No Nutritional Value: My Boyfriend's Back

[trinityvixen]

Of course, I object on principle to any movie that makes any zombie seem sympathetic in any way. However, My Boyfriend's Back is worth a view, not because the zombie lead is sympathetic but because his family, friends, and neighbors are surprisingly unaffected by his refusal to stay dead. The entire-town-is-indifferent-to-the-monster-in-their-midst was done before in Teen Wolf (and, sorta, previous No Nutritional Value entry, My Best Friend Is A Vampire). I didn't really care for Teen Wolf. Can't say why, just didn't strike a chord with me.

But the Dingle family--particularly Mama Dingle--and their willingness to pick up stray children and corpses to feed to their recently departed son/brother is all kinds of hilarious. Apart from them and Zombie Johnny Dingle's constant harrumphs of harassment over people's assumptions about his zombism (which are awesomely funny), the movie is deader than its lead. (Okay, so, the brief scene with Saint Peter was giggle-inducing, too.) I was hard-pressed to pick a favorite line. There are so many. (Mama Dingle being at the center of most of them.) But I think I'll have to go with:

Johnny: I'm just dead. It's not like I'm an asshole or anything.

Oh, okay, one more.

Johnny: I almost took a bite out of my friend Eddie, and it was such the wrong thing to do. He's very mad.

Comments

[anirien.livejournal.com]

One of my BFFs, manwe_iluvendil, cites My Boyrfriend's Back as his all time favorite movie. He says it exemplifies his concepts of true love.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I...can't say that those aspects were the most enjoyable. I rather sympathized with the people who weren't so keen on the zombie running around. You can tame vampires to a point--they don't need to kill to live--but not zombies. And there's a difference between the living dead and undead--zombies and vampires, respectively. Undead creatures aren't actually corpses. You don't want to kiss a corpse, no matter what effort was made on the part of the lead actress to make that seem at all palatable.

[anirien.livejournal.com]

Haha. True. Zombies are not sexy. I don't really remember the movie all that well. He explains it much better himself. Perhaps I will direct him over here. ^_^

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Zombies are not sexy. And body parts falling off into mouths...not cool. But hey, maybe your friend got something else out of it than that. I was kinda stuck on that.

[manwe-iluvendil.livejournal.com]

I am cited BFF. The reason I love this movie (it may not be my favorite film of all time, but certainly my favorite romantic comedy) is that putting aside all the cannibalism and borderline necrophilia, it's really a beautiful love story. We're talking about someone who remianed faithful in his heart with no reward to a gril from first grade all through to his senior prom. And he died for her, came back from the dead for her, and ate people just to spend more time with her.

I'm not saying I want to eat people or that I want someone to eat people in order to prove their love to me. Rather, it's more the idea of doing something, anything, that you have to do for the one you love. It's not even limited to the flesh eating which could be interpreted as a partially selfish act, sating his zombie hunger. Before all that, he did get shot to save her life. And then, knowing the consequences, he did it again. That, my friend, is devotion.

And let's not forget the fact that a teenager -- an unpopular geeky virgin to boot -- found the stones to go out on a limb, without any expectation of reciprocation, and be honest and open about his feelings for the sake of being true tro his heart. That's a lot of courage coming out of a seventeen-year-old.

To me, yes, it's a light-hearted nummy treat with a few fun cheap laughs, but it's slapstick belies a very subtle wit as well as some genuine emotion. True, Johnny's reasons for loving Missy could have been a little more fleshed out (pardon the pun, I beg of you), but ultimately, this movie showed me, at the tender age of twelve, what it means to love someone and to be true to your heart, and it ultimately shaped my views on love in a very profound way. Some -- okay, many -- might find that incredibly silly, but we find meaning where we can.

I'm very much in love right now, and I can tell you without reservation that I'd eat someone's stomach if it was the only way to ever be with him. But I really, really don't wanna. Ever. Ew. But I would. And that's love.

Yes, I've been in therapy for quite some time.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That's definitely as sweet as advertised <3

However, I still see it as sorta less romantic than that. (Must be seeing it at my advanced, cynical age.) But far be it from me to say you can't :) ('Cause clearly you do.)

[manwe-iluvendil.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I have bizarre ties to My Best Friend Is A Vampire as well, but they're far, FAR less profound.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It must just be something about seeing movies at a formative time. I have no allegiance to any of these late 80s, early 90s monster-teen films, but I'll defend the movie of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from here to eternity. And don't get me started on The Princess Bride...

I'm curious about what My Best Friend Is A Vampire ties you have! Do share!

Cult Films

[manwe-iluvendil.livejournal.com]

My ties to MBFIAV are that I saw it in fourth grade, loved it, found it hysterically funny -- enough that I watched it about three times a week for six months -- and began my infautation with vampire lore.

And it got me to claim to all my classmates that I was a "living vampire" much like Jeremy Capello for the entire spanse of my fourth grade year. And I pulled some really sad shit to try to prove it them all. There's a particular incident in mind involving red food coloring that I didn't live down for years.

YEARS.

And Buffy and the Princess Bride are classics. I was drawing the Buffy / Sailor Moon parallels long before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon.

[saturn-shumba.livejournal.com]

That asshole line is great. GREAT.

I need to go back and read some of your other movie/review entries...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I started the "No Nutritional Value" sort of reviews because I either have hyperbolically good responses to movies or really, really bad ones. It's nice to occasionally watch a movie that is just silly and inoffensive and doesn't provoke me except in that it's fun.

It also spares me and everyone else a long-winded review. Which I tend to do all too often. But I'm glad you're liking it.

(And yes, the asshole line was marvelous. The whole character of the zombie kid was not unlike the narrator of Jonathon Coulton's "Re: Your Brains.")

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Not as amusing as zombies school girls eating people because they (the zombie school girls) love them ^_^


...in case you're wondering, it's a reference to Stacy

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Never heard of it, but it might be worth a look.

Matter of fact, there was a scene in this movie where the zombie kid showed how much he loved the girl by dint of eating somebody who'd already died just to have enough energy to make it to prom. I don't follow the logic--"I ate someone because I love you!"--but I gather it is supposed to be "sweet."

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368296/

If netfliks doesn't have it let me know and I can lend you my copy (assuming my sister hasn't stolen it again).

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Netflix does appear to have it. What you failed to mention was that it seems to be a Japanese horror movie. Given my previous attempts to wade into Japanese horror, I might have to skip this one.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

...this is very much not horror, not by any stretch of the imagination ^_^

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You say that now, and then I end up watching Suicide Club.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Ok, between the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness references and how it ends, I expect you to be laughing more than cringing.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

A good review (doesn't spoil much of anything)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWuvhPAvwk