My wife wasn’t feeling so great today. When we don’t feel good in the Mackay household, we tend to trend toward romantic comedy movies. So, when I was out today getting ingredients for dinner, I saw a new romantic comedy in the little, scary DVD dispenser in the foyer at Walmart. (Aside: I was recently informed that you only pronounce foyer as foyay if you’re uppity. I was unaware.) Naturally, I rented it.

Some people I read play coy with their movie reviews. Not me… I’m going to go for it. I will name names. The movie we watched was “He’s Just Not That Into You.”

It was terrible. It was everything about north America that is a problem. It masqueraded lust and emotionalism as love. It did a good enough job that I can almost imagine falling for it. But it was dangerously false. As my wife and I watched it (and even empathized with some of the characters), we started to see the depressing truth: that what this movie called love was close to the real thing–just close enough to be dangerous. But, the twist it put to it made it dangerous untruth.

I found myself wondering how exactly will I help my child through the minefield that is the popular view of love? How will I help him to understand that there is, or ought to be, a difference between marriage and “being together.”

Maybe if we hadn’t let marriage be so cheapened the minefield wouldn’t exist the way it does. But exist it does.

It was a challenge to me as a writer, too, to pursue truth through art. This movie sold the absolute mess that the way we handle love results in as a great thing. As though, somehow, a woman really “finding herself” after a messy divorce with her cheating husband is a good thing. Let me tell you, that’s not character arch, that’s tragedy. Certainly not something to aspire to.

And it just occurred to me, reading Sam’s review that I linked to above, that everything he says could apply to this movie. Could be… I guess we’ll never know.