Sunday, September 9, 2012

So I Finally Saw Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Review

In a shockingly ironic twist that would makes hipsters across the globe proud, contrary to popular belief, I never saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s until two nights ago.  I really don’t know why it took me so long to do so, but I just never really got around to it.  I thought the movie would be about Audrey Hepburn being a rich socialite named Tiffany and the movie was about her awesome life hobnobbing with the rich, the famous, and the beautiful in New York City.  Clearly I was wrong about this assumption.  Now here are my thoughts/movie review of the only film worthy of enough for me to make a mockery of with the naming of this blog. 

Holly Golightly- What the hell kind of a last name is Golightly?  Is this supposed to be a realistic sounding last name?  I understand that Holly was poor and on the run since she was 14, but if you’re going to use a fake name why on earth would you use such an odd last name that stands out when you’re trying to be hiding from your past?  It just doesn’t fit.  I mean sure, Holly Golightly is a pretty awesome sounding name, but not when you’re trying to pull off your best Carmen San Diego impression in life.  Actually now that I think about it, Carmen San Diego isn’t really a good name when you’re trying to be incognito either.  Further adding to the confusion, she picks an absurd name like Holly Golightly for herself, but she can’t come up with a name for her cat, choosing to call it Cat?  This is troubling. 

Moving on, Holly kind of surprised me with how much of a gold digging tramp she turned out to be.  She basically dumped her first husband who was about 60 years older than she was to get rich.  As a young man who hopes to one day be happily married and a true family man, it sickens me to hear that Holly would just go for the money and live a life without true love.  What a fraud.  If Holly Golightly were around today, she would be one of those girls to date an asshole, post a Facebook status about how there are no good guys out there in the world and she only dates assholes, and then proceed to keep on dating assholes instead of going for genuinely nice and caring dudes.  The way she had poor Paul wrapped around her finger was quite disheartening.  Don’t even get me started on how she dumped Cat out of a running cab into a back alley.  It seemed to me that Ms. Golightly, if you can even call her that, has relationship issues and a few screws lose upstairs.  In a sense, Holly Golightly seems like the type of girl who would be the cause of kids to form emo bands.  What a weirdo. 

Paul- Paul was a sucker from the start.  Essentially you’re a writer who gets paid to sleep with a disgruntled yet rich housewife.  With that going for him, it was almost too easy to see him fall for and get his heart trampled on by Holly.  Let’s face it, he had no chance.  His only source of income was whoring himself out, which isn’t good when you’re trying to land a gold digger.  Great job Paul.  I also didn’t care for how easily influenced he was by Holly.  He became all reckless and even stole from a 5 and 10 cent store just because Holly told him it was something he had never done.  I’ve never kidnapped a small child and sold him/her on the black market, and I don’t think I would start doing that just because Holly Golightly told me to.  This being said, I am a fan of Holly’s YOLO, therefore, DGAF lifestyle.  Much respect in that department.  Paul is just sad to watch throughout this whole movie. 

That Whole Marriage Thing- So Holly got married when she was 14 to a horse doctor who was about 70? Yeah that’s not weird or anything.  How is that even legal?  It’s not like he was even a good looking or charming horse doctor.  He was exactly what I would imagine a horse doctor to look like.  Can you imagine being married at the age of 14?  Sounds awful.  High school was hard enough being a bachelor nevermind having the ol’ ball and chain waiting for you as you got back home after a tough day in geometry class.   
 

The Mob- Arguably the strangest part of the movie is that Holly is passing along drug trafficking information for a jailed mobster named Sally Tomatoes.  I’m not sure what the bigger crime here is: drug trafficking or the fact that a character’s name is Sally Tomatoes.  Was Truman Capote on drugs when he wrote this?  Well, probably, but you know what I mean.  This whole mob and drug thing kind of came out of nowhere, but along with that, stealing cartoon masks out of a store, and the fact that a white guy was cast as the Japanese landlord, crime seemed to be an underlying presence throughout the movie.  By the way, if a white guy were ever cast as a Japanese man today a war would probably break out.  Imagine the Rush Hour movies if Chris Rock was paired up with a white dude pretending to be Japanese?  Actually that does seem somewhat appealing in an odd way, but bottom line is that it just wouldn’t work and it would piss off a lot of people. 
 

In the end, I was kind of confused when the movie was over.  I found myself just staring with a Jim Halpert-like face at the screen when ‘The End’ showed up on my TV.  I just couldn’t comprehend the fact that the movie ended with Holly getting bailed out of jail, gets dumped by her Brazilian playboy fiancĂ©, turns down Paul, throws her Cat out of a cab, gets bitched out by Paul, retrieves the Cat and makes out with Paul in the pouring rain.  Some might call it a happy ending, but I believe that standing in a rainstorm while being reunited with your unstable crush who will be soon be on trial for drug trafficking isn’t really ‘happy’.  It kind of sounds like a bleak future to me.  Anyways, I give it a B, which translates to about 1.5 thumbs up or 3 stars out of 5 if you prefer those ratings.  I will say though, it will be nice to finally say yes to the question “have you even seen that movie?” when I tell people what my blog’s name is. 

3 comments:

  1. I want to say the original Holly Golightly is a character in "The Three Clerks", an obscure novel by Anthony Trollope, but no one ever mentions it so I'm doubting my memory. HG is somebody the protagonists meet at a dance, or maybe it was the android woman who goes haywire and dances another minor character to death.

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  2. I dug up a copy of The Three Clerks online. There is indeed a Miss Golightly, but her given name is Clementina.

    The film does have great visuals (except for the Mickey Rooney travesty), but I find it disturbing on many levels. The witless, egotistical, and ignorant HG would be bad enough, but hearing those lines in the Euro-sophisticated voice of Audrey Hepburn only makes it worse. "Stop the cab!" [Flings cat into the driving rain). Yeah, it's got cruelty to animals, too! It's another thing nobody seems to mention--did it just not bother people in 1961?

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