30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 15

            I decided to do the 30 day movie challenge as a blog series as it ties into my blog activities rather easily and I am once again not blogging my usual series with regularity in spite of saying that I would.

            Today is "A Movie that no one would expect me to Love".  I actually had to ask someone else what movie I have talked about positively that they were rather shocked or confused by my having liked it, and while I was thinking along the lines of "Crash", a movie that won best picture, but is more or less forgotten or now derided by the mainstream world of movie going.  "Crash" is not a movie people would be surprised that I like because it fills out a lot of the things I like so well.  Instead I went the entire other direction with a movie that was going to fall under tomorrows header of 'Guilty Pleasure'.  So what movie would you be surprised that I like?  "MeanGirls".

No nudity.

            Written by Tina Fey before she made it big, and staring Lindsay Lohan back when people thought she was going to be the big actress of her generation "Mean Girls" fell into a very reflexive hole in most people's view of the world.  It is now okay to like Tina Fey, and to enjoy Lohan ironically for how insane she is (like Gary Busey) when "Mean Girls" came out Fey was the head writer for SNL during a mediocre cast period, and Lohan was hated by people of my stripe and social circle mostly for being popular with so many normal people.

Popular.  You know.  For her acting.

            So what makes this movie something I went to see?  Nothing, I avoided it just like my social designation demanded of me and only came across it on TBS when I left the TV on while working.  I heard it, gave it a chance, and was rewarded with a very entertaining movie.  It has a lot of cliché things in it, but has a perspective that I have only ever seen in "Easy 'A'" recently, the perspective of smart female protagonist getting beaten down by social norms and bullshit.

Please don't go crazy Emma, you have such charisma.

            And while I like Emma Stone (the red head star of "Easy 'A'") as much now as I liked Lohan then, people are not surprised about me liking the movie.  What changed?  I wonder if something clicked in the last few years in regards to this.  That Tina Fey's success on "30 Rock" (the best TV show on the air currently) has changed people's perspectives on the idea of smart women protagonists?  I don't know, but I'm rolling the idea around in my mind, and it rings true.

I make passes at women in glasses.

            But yeah, the movie is well paced, has several jokes and character development disguised as sight gags, and the whole thing has a vibe to it of being very ironic (if that is the right word for it) which makes you feel like you are in on the humor.  It is about a math smart girl (Lohan) moving to a new school and moving through various exaggerated social circles; eventually she pretends to be dumb at math in order to let a guy she likes, who is actually bad at math, tutor her.  The ending is visible from the word 'welcome' as in 'welcome to the show' but it is still a good ride getting there.  Go watch it.

Lohan is not this orange in the movie.  Fake tans, because for whatever reason girls with freckles fail to realize how cute freckles are on them.