Mannequin (1987) The Skeleton Twins (2014)

Starship! Star-Fucking-Ship!! We all know they suck rhino balls but Crom-damn it once one of their sappy saccharine infused pop songs comes on, it’ll get stuck in your head for days. Which is what’s been happening for me since Saturday. Watched The Skeleton Twins on Netflix (REELY Quick: It’s just OK/borderline bad) and there’s a scene with Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, who play siblings, lip syncing to Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” I’m pretty sure the whole song was played in its entirety. The movie was just OK as I said but the chemistry between Wiig and Hader was great and every scene they shared was golden. This scene was no exception. While I may lambast Starship wholeheartedly, I cannot really hate on any 80s music at all (it’s an unwritten rule I think) and I hate to admit it but I have a soft spot for the Andrew McCarthy/Kim Catrall comedy Mannequin. What can I say, I’m somewhat of a sap. For those of you that don’t know, the Starship song was the de facto love theme played over the end credits. I haven’t seen Mannequin in quite a while but the universe must’ve been trying to tell me something because at our local community pool I heard Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now again over the radio! So that’s another reason it’s stuck in my damn head. There’s nothing gonna stop the misery, except a quick death.

I kinda wish that the lip sync scene from The Skeleton Twins was on YouTube but its not there. Probably a good thing since that song is like a disease really.

Without getting into too much for The Skeleton Twins, I will express some of my thoughts on the dramedy. First off, had I known that the fucking Duplass Brothers produced it, I would’ve avoided it like the plague but since it was the first mumble core movie I saw that had established talent acting in it, it wasn’t so torturous—until the end. I really want to understand why the Mumblecore idiots keep making such melodramatic and more or less perverted movies that try to push the boundaries of “normal” human activity and emotions. Quick synopsis: Hader plays a lonely and downtrodden gay guy who attempts suicide. At the same time, his philandering sister, Wiig, also contemplates suicide. I really thought this suicide angle would play out better but it really doesn’t. Haider now stays with his sister and her happy-go-lucky husband (Luke Wilson) and reunites with his old English teacher (Ty Burrell) whom he had an underaged affair with back in high school. The siblings reconnect, fight and act like whiny assholes involving themselves into each other’s lives and affairs. As you can probably tell, they [SPOILER ALERT] muck up each other’s lives and end up living together in the end. I usually don’t like spoiling the endings to the movies we review but here I want to express my anger and disappointment in this film’s finale. What exactly is this movie trying to tell us? Sure, Wiig had an unhappy marriage, despite having a really happy and loving husband, but she was “missing” something I suppose even though it seemed fine on the surface. Haider was just a lonely, grumpy and depressing homosexual man with no prospects or life goals. Two great protagonists to identify with. I would’ve preferred they help each other and lift each other out of their depressive suicidal states with love and kindness and maybe even some tough love but nope, they basically end up losers together, happily with no one but themselves. How is this a happy ending? It pissed me right off. Anyway, I now I sound like an old man but there was a better story waiting in this movie and it never materialized. Both characters are so weak and quitters. If one of them succeeded I’d be happier about it but them being alone together is just so depressing and sad. 

Score: 4 (I really want to like Kristen Wiig as an actor) out of 10