Thursday Movie Picks - Parties

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join the weekly party by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!

Are you a party animal? I'm not, generally speaking. I mostly prefer my own couch, a mug of hot tea, and Netflix, but this time of year there are so many parties around that I get out and about more than usual. And I will admit, I usually have a pretty good time. So it's fitting that this week on Thursday Movie Picks the topic is parties. I've picked three movies that center around three very different types of parties. Party on!

The Party (Blake Edwards, 1968) Maybe not the funniest collaboration between director Blake Edwards and star Peter Sellers, The Party is still manic fun. Largely improvised, Edwards just lets Sellers's Indian actor Hrundi V. Bakshi loose at a lavish, over-the-top Hollywood party and watches the insanity that ensues. Something is going on in every square inch of every frame, and watching people react to Sellers is a large part of the fun.

Can't Hardly Wait (Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, 1998) The ur-90s teen movie, with a cast of just about everyone who was anyone in that decade, taking place at the graduation party to end all graduation parties. Ethan Embry is in love with Jennifer Love Hewitt, recently back on the market after ending things with jock Peter Facinelli, only she doesn't know who he is. Seth Green is determined to have sex, but he's affected a white gangsta persona so off-putting it's made him a joke. And everyone else just wants to have a rager. I never went to a party anywhere to close to this in high school, and maybe that's why I like this movie so much.

Bachelorette (Leslye Headland, 2012) Three friends from high school get asked to be a fourth's bridesmaids for her upcoming wedding. The only problem is, the bride is no longer the party girl the other three still are... and they're also kinda mean girls. But they're played by Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, and Lizzy Caplan, so they're VERY fun to watch, even while ruining the titular party for the very sweet Rebel Wilson. The movie's mean streak goes a long way to making it more fun than your average female-led comedy, actually, and it's a much better movie than any of the similar Hangover movies.

Thursday Movie Picks - Teen Comedies

Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. To participate, just pick three movies related to the week's theme. It's easy and fun!

This week's Thursday Movie Picks theme is Teen Comedies. So many and yet so few to choose from!

Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004) This Tina Fey-scripted, Lindsay Lohan-starring film is now a bona fide classic, and thank God for that. It's one of the funniest, smartest, most rewatchable films of the '00s. The quotable lines are endless, the comic performances are iconic (Amy Poehler and Rachel McAdams - funniest mother-daughter pair ever?), and the visual gags are untoppable (THE BUS)! And it's also surprisingly resonant - check out what I wrote about it for The Film Experience's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series a while back. In a perfect world, this would have gotten Oscar noms for Fey's script as well as the performances of Rachel McAdams and/or Amanda Seyfried.

Dick (Andrew Fleming, 1999) If you haven't seen this, man are you in for a treat. The title refers, of course, to Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon, 37th President of the United States. Betsy and Arlene (Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams, at their teenage best) are just two regular teenage girls in the 1970s, trying to win a date with Tad Hamilton heartthrob singer Bobby Sherman. But instead, they witness part of the Watergate scandal. In order to buy their silence, Nixon makes them the Official Presidential Dog Walkers. But then they discover the President's not-so-nice side, and decide to get revenge as only teenage girls can. Dick is hilarious and surprisingly sweet, with killer performances from Williams and Dunst, a very funny cameo from Will Ferrell, and a great, atypical Nixon in Dan Hedaya. And also: AMAZING costumes.

Whip It (Drew Barrymore, 2009) Okay this MIGHT be stretching it a bit, but Whip It is so good that I don't really care. Ellen Page is typically wonderful as the directionless teen Bliss, whose mother (Marcia Gay Harden) makes her compete in beauty pageants... because that's what you do in Texas when your mother is a former beauty queen. But one day, she and her best friend Pash go to check out this thing called Roller Derby, and Bliss is so excited by it that she tries out for a team - and makes it. And, as is typical in both teen flicks and sports flicks, she learns more about Who She Is and Becomes A Better Person in the process. Drew Barrymore directed this, and also features as Smashley Simpson, a member of Bliss's roller derby team, the Hurl Scouts - along with Kristen Wiig (Maggie Mayhem), Zoe Bell (Bloody Holly), Juliette Lewis (Iron Maven), and Ari Graynor (Eva Destruction). The film is alternately tough and sweet, just like its heroine, and it's good enough that it makes you wish Barrymore would hop back into the director's chair sometime soon.