The Expendables vs. Eat Pray Love
Stallone decks Roberts at the box office: Greased biceps win over archedeyebrows
This weekend, I did my ovarian duty and went to see Eat Pray Love with a group of female friends. I’ve never read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book and while I like Julia Roberts, it really wasn’t this summer's must-see movie for me. In fact, there were only two reasons I went.
One, my best friend in the group recently moved out to Sugar Land, and though I disapprove of this lifestyle choice, I’m trying to support her by trudging out to suburbia to see a movie with her occasionally.
And two, Sylvester Stallone. I read Saturday morning that The Expendables, and its cast of aging to has-been action stars had bested Eat Pray Love in box office receipts the night before and my uterus felt this was wrong.
Back in July an Expendables fan video surfaced on YouTube titled “The Expendables Call To Arms.” Along with many shots of the stars of the movie looking manly while shooting and blowing things up, the trailer spread the dire warning that if Julia’s movie makes more money than Sly’s, women would suddenly rule Hollywood and the future will hold only sparkly vampires and romantic comedies.
This idea is, of course, absurd, evidenced by movie screens littered by the many superhero, action hero, and pudgy/geeky loser-heroes who win the heart of the blond babe with zero percent body fat. And some of these movies I do enjoy. Two X chromosomes do not prevent me from getting a thrill watching shit get blown up as much as the next guy, but occasionally we have to vote with our pocketbooks for explosion-less movies.
The problem is that I didn’t find Eat Pray Love particularly good, but neither did I find it all that bad. Yes, it’s long and overly self-obsessed — one critic dubbed it "Sit Watch Snooze" — but like Sex and the City 2 before it, this is not the crime against humanity the critics make it out to be.
Do chick flicks not have a right to be as annoyingly self-indulgent as the male buddy movie or bromance? The main difference is this summer, the female heroes decide to go to exotic locations to find themselves, instead of putting on a superhero mask or greasing up their biceps like their male counterparts. Should I resent real Liz or fictional Carrie for traveling the globe in an attempt to solve their existential dilemmas? I will, when men start resenting Tony Stark for flying the globe in a shiny red and gold suit to work through his mortality issues.
O.K, I might resent Robert’s Liz a little, but only for her too many flashbacks of her hot, but really whiny exes and her flawlessly arched eyebrows. How does one find time for proper eyebrow maintenance during months of scrubbing floors and meditating at an Indian ashram?
Unfortunately, for this contest of the sexes, the Stafford theater was only about half full of mostly women. While leaving, I didn’t hear my fellow movie goers raving about Eat Pray Love, though in the restroom I did overhear two older women discussing Gilbert’s appearance on Oprah and what a good episode that had been.
The women I was with enjoyed it, but chatting in the lobby we mostly discussed our own lives, not the filmed version of Gilbert’s. But then, taking a lesson from the film, a few of us went for ice cream afterwards without guilt.
The final tally gave the weekend to Stallone with a $35,030,000 gross to Roberts’ $23,700,000. So XY wins this round, but watch out guys. Those Twilight tweens and teens are growing up fast.
I do have to agree with “Expendables Call to Arms” about one thing. Eat Pray Love really does need some commas in that title. Punctuation knows no gender.
See the "Expendables Call to Arms" trailer that said manhood would be threatened if Eat Pray Love triumphed: