Incorrectly Described Movies

March 30, 2020—Gabriola Sounder

I feel lucky to have a bucketload of entertainment to indulge in, but it’s a challenge to decide what to watch. After a period of endless scrolling and “just pick something” comments, the pressure is on to make a choice, which ends up being based on titles and images. In other words, I do judge books/movies/TV shows/podcasts by their covers, and I’d like share my judgments with you. What follows is a list of feature and short films available on streaming services. For each one there’s a description of what I think it’s about (WITIA) followed by a blurb of what it’s actually about (WIAA).

WITIA: An elderly woman runs a laundry service out of her cottage in the English countryside. She’s American, but feigns a French accent so she can offer exotic laundering services and charge a premium. She falls for a county parishioner and has to keep up the accent and lie to her one true love. When she inevitably slips up and he discovers she’s been untruthful, she figures it’s over until he reveals he’s been faking his English accent and is actually Swedish. It’s about the masks we don and wanting to be accepted by your peers, blah blah blah.

WIAA: Some widow played by some actress gets taken for all her insurance money and she tracks down some lawyers who are behind some big plan to take all the world’s money.

WITIA: A young woman receives a package from an unknown sender. Inside the package is a marble filled with a black swirling gaseous substance. There’s a note with it that says, New candy. Looking to do market research. Eat and send back your comments on this postage-paid postcard. Meg Ryan pops it in her mouth and three days later discovers she can control minds, so she makes everyone patronize her bookstore so she can become super rich. She writes back to the sender suggesting they tweak the recipe to add the ability to fly.

WIAA: Two people wait 20-30 minutes a day for their computers to boot up so they can email each other about how they like books. Later they discover they are business competitors, but their love ends up conquering any spats about livelihood.

WITIA: The year is 1922. Two hot scientists are travelling to the Caribbean to do research on birds and stuff. The tiny sailboat they are in gets caught in a windstorm and they are stranded on a small island full of guavas. They drink tons of fruit juice so they don’t get scurvy and discover they can use the guava fruit peels to build stuff like shoes and waste treatment facilities. They turn the island into an industrialized nation and eventually everyone in the Caribbean hates them.

WIAA: The year is now and a musician puts on a one-day festival to lift the spirits of the people living on a paramilitary-run island where they are treated horribly, and I don’t think it has a lot to do with guavas.

WITIA: The year is 1922. Two Rorschach inkblots come to life and, from their paper homes, they can see what’s happening in the three-dimensional world. It looks bad out there – someone steals their psychologist owner’s Fileofax! – so they become a crime-fighting duo, determined to get the psychologist’s address book back so that he can order Chinese food takeout over the phone again.

WIAA: The Odd Couple with a cat and a dog so that kids will like it.

WITIA: A nice guy moves to a new town and with every interaction he has with townspeople, he discovers that, unlike him, nobody waves goodbye – they just nod their heads. It’s a huge culture shock and eventually he goes mad because he just can’t adjust. The movie ends 20 years later – he’s lost the ability to speak and all he does is wander the streets waving at people.

WIAA: A boy in his teens rebels against the suburban lifestyle of his middle-class parents, runs away from home and gets into trouble with the law. Some viewers of this film feel the need to share deep questions, leaving comments like, “Why is he allowed to drive a scooter when he does not have a licence to drive a car?”

Published by Gabriola Sounder.