Nicholas Cage and La Lopez? Gwynneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck? Or perhaps Vince Vaughn and Julia Roberts? Nick Cage and Gwynneth Paltrow? Maybe Ben Affleck and Kate Hudson? Owen Wilson and Julia Roberts? (a bit of a height problem there, perhaps) George Clooney and La Lopez? Matt Damon and Jennifer Aniston? This IS a dumb romantic comedy, but thank God, it's none of those pairings this time around, none of those people. This is one of those extremely rare occasion when a romantic comedy is cast well: the likable Luke Wilson and the stunningly beautiful Gretchen Mol. But what is the script like? Do you even have to ask? It stinks, of course.
Romantic comedies are aimed at women, naturally, hence the kind of effort that is put into such scripts is, well... practically non-existent. "Tenure" contains Hollywood's almost century-old "safe comedy", also known as "cute comedy" aka "tee-hee-hee comedy" aka "makes-male-viewers-vomit comedy"; the kind of humour that is only one step above the kind of crap that poor, defenseless babies get when their sadistic parents switch on the "Teletubbies", gearing up their kids from an early age towards reaching the kind of low expectations and non-critical attitudes that will one day help them to appreciate bottom-of-the-barrel material such as "Friends". ("Friends": Teletubbies for adults.)
The gags are truly pathetic, and the characters who stumble over these hilarious jokes are painfully goofy, unrealistic people who clown around in all the wrong ways. For example, Wilson's terminally unfunny sidekick is a Sasqwatch-obsessed anthropology professor; he spends his time looking for Bigfoot in the woods, and takes fake acid pills now and again. Yes, that's the kind of embarrassing-to-watch trash we've got here. On the upside, there is no laugh-track; this is the one great thing about bad big-screen comedies.
But just because the humour is "safe" doesn't mean it doesn't get raunchy, or at least desperately tries to be, and this is where "Tenure" gets abysmal. A sub-plot revolves around a retirement home in which Luke's father has sex with very old women. In the final scene, Luke distributes free erection aids to the occupants of the nursing home. Painfully, painfully unfunny. Similarly shame-happy were the scenes with his students' "sex poetry". Even Wes Anderson wouldn't pull something this bad out of his talentless ass.
Luke lies about having a girlfriend, then predictably gets a paid stand-in to join him in the kind of scene we've seen in at least 5,000 sitcoms.
The only ace the movie ever had up its sleeve was Gretchen Mol. Yet(i), she makes her first appearance after about 25 minutes or so. After that, she is featured in about a handful of scenes. I don't think she has more than 20 lines in the whole movie. And she is Luke's romantic interest. You figure it out...
Romantic comedies are aimed at women, naturally, hence the kind of effort that is put into such scripts is, well... practically non-existent. "Tenure" contains Hollywood's almost century-old "safe comedy", also known as "cute comedy" aka "tee-hee-hee comedy" aka "makes-male-viewers-vomit comedy"; the kind of humour that is only one step above the kind of crap that poor, defenseless babies get when their sadistic parents switch on the "Teletubbies", gearing up their kids from an early age towards reaching the kind of low expectations and non-critical attitudes that will one day help them to appreciate bottom-of-the-barrel material such as "Friends". ("Friends": Teletubbies for adults.)
The gags are truly pathetic, and the characters who stumble over these hilarious jokes are painfully goofy, unrealistic people who clown around in all the wrong ways. For example, Wilson's terminally unfunny sidekick is a Sasqwatch-obsessed anthropology professor; he spends his time looking for Bigfoot in the woods, and takes fake acid pills now and again. Yes, that's the kind of embarrassing-to-watch trash we've got here. On the upside, there is no laugh-track; this is the one great thing about bad big-screen comedies.
But just because the humour is "safe" doesn't mean it doesn't get raunchy, or at least desperately tries to be, and this is where "Tenure" gets abysmal. A sub-plot revolves around a retirement home in which Luke's father has sex with very old women. In the final scene, Luke distributes free erection aids to the occupants of the nursing home. Painfully, painfully unfunny. Similarly shame-happy were the scenes with his students' "sex poetry". Even Wes Anderson wouldn't pull something this bad out of his talentless ass.
Luke lies about having a girlfriend, then predictably gets a paid stand-in to join him in the kind of scene we've seen in at least 5,000 sitcoms.
The only ace the movie ever had up its sleeve was Gretchen Mol. Yet(i), she makes her first appearance after about 25 minutes or so. After that, she is featured in about a handful of scenes. I don't think she has more than 20 lines in the whole movie. And she is Luke's romantic interest. You figure it out...