13 December 2011

8 Dec - "Easy to date. That's been my fate, since the age of ten"

Mad About Men (1954)
dir. Ralph Thomas

CAST
Glynis Johns (The Ref, 1994 )

This was a pretty silly old movie. It's about a slutty mermaid who switches places with a prudish schoolteacher, which they are able to easily do because they share a common ancestor and so look and sound identical. The mermaid, Miranda, wraps her tail up in a blanket and pretends the schoolteacher had an accident so she can sit a wheelchair. A bunch of times guys pick her up to move her around, but none of them notice the lack of legs. The ridiculousness is how many innuendos Miranda makes and how everyone just goes along with her crazy mermaid habits because she's pretty, I guess.

Miranda soon discovers that the schoolteacher's fiance is a pretty awful guy, so she decides to catch a better man. It ends up being a choice between this pretty smarmy dude who's already engaged, and another guy who is dashing and wealthy. Unfortunately, the moral seems to be that men love women who are stupid and easy like Miranda, and don't like uppity ladies like the schoolteacher. At the end, when she hesitates to kiss the wealthy fisherman, he's like, "What's wrong, you seem like your old self" and she's all, "Oh, sorry, I'll never be like that again," with a knowing glace back at Miranda. So, 1950s chicks, don't be yourself, the boys don't like that, be easy and undiscriminating.

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