UCW 25