{"id":226,"date":"2007-09-21T08:37:46","date_gmt":"2007-09-21T13:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weeklyrob.dreamhosters.com\/?p=226"},"modified":"2007-09-21T08:37:46","modified_gmt":"2007-09-21T13:37:46","slug":"the-ex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=226","title":{"rendered":"The Ex (with a spoiler)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night I rented &#8220;The Ex,&#8221; which got a rockin&#8217; 20% on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/the_ex\/\">Rotten Tomatoes<\/a>. In other words, it was supposed to be terrible.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t actually <em>terrible<\/em>. But that&#8217;s it for the movie review. I just wanted to mention something that I think they did really wrong.<\/p>\n<p>The movie is more or less an extended sit-com about a guy who has to deal with a rotten co-worker. The rotten co-worker is in a wheelchair, so the protagonist has all kinds of guilt about being nasty to him.<\/p>\n<p>Then, at the last minute, they pull out the twist that the wheelchair guy can actually walk. And that information, I guess, gives us all the right to hate him and want him to suffer.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s what they did wrong. Let&#8217;s face it, some people in wheelchairs must be jerks, right? Some of them must be mean-spirited. It just can&#8217;t be true that when you lose your ability to walk, you suddenly gain saintliness.<\/p>\n<p>So why can&#8217;t we be pissed off at a guy in a wheelchair?<\/p>\n<p>At the turning point in the movie, the wheelchair guy says something along the lines of, &#8220;hey, I&#8217;ve beaten you and humiliated you on every count, and you still have the gall to feel sorry for me? Well, don&#8217;t.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That was an interesting point. And I figured that the main guy would take that to heart and go kick some ass. But instead, wheelchair guy stands up. See, the message is: don&#8217;t feel sorry for him, because HE CAN WALK. They missed the opportunity to say, &#8220;don&#8217;t feel sorry for him, because he&#8217;s not worth it. He&#8217;s a bad person. And anyway, in case you haven&#8217;t noticed, he doesn&#8217;t need you to, &#8217;cause he&#8217;s doing fine.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sigh. Those guys should have watched <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/title\/tt0436613\/\">Murderball<\/a> before making this flick. Or maybe they did, but chickened out at the last minute. Still, what can we expect from a 20% Rotten Tomato?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night I rented &#8220;The Ex,&#8221; which got a rockin&#8217; 20% on Rotten Tomatoes. In other words, it was supposed to be terrible. It wasn&#8217;t actually terrible. But that&#8217;s it for the movie review. I just wanted to mention something that I think they did really wrong. The movie is more or less an extended [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-humanity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}