c7_assassin
3rd Level Black Feather
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Generally speaking, you'll never see anything dumber than an old-timey cautionary film. Getting people to stop doing the thing you don't like by depicting beautiful movie stars doing exactly that is the most misguided strategy since How to Not Think About Elephants became a best-seller in lunatic-land.
But every so often, one film will cross the line so far into the realm of the crazy, it becomes awesome again. One Too Many is that film. It tried valiantly to convince me how much AA I could use in my life, but the only things it succeeded in proving is:
A) The 1950's were a fucked-up, awesome time, and
B) AA stands for Alcohol? Absolutely!
Act I: Let's all get drunk!
This movie tells the story of a grinning suit-wearing asshole and his wife, a gifted concert pianist who suffers from a secret disease known as...alcoholism! This is what the movie tries to accomplish anyway, but the more you see of her husband the more you realize that his wife is really drinking to quiet the voices that are telling her to murder him. After watching his stupid face move for two minutes, I was hearing those voices.
The movie open in a bar, because it's the fifties and drinking is how we all choose to express how awesome it is that we just got back from four years of murdering Japs and PTSD hasn't been invented yet. 'Merica!
The patrons are discussing which type of booze is best to get drunk with. One guy prefers beer, the other says you can never go wrong with whiskey. A third suggests sherry and the other two punch him out for being gay, or at least they would if 'gay' was a thing yet.
The bartender interrupts with some helpful scientific facts about booze. As the movie goes on, the bartender is constantly on hand to offer helpful advice and offer emotional support to his patrons. That's right: this is an anti-drug movie where the pusher is the hero.
Example: Early in the film the husband and wife (I'm going to call them Goofus and Gracie) are arguing over where she stashed her last bottle. Goofus gets the brilliant idea to call up the bartender and ask him. And he knows! I don't know if I'm more shocked by the revelation that bartenders are psychic, or the fact that in the 50's there was a goddamn social safety net to help citizens find their missing liquor.
Later Goofus tracks down the bartender and confides that his wife might be an alcoholic. He says that yes, she is, and asks:
"What makes your wife any different from the half million women who are alcoholics?"
That's kind of a weird question to put to a husband, really. Can't you think of anything? Her smile? The fact that she doesn't laugh at the sight of your penis? If you put your wife in a lineup with a bunch of mannequins cooking you bacon, could you correctly identify her?
Act II: My goddamn wife is broken!
Goofus seeks advice from a doctor about whether he can cure his wife's alcoholism, and the doctor awesomely offers him a cigarette while they all sit down and talk about the horrors of addiction. Seriously! In the 50's, the doctors gave you cigarettes. You are fucking dope, 50's!
"Science is one of the worst bigots in town about liquor."
That kind of came out of nowhere, doctor. Is this the part where you lean in close and whisper that the thetans are making me drink because Lord Xenu loves the taste of cirrhotic liver? Oh, we also get this exchange:
"At one time alcohol was considered a useful medicine. Today other medicines have been discovered that doctors prefer to use."
"Oh yes, I've heard that." Education for the win, am I right?
The doctor also remarks that people are ashamed to admit they have the disease of alcoholism, much like 'we used to keep quiet about cancer and tuberculosis.' Holy shit! You guys used to hate people with cancer and tuberculosis? That's prejudice on a whole different dimension; did you run out of arbitrary reasons to discriminate against each other? You fascinate me, past.
Anyway, Goofus struggles with the dilemma of whether to forcibly institutionalize his wife, because in the 50's that was totally an option if your broad wouldn't do like a broad should do. I mean otherwise what's the point of feeding it? I'm not saying this movie is sexist, but at one point Goofus acts surprised when Gracie demonstrates that she knows how to perform basic arithmetic.
Gracie soon decides to go on the wagon herself, which she finds so stressful that next time she speaks to her daughter she blows a lungful of smoke directly into her face, which is fine because in the 50's cigarettes didn't give you cancer. Fuck yeah!
Then once the kid runs coughing off to bed, Gracie goes and finds a bottle she's cleverly hidden, in her daughter's breakfast cereal. This movie is crazy in all possible directions at once, plus hundreds more.
