#77 - Bus Stop

Shhhhhhh......listen.....you might be able to hear it.....even now. What is it you might be hearing? It's the echoes from me beating my skull against the wall while watching this god awful movie. There!! I said it. No build up. No waiting to see if I liked the old movie or not. It's plain. It's simple. It's simple and plain. NO. This had to be one of the most annoying movies I have seen in a while. Usually when I watch an older movie, I am able to recognize what it is that movie watchers from that time enjoyed about it, even though I may not. In this case...I don't see it. It's just lame, and the weirdest part about it is that the writer responsible for this is the same guy responsible for Splendor in the Grass. Talk about two movies that couldn't be more different from each other.

See the cowboy in the picture? His name is Don Murray. I dont know what else he has done but just about everything he does in this movie makes me want to shove pencils into my eyes. It's a sleeper for being the most annoying and ridiculously written character...EVER. And I'm not talking about characters written for movies where the characters are intended to be ridiculous. Apparently this yokel has spent all of his life on a farm in Montana and has absolutely no social skills whatsoever. Are you chuckling yet? So we have ourselves a charming little fish out of water movie when he goes to Phoenix to compete in a rodeo...right? WRONG!! This guy is so bull headed, loud, and obnoxious with his lack of social savvy that in real life he probably would have had the crap beat out of him on day one, which would be nice because then the movie would have gotten over sooner. It's as if the writer took every possible farm hand cliche, amplified it to an unrealistic level, and then expect people to think it's funny. Guess again. I think of the movie Elf. That was funny becuase a lot of the humor dealt with how Will Ferrell interacted in a world that is familiar to us. This was not the case in Bus Stop. Instead I was forced to watch a stubborn loud mouth do whatever he wanted to without any consequences for any of it. I guess I was suppossed to laugh at his lack of knowledge about the ways of the world, but whereas Crocodile Dundee adapted to NYC with his own style, this cowboy just did whatever the hell wanted. Not entertaining at all.

Oh, by the way, is that a "southern" accent you have there Marilyn. Is that really what women from the Ozarks sound like? Cause that didn't sound like any kind of southern accent I have ever heard of. In all honesty, whatever it was Marilyn was trying to do with her accent, it didn't work and sounded awful. The worst part was when she tried to sing Black Magic with that bad accent. It was unbelievable because Marilyn was doing the sultry thing that she is famous for, but with that bad accent and the song was horrible. I wonder if Sammy Davis, Jr. sang this song first because I cant imagine anybody wanting to sing it after watching Marylin hack through it. Seriously, it was bad.

And to bring it back full circle, the most preposterous thing about the whole movie was story itself. A loud mouth from the country goes to Phoenix to compete in a rodeo. On the way there his friend suggests that he use this trip to learn how to interact to women. Good ol' cowboy says he will know his angel when he sees her, and obviously, Marilyn is that angel. From that point on he drags her all over Phoenix against her will, and about every five minutes you get to hear him boldy state, "that woman is gonna murry me". She tries to get away because he is obviously crazy, but he gets her and kidnaps her. On the way back to Montana, they get caught in a snowstorm. They argue and when cowboy Bob is an obnoxious jerk, the bus driver fights him to teach him a lesson. Apparently, when a kidnapper and stalker that you want nothing to do with gets his ass kicked and then apologizes without really learning anything, this is what makes a woman fall madly in love with somebody. Are you freaking kidding me? This idiot who has been absolutely annoying the entire time gets his ass kicked and you feel sorry for him and then fall in love? How the hell does that make sense? Nothing says romantic comedy more than a mild case of Stockholm Syndrome.