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Brian Cox picks
up a paycheck for acting against a phone and a La-Z-Boy in
this movie that uses Dr. Phil as its referential literary
antagonist. There’s a stupefying scene early on in which
Rachel McAdams unbuttons her blouse in an airport bathroom
(after someone spills Starbucks all over her) and then pauses
to stare at her own breasts in the mirror, as if to say that
actresses are not just complicit but themselves participants
in the audience as male gaze. But then I scooted the couch
closer to the TV and was no longer stupefied.[1]
Anyway this movie is all about female appropriation
of male phallic power via a goofy pen, a hockey stick thing,
and a straight-up pistol – that is until the end, when
her father restores the phallus to its proper domain by shooting
and killing the mercenary/date-gone-bad. I’ve never
read any Dr. Phil, but I bet even he wouldn’t suggest
that being saved by daddy is the last step on the road to
self-empowerment.
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[1]
She was in fact not staring at her boobs but rather a scar
on her chest, the traumatic origin of which we find out about
later. |