But for a movie that's supposedly all about the evils of drinking, One Too Many shows surprisingly little of it. Instead, the boozing is broken up by tedious speeches about how alcoholism is a disease and needs to be treated as such, and unrelated musical numbers that I'm attributing to the director's untreated neurosyphilis, because 50's!
"The cops don't pick up a man for staggering when he's got diabates or one of the 'respectable' diseases. But when he's got a disease called 'alcoholism' they throw him right in the can."
Solid argument, movie! My next DUI I'm calling the cop a diabetic racist!
Act III: In which I invent a drinking game.
The rules are simple. I take a drink whenever:
A) Someone onscreen takes a drink
B) Someone mentions AA
C) A doctor gives away free cigarettes
D) Blatant sexism
E) Unrelated singing
By the time I hammered out these rules there had been dozens of examples of each, so I had a lot of catching up to do.
Also, as I was writing this they broke up a shot of the little girl doing some unrelated singing with a shot of a forty-something man creepily smiling at her. I know that's not an official category, but I'm adding it to my supplementary list of drinkable offences.
Oh my god. Right after this, he grabs her and forcefully insists that he take her out for milkshakes and hamburgers right away. When she insists that she has to tell her dad before she gets in his car, he actually says, "Sure, we wouldn't him to think I'd kidnapped you." You are so about to become a lampshade, little girl.
Meanwhile Gracie has gone missing because alcoholism, and Goofus still has a shit-eating grin on his face. In fact he's not even looking for his wife; he's going around town trying to get support for an alcoholics-only wing at a local hospital. This would come off as a lot more charitable if we didn't know that you were looking for a convenient place to store your malfunctioning wife, you insensitive prick, and by the way where the fuck is she?
Soon we see exactly where Gracie is: drunk driving with the little girl! Holy crap, kid; I don't know which gods you angered to bring this fate upon yourself, but every character is in this film is trying desperately to murder you. Twenty minutes before this, a random stranger almost backed over her for no reason whatsoever. This kid is dead.
"Are you okay, momma?" "Don't talk to me when I'm drunk." That last line may have actually been 'driving,' but she's slurring and I'm choosing to believe the more hilarious option.
Mom then passes out cold behind the wheel while the little girl frantically steers to avoid oncoming traffic. I take back everything I said, little girl: you fucking rock! Not even God's hate can kill you!
When a cop finally manages to stop them, the girl even tries to deflect:
"My momma's sick." "Yes, I can smell it. "That's just the medicine she takes!"
Pretty loyal for someone who was just almost turned into hamburger meat. Let's see: an alcoholic mom, a dad who doesn't give a shit, and a talent for rationalizing abuse. This girl becomes a stripper, no question.
Next we see Gracie freaking out in a straightjacket. Which is weird, because HOW? You were so drunk you just passed out behind the wheel of a moving car with your kid inside; it is MEDICALLY IMPOSSIBLE that you remember anything that just happened to you. Did the cops think it would be funny to tell you that you accidentally killed your family? Because boy were they right!
Eventually Goofus gets everyone in town onboard with his idea for a drunks-only hospital, including the local distiller. In fact, he tells us:
"The liquor industry would spend millions of dollars if we could teach people to drink in moderation! It's the excessive drinker who gives the liquor industry a bad name."
Uh huh. So wait a minute, in this anti-alcohol film the bartender and the distiller are your trusted friends, sober people are dipshits and the plot is only bearable if you're completely hammered... Was this film produced by Charlie Sheen's bloodstream?
Gracie is visited by a representative from AA, a kindly old woman who tells her:
"Yesterday's gone, and tomorrow isn't here yet. Just live for today."
I've literally never heard a better case for getting wasted right now, helpful old lady! At this, Gracie is cured and floats out of the hospital, back to the husband who apparently never visited her, and the daughter who now has a lot of ammunition if anyone chastises her for all the shit she's going to get up to in the 60's.
So, what did One Too Many teach me? Number one, never get involved in a drinking game against 1950's misogyny: I will lose. Number two, bartenders are psychic. Number three, sherry is gay. Number four... wait, was number three sherry is gay? I don't remember number three. I bet a bartender knows. I'm totally fine to drive too, you guys. It's cool; I can handle it. 50's!
