No, really; the final movie was My Worst Nightmare. There’s an obvious joke there. And tempting, too, because I disliked much of this movie. And yet it was not nearly as bad as consistently as some other ones we had seen before our final day (we saw this the same day as Peace Love & Misunderstanding).
The premise (like Peace Love & Misunderstanding) is that an uptight woman gets “thawed” by a wild-hearted man. This being Paris, she is an exacting art gallery owner, and he is a Belgian drunk. Mary asked why I disliked it so much, and I was hard pressed to say. The characters were beyond the level of believability, but not so far beyond that they reached the realm of the comic. Thus, I didn’t believe them before the crisis of the plot got things moving, and I didn’t believe the plot as it unfolded because I didn’t believe the characters. I could not willingly suspend disbelief. I understand that it is a French farce and a comedy of manners, but again, that does not save a film that is not artistically good enough to keep me suspending disbelief.
So: real life and noble ideas (artistic or political) are no excuse for bad art. You can make a god movie about anything, and you can make a bad one about anything. Some of these topics were important to look at. But the look (or looking) has to be interesting, too.
