Belated film reviews: Because I Said So

On Sunday night, I decided to watch Because I Said So, and, objectively, I could save us all the trouble and sum it up in one sentence: "Well, that's one hour and forty-one minutes of my life I will never get back."

But, as the nice girl who always takes one for the team, I will be elaborating on that and turn the sentence into "I watched Because I Said So, so none of you ever has to."

I usually research the films I am about to watch on Google for three different reasons. First, I want to know how long they are. Second, I need to figure out if they fit the mood I am in. Finally, I check which streaming services they are on. I googled Because I Said So, and I chose to ignore the premise. This nightmare was all on me. I read "A mother, afraid her daughter will make the same mistakes as her, sets out to find her a suitable partner" and I chose to ignore what it meant. There is so much to unpack in this sentence alone, but I decided to not consider it. I brought this all on myself. Do you want to know why?

Because the cast included Mandy Moore and Lauren Graham.

I misguidedly decided to embark on this hour and forty-one-minute long journey because Mandy Moore and Lauren Graham were along for the ride. I have loved Mandy Moore ever since I was a little girl. I discovered her in the early 00s, when she released her underrated hit single Candy. It was all I ever wanted my teenage years to be and is still on regular rotation in my playlists. I found out about Lauren Graham when I first saw Gilmore Girls, where she portrays the iconic Lorelai Gilmore, all super fast sentences, pop culture references, and too much coffee. I also recognised the actress who played Mae, the middle daughter, from somewhere. I knew I had seen her in something, but couldn't remember where, mostly because I had missed out when her name appeared on the screen. I couldn't put a name to a face, but I can associate Piper Perabo with Coyote Ugly.

And now, I have sufficiently avoided talking about the trainwreck that is Because I Said So. If you want to know how much I hated this film, a, stick around, and b, know that my personal highlight lasted for about two words. I may have mentioned it before, but I am a huge fan of the show RuPaul's Drag Race. In season four, one of the queens, Willam, one of whose strengths is her acting abilities, mentions many, many, MANY a time that she is an actress and that she has been in Hollywood movies. One of those films is Because I Said So. She pronounces two words, "Vera Wang", sat around a table in full drag, and it was my highlight purely because it gave me the opportunity to stop thinking about how much I disliked the rest of the film for about three seconds.

I guess the rest of this is going to be a list of all the things that particularly ground my gears in Because I Said So.

A- The film revolves around Daphne, the matriarchal figure of the Wilder clan, and her three daughters: Maggie, Mae, and Milly. None of the sisters have any sort of discernible personality. They could be all completely interchangeable. Mae is pretty much inexistent. Maggie is a psychologist, God knows why, because, overall, she shows as much empathy as a butcher's knife. She is never defined as a sister, a daughter, a wife, a mother, let alone a woman. She complains a lot, but then again, everyone does. The scenarists, pardon my French, have done absolutely fuck all with Milly's personality, and she is supposed to be the main character. Am I meant to relate to her? Sure, I wouldn't want to be her, mostly because I would absolutely hate her mother. But am I meant to find myself in anything else in her? I couldn't figure that one that, because the film doesn't give me the grounds for it.

B- As previously mentioned, Maggie, the eldest daughter, is a psychologist. How come she has never noticed, not once, not a single time in all her life, that the relationship her mother has built with every one of her daughters, but particularly Milly, is horribly toxic? How come it is never mentioned? If anyone in this whole damn movie is qualified to sit Daphne down and have a serious conversation with her, it is Maggie. Instead, she brushes it all under the carpet and treats her most faithful and struggling patient like dirt, notably by talking at length about him and his woes to her family and cancelling an appointment to talk to her sister, who she speaks to on the phone every night. The scene where the patient knocks on Maggie's office door while she is locked up with Milly defies my understanding capabilities. Milly, annoyed and angry by his constant presence, shouts something along the lines of "She's been saying for ten years how you want to kill yourself, go for it" while opening the office window. WHO approved of this? I am usually pretty laid-back when it comes to humour and what is in poor taste or not, but that was just disgusting.

C- Am I meant to feel sympathetic towards Daphne at all? Am I meant to side with her at any point? She talks about healthy relationships while she is unable to have one with any of her daughters, but specifically Milly. (She decided to spell her daughter's name Milly with a Y when Millie with an -ie was right there.) She shouts at her adult daughter in the fitting room of a clothing store because said daughter does not like the dress that has been chosen for her and doesn't want to wear it at work. She calls her children all the time and turns up at their apartments and workplaces unannounced. She never takes no for an answer. She is emotionally manipulative and cries to get her way. (This is a sixty-year-old woman we are describing, not a toddler.) She writes an ad to find Milly a lifelong partner without informing her or consulting her on the contents. She wants to be the one who chooses what kind of man her daughter marries. She doesn't believe that Milly being a successful business owner and having a lovely place to live equates to having a "life" because she isn't married. She judges the way Milly dresses, laughs, sings, and even the way she has arranged the furniture in her flat.