...
But every so often, one film will cross the line so far into the realm of the crazy, it becomes awesome again. One Too Many is that film. It tried valiantly to convince me how much AA I could use in my life, but the only things it succeeded in proving is:
A) The 1950's were a fucked-up, awesome time, and
B) AA stands for Alcohol? Absolutely!
Act I: Let's all get drunk!
This movie tells the story of a grinning suit-wearing asshole and his wife, a gifted concert pianist who suffers from a secret disease known as...alcoholism! This is what the movie tries to accomplish anyway, but the more you see of her husband the more you realize that his wife is really drinking to quiet the voices that are telling her to murder him. After watching his stupid face move for two minutes, I was hearing those voices.
The movie open in a bar, because it's the fifties and drinking is how we all choose to express how awesome it is that we just got back from four years of murdering Japs and PTSD hasn't been invented yet. 'Merica!
The patrons are discussing which type of booze is best to get drunk with. One guy prefers beer, the other says you can never go wrong with whiskey. A third suggests sherry and the other two punch him out for being gay, or at least they would if 'gay' was a thing yet.
The bartender interrupts with some helpful scientific facts about booze. As the movie goes on, the bartender is constantly on hand to offer helpful advice and offer emotional support to his patrons. That's right: this is an anti-drug movie where the pusher is the hero.
Example: Early in the film the husband and wife (I'm going to call them Goofus and Gracie) are arguing over where she stashed her last bottle. Goofus gets the brilliant idea to call up the bartender and ask him. And he knows! I don't know if I'm more shocked by the revelation that bartenders are psychic, or the fact that in the 50's there was a goddamn social safety net to help citizens find their missing liquor.
Later Goofus tracks down the bartender and confides that his wife might be an alcoholic. He says that yes, she is, and asks:
"What makes your wife any different from the half million women who are alcoholics?"
That's kind of a weird question to put to a husband, really. Can't you think of anything? Her smile? The fact that she doesn't laugh at the sight of your penis? If you put your wife in a lineup with a bunch of mannequins cooking you bacon, could you correctly identify her?
Act II: My goddamn wife is broken!
Goofus seeks advice from a doctor about whether he can cure his wife's alcoholism, and the doctor awesomely offers him a cigarette while they all sit down and talk about the horrors of addiction. Seriously! In the 50's, the doctors gave you cigarettes. You are fucking dope, 50's!
"Science is one of the worst bigots in town about liquor."
That kind of came out of nowhere, doctor. Is this the part where you lean in close and whisper that the thetans are making me drink because Lord Xenu loves the taste of cirrhotic liver? Oh, we also get this exchange:
"At one time alcohol was considered a useful medicine. Today other medicines have been discovered that doctors prefer to use."
"Oh yes, I've heard that." Education for the win, am I right?
The doctor also remarks that people are ashamed to admit they have the disease of alcoholism, much like 'we used to keep quiet about cancer and tuberculosis.' Holy shit! You guys used to hate people with cancer and tuberculosis? That's prejudice on a whole different dimension; did you run out of arbitrary reasons to discriminate against each other? You fascinate me, past.
Anyway, Goofus struggles with the dilemma of whether to forcibly institutionalize his wife, because in the 50's that was totally an option if your broad wouldn't do like a broad should do. I mean otherwise what's the point of feeding it? I'm not saying this movie is sexist, but at one point Goofus acts surprised when Gracie demonstrates that she knows how to perform basic arithmetic.
Gracie soon decides to go on the wagon herself, which she finds so stressful that next time she speaks to her daughter she blows a lungful of smoke directly into her face, which is fine because in the 50's cigarettes didn't give you cancer. Fuck yeah!
Then once the kid runs coughing off to bed, Gracie goes and finds a bottle she's cleverly hidden, in her daughter's breakfast cereal. This movie is crazy in all possible directions at once, plus hundreds more.
