Ugly People: The Movie

Nooooooo 😱

I don't know.. Idiocracy was pretty good.

Forrest Gump is a national treasure!

This happens from time to time. Critics go out of their way to praise as beautiful a woman who isnt very -- at least by model features gorgeousness. Then there's a "pile on" to objections to anyone who tries to say "this is not an attractive person".

Way back in The Dark Knight, Maggie Gyllenhaal seemed too unattractive to have hunks Christian Bale(rich) and Aaron Eckhart(powerful) fighting over her. Men that rich and powerful don't go for women that plain. Didn't hurt the mega-gross at all though.

Alana Haim is actually more attractive in the face in the movie than she looks on the photograph poster -- she's one of those people who photographs differently from different angles. You'll note that they also have a cartoon-art poster which draws her a bit more cute.

The photograph poster accentuates Alana's nipples through a tee-shirt, which ties into the movie, which makes the point that a not terribly pretty girl in the face can often draw men with a great body, instead. Perhaps this is why Alana does one scene in a bikini that is odd because she is greeting customers in a waterbed store(valiantly putting her body into sales service as countless women have before her.)

Alana also has a great VOICE...which makes sense, as she is one of the singing sister group Haim.

There's a YouTube clip from the movie where Alana and Gary meet at Tail of the Cock and HER line readings, and facial expressions are very precise.

Watch how she says:

"I don't know" and then again "I don't know" differently each time. Like, three different ways three different times.

Or her reading of "I HATE working at Tiny Toes."

She turns her head away at times in the scene and looks a bit like a space alien with a big head and a narrow nose.

CONT

> I thought they were average looking, which makes sense for a movie like this.

Doesn't make sense when according to the screenplay the character is supposed to be a bona fide beauty on par with "Grace Kelly."

So WTF was the point, if any, of this movie?

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Well, even though the movie was released on a lot of screens like a "mainstream movie" it is really an art film. And art films often don't have much narrative drive , or plot, or logic to them. We are supposed to try to figure out "what it all means." The writer-director , Paul Thomas Anderson ("PTA") has made a LOT of art films. I"d say the only one that was fully understandable was his first hit -- Boogie Nights, about the porn industry in the 70's and 80's and set in the same San Fernando Valley as Licorice Pizza.

The unconventional, borderline unattractive looks of the female lead are an "art film" affectation, too. As is the "impossible" romance of a 20-something woman and a 15 year old "boy."

Funny thing: I can never tell if I'm watching a good art film or a bad art film, because either way, I can't understand them!

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And why did they leave the hose running in that guy's bedroom?

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Art film stuff again. It seemed that they somehow overfilled the bed and broke the cap at the top. But instead of running out and turning off the hose, they just left it running and ran away -- seemingly in terror. But THEN -- in a total emotional turnaround -- in the truck they laughed about getting that Hollywood a-hole. (Based on a real guy, Jon Peters, who was indeed Barbra Streisand's boyfriend, after being her HAIRDRESSER, and became a producer.)

One wonders: after Jon Peters found his bedroom all flooded, wouldn't he have sued the business and ruined it? No answer given. Art film.

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And how could a 15 legally start and run businesses?

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I figure his mother signed papers. Or maybe Alana did ...she was 25, yes? They called the outfit "Fat Bernies" to disguise that youths were running it. Maybe that old water bed salesman helped out for a cut(he was played by Leo DiCaprio's dad, by the way.)

She's like ten times better looking on the drawn poster. False advertising!

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Unfortunately, that seems to be the case -- in any event, the cartoon version doesn't look like the real version.

That said, there are many photos of Alana Haim from Licorice Pizza and sometimes, they almost accidentally show her looking prettier than in other photos. Usually when she smiles -- there is a photo of her in a a tan-orange "vest dress" (at the politician's interview) where she looks quite pretty.

And in other photos, not so much.

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But then there's this. Neither Alana Heim, nor her sister Este Haim, nor her sister Danielle Haim, have "traditionally beautiful faces," but as ROCK STARS they get photographed as "sexy" all the time. They have great , fit bodies, so sometimes they are photographed in bras, or topless (with hands over the naughty bits) , or in sexual poses. One photo has them in bras, pants pulled down and their guitars over the naughty bits.

They are also "leggy," and in Licorice Pizza, Alana gets to show off her legs a lot. She even does one scene in a bikini -- at the water bed store, advertising the product (the enterprising Gary probably convinced her that he could sell water beds better with a girl in a bikini.)

Like many average-looking rock star MEN before them, the Haim sisters are selling sex and it overcomes any facial issues. And I guess Alana Haim brought some of this with her to this movie.

PS. I don't want to give the impression that ALL of the Haim photos are sexual in nature, perhaps 20%, perhaps from earlier in their careers when they had to sell that more. More of the time, they are pushing the sisterly, womanly, stylish icon role model thing....

Yes. Frankly, if this same story had starred, say, Zac Efron and Rachel McAdams(OK, in their younger years), it might have felt more like a traditional "teen rom com" -- even with the older girl.

The realistic people made everything more real and believable. Gary has to hustle for a career early in life(probably supports his family) and in making money, can attract girls. Alana lives at home with her parents AND her older sisters -- the whole thing is a "failure to launch" scenario in which Alana is still treated like a teenage girl by her father("Where were you tonight?") even as she is 25. Realistic: she's not quite that pretty to have maybe made the breakout. She complains to her father about the atheist date he rejected -- "He could have taken me out of here!"