Monday evening: dinner at Jennifer C’s, including an Earl Grey flavoured chocolate. It’s part of some exotic Belgian selection box, one of her birthday gifts. Other flavours include nutmeg, red pepper, and bergomot. Which she points out is probably pretty similar to the Earl Grey one, given Earl Grey is bergomot-flavoured tea.
I muse on the whole idea of default flavourings, how you can get chocolate flavour milkshake, but boxes of chocolates resist the temptation to include a chocolate flavoured chocolate. Some of the selections of branded and wrapped miniature chocolate bars, such as Celebrations, include a diminutive Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, but that’s different.
I used to imagine how small the person would have to be to make Fun Size bars resemble the normal size in their hand. And whether I could buy a Lilliputian chocoholic as a pet.
I also recall the sugary brands of ‘Orange Flavoured Drink with Vitamin C’, packaged in cartons to resemble proper orange juice, a cruel trick on short-sighted shoppers. I imagine the manufacturer’s defence: ‘But orange juice is merely an orange flavoured drink with Vitamin C.’
Jennifer is a fan of 80s high school movies, particular the ones by John Hughes such as Sixteen Candles. We end up idly watching Bring It On on TV. It’s a recent example of the genre, this time a romp about a cheerleading competition. Made circa 2000 and full of the school slang of the day, yet portions of it may as well be straight from the 80s. The male lead’s bedroom is covered in posters of New Wave and UK Punk bands: the Clash, Ramones, the young Elvis Costello and so on.
It does has its snappier, funnier moments, not least the opening chant sequence, and at times hints that it wants to be a more caustic comedy like Heathers or Election, yet it keeps to a tried and tested template elsewhere. Jen’s flatmate Alex M joins us on the sofa and points out the movie’s most formulaic box-ticker, the Third Act Montage. After experiencing a setback, the cheerleading team gather their resources and pull out the stops in time for the big finale. Cue shots of them practicing, exercising, training and so on, all cut to uptempo pop music. It’s the way so many movies have been made for so long.
But one has to remember this was released before Team America: World Police, which included a knowing – and utterly hilarious – ‘Montage Song’. Since then, I think audiences have become wiser to this particular narrative standby.
Sometimes it takes genre-spoofing movies to shake genres up, daring them to try harder. Shrek tore apart the Disney fairytale formulae and created something to please ogre fans and Leonard Cohen fans alike (given the inclusion of ‘Hallelujah’). And yet last year Shrek itself became formulaic, in the shape of Shrek 3.
Meanwhile Disney took its fairytale ball back, with its first post-parody, post-cynicism, post-everything film, Enchanted. I saw this just before Christmas, and aside from a few power ballad moments left over from the duller days, loved it immensely. Amy Adams’s performance as the cartoon princess made flesh is mesmerizing. Some critics have said she camps it up, but it’s only the Handsome Prince and Susan Sarandon’s Wicked Queen who play it for pantomime laughs.
Ms Adams, on the other hand, goes beyond camp altogether. She evinces a kind of old-fashioned sincerity, last seen on the Disney Time programmes of my youth. Every Bank Holiday, this TV staple with rotating presenters (for some reason I can only remember the one introduced by Jimmy Tarbuck, possibly on a golf course) would show the famous routines from the usual cartoon classics, alongside clips of lesser-known 60s and 70s live action fare, like Candleshoe or The Cat From Outer Space. Enchanted is like that. It’s a gay movie in the original sense of the word: honest gaiety, reached only when knowingness hits saturation level. The eye of the camp storm. You can take along eight-year-old girls, or your friend who’s doing a thesis in Susan Sontag, or someone who just wants to see something unashamedly jolly with big dance routines.
My favourite moment in Enchanted:
Patrick Dempsey: (driven to frustration) It’s like you just stepped out of a Hallmark card or something!
Princess: (confused) Is that a bad thing?
Mr Dempsey is stuck for an answer.
***
Last night: with Kat Brown to the Colony Room for a drink, then onto the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly. A gloriously beautiful theatre full of exquisite 1870s illustrated tiles: late Victorians aping the salons of Louis XVI. The current production is a comedy take on The 39 Steps, via Hitchcock’s classic 1935 film. A cast of four play all the parts, and indeed much of the scenery, taking in lots of ingenious stagecraft tricks with limited props. At its heart is a brilliantly chiselled performance by Simon Paisley Day, as Richard Hannay. You’re in no doubt that he could swim a Scottish loch in full waistcoat and plus fours, and come out with his pipe still alight. I last saw him when he was training at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, at the same time as me in 1991. He then known simply as Simon Day, but clearly had to add the middle name to avoid confusion with the comedian from The Fast Show. He looks exactly the same as I remember him, always perfect for very English, stiff upper lip roles.
The show is wonderfully silly – there’s even puppets – but the iconic parts of the 1935 film are intact. Not least Hannay on the run across the countryside while handcuffed to a reluctant young woman, who’s forced to help yet hinder his escape, depending on how much she believes his story. Thus adding a welcome touch of wry romance to all the breathless goings-on with spies. The original John Buchan novel had no women at all.
Last time I was at the Criterion was for a Q&A with Neil Gaiman regarding the movie Stardust, based on his book. He remarked that the choice of theatre was particularly apt. In Stardust there’s a reluctant chaining together of the young leads as they journey across a fantasy land. Their physical bond eventually leads to a romantic one. This element was a little nod to The 39 Steps, said Mr Gaiman.