But for a movie that's supposedly all about the evils of drinking, One Too Many shows surprisingly little of it. Instead, the boozing is broken up by tedious speeches about how alcoholism is a disease and needs to be treated as such, and unrelated musical numbers that I'm attributing to the director's untreated neurosyphilis, because 50's!
"The cops don't pick up a man for staggering when he's got diabates or one of the 'respectable' diseases. But when he's got a disease called 'alcoholism' they throw him right in the can."
Solid argument, movie! My next DUI I'm calling the cop a diabetic racist!
Act III: In which I invent a drinking game.
The rules are simple. I take a drink whenever:
A) Someone onscreen takes a drink
B) Someone mentions AA
C) A doctor gives away free cigarettes
D) Blatant sexism
E) Unrelated singing
By the time I hammered out these rules there had been dozens of examples of each, so I had a lot of catching up to do.
Also, as I was writing this they broke up a shot of the little girl doing some unrelated singing with a shot of a forty-something man creepily smiling at her. I know that's not an official category, but I'm adding it to my supplementary list of drinkable offences.
Oh my god. Right after this, he grabs her and forcefully insists that he take her out for milkshakes and hamburgers right away. When she insists that she has to tell her dad before she gets in his car, he actually says, "Sure, we wouldn't him to think I'd kidnapped you." You are so about to become a lampshade, little girl.
Meanwhile Gracie has gone missing because alcoholism, and Goofus still has a shit-eating grin on his face. In fact he's not even looking for his wife; he's going around town trying to get support for an alcoholics-only wing at a local hospital. This would come off as a lot more charitable if we didn't know that you were looking for a convenient place to store your malfunctioning wife, you insensitive prick, and by the way where the fuck is she?
Soon we see exactly where Gracie is: drunk driving with the little girl! Holy crap, kid; I don't know which gods you angered to bring this fate upon yourself, but every character is in this film is trying desperately to murder you. Twenty minutes before this, a random stranger almost backed over her for no reason whatsoever. This kid is dead.
"Are you okay, momma?" "Don't talk to me when I'm drunk." That last line may have actually been 'driving,' but she's slurring and I'm choosing to believe the more hilarious option.
Mom then passes out cold behind the wheel while the little girl frantically steers to avoid oncoming traffic. I take back everything I said, little girl: you fucking rock! Not even God's hate can kill you!
When a cop finally manages to stop them, the girl even tries to deflect:
"My momma's sick." "Yes, I can smell it. "That's just the medicine she takes!"
Pretty loyal for someone who was just almost turned into hamburger meat. Let's see: an alcoholic mom, a dad who doesn't give a shit, and a talent for rationalizing abuse. This girl becomes a stripper, no question.
Next we see Gracie freaking out in a straightjacket. Which is weird, because HOW? You were so drunk you just passed out behind the wheel of a moving car with your kid inside; it is MEDICALLY IMPOSSIBLE that you remember anything that just happened to you. Did the cops think it would be funny to tell you that you accidentally killed your family? Because boy were they right!
Eventually Goofus gets everyone in town onboard with his idea for a drunks-only hospital, including the local distiller. In fact, he tells us:
"The liquor industry would spend millions of dollars if we could teach people to drink in moderation! It's the excessive drinker who gives the liquor industry a bad name."
Uh huh. So wait a minute, in this anti-alcohol film the bartender and the distiller are your trusted friends, sober people are dipshits and the plot is only bearable if you're completely hammered... Was this film produced by Charlie Sheen's bloodstream?
Gracie is visited by a representative from AA, a kindly old woman who tells her:
"Yesterday's gone, and tomorrow isn't here yet. Just live for today."
I've literally never heard a better case for getting wasted right now, helpful old lady! At this, Gracie is cured and floats out of the hospital, back to the husband who apparently never visited her, and the daughter who now has a lot of ammunition if anyone chastises her for all the shit she's going to get up to in the 60's.
So, what did One Too Many teach me? Number one, never get involved in a drinking game against 1950's misogyny: I will lose. Number two, bartenders are psychic. Number three, sherry is gay. Number four... wait, was number three sherry is gay? I don't remember number three. I bet a bartender knows. I'm totally fine to drive too, you guys. It's cool; I can handle it. 50's!
...
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