See, I have had a toxic and emotionally abusive best friend. Those years were some of the hardest of my life. Being constantly judged and critiqued on my physical appearance, my clothing choices, my life decisions was awful. Having to agree to everything to avoid arguments and endless fights was exhausting. Bending over backwards to stop someone from crying when you know you haven't done anything wrong at all was belittling and humiliating. After five years, I was mentally tired and a little broken, and, six years later, I still find it hard to believe when someone is kind to me, loves me for who I am, and tells me they are proud of me. Watching an entire film with one of the main characters displaying all those traits made me uncomfortable to say the least, even more so when I realised it wouldn't ever be resolved or addressed. It, pardon my French, pissed me off so much when it was just put down as a little quirk Daphne developed because she raised her three daughters by herself and never took a second to exist for herself. She's not the heroine! She's the villain! She's the one who's emotionally scarring and manipulating her daughters! She didn't just get there because she needed to get laid!

Bin the whole thing.

It's no wonder Diane Keaton was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress when that movie came out. The trophy was taken by Lindsay Lohan for her performance in I Know Who Killed Me, and, granted, I haven't seen it, but I wonder how that could have possibly been any worse than the trainwreck that is Because I Said So.

D- As we have briefly touched upon, Daphne sets out to find Milly a lifelong partner, and writes an ad in the online paper, which is what I have gathered from the baffling "I can't use the Internet without ending up on a porn website, and it's turning on my dog" scene. Daphne struggles with her computer like the boomer she is, but where else do you find those ads apart from the newspaper? The advert is longer than the average terms and conditions contract no one ever reads, and not a single word of it has been decided by Milly, who is supposed to want to marry the chosen guy. After sending out the ad into the world, Daphne meets the men who replied to it, and we need to address the quick but blatant display of racism in this scene. One of the questions Daphne asks is: "When I say marriage, you say..." (It's the scene where we see Willam fill in the blank with "Vera Wang.") One of the pretenders is a man of colour who evidently does not speak nor understand English well, and it's supposed to be portrayed as some sort of funny moment. Look at all the men who replied to Daphne's ad and don't fit the criteria! One is a drag queen! One doesn't speak English well enough to answer a question! One is Maggie's most dependent patient! One has allergies! How hilarious! Except that dismissing someone based on their origin or language is racist. Full stop, no discussion. Watching this being chucked in the middle of a scene that was designed to be comedic, even though it failed miserably, was painful.

E- The men Milly meets, part one. Oh, boy. During Because I Said So, Milly meets and dates two men, both of whom have met her mother on the same day. The first of them is Jason, who swept Daphne off her feet almost immediately. He's a traditional rom-com wet dream, the man who looks too good to be true. He is charming, he wears suits, he knows his way around fine dining, he is learning how to speak Italian, and he is an architect. The problem is...he is also the worst. When he takes Milly out on their first date at a restaurant, he takes the liberty of ordering her dinner. Pragmatically, they have likely not spoken about potential dietary requirements or food allergies, so that is a careless move, but, most importantly, a red flag. If I went to the restaurant with someone I don't know and they ordered my entire damn dinner for me, implying that I cannot choose for myself, I would be out of the door before the drinks were even served. On top of that, Milly is a caterer. Food is her livelihood. She definitely knows a lot more about it than Jason does. She is perfectly capable of choosing her dinner. The second red flag for me was the scene when they hang out on Jason's balcony, even though it was evidently not balcony weather. When they make their way back inside the flat, Milly accidentally breaks a plate and profusely apologises before asking if there is anywhere she can get another one to replace it. Jason angrily replies that no, she cannot, because those belonged to a dead relative. Milly then asks if he is okay, and he replies, pointedly, "I'm great," mirroring the way she speaks. First, dude gets irrationally angry over a plate. Second, he is sarcastic, pointed, and turns the way Milly speaks against her. Again, if someone did this to me, I would be on a taxi back home before the remains of the broken plate were in the bin. They break up when Jason confesses he found Milly through her mother's ad, which she knew nothing about, and is, quite obviously, another red flag. If you're down with Daphne's idea, you can get in the bin, stat.

F- The men Milly meets, part two. Her second boyfriend/suitor/person, Johnny, also meets Daphne at the hotel where she is interviewing the men who replied to her advert. Contrary to the others, that's not the reason why he is here. He just happens to work there as a guitarist in the background noise band. He briefly chats with Daphne, and she immediately dismisses him as not good enough for Milly. He's a musician! He has a tattoo on his hand! (Speaking of, Johnny has a tiny tattoo on the top of his hand but seemingly none on his arms or chest, and I am pretty sure tattoo purists would have a problem with it.) Johnny decides that he would quite like to meet Milly and, because Daphne is not going to be on his side, he takes one of the business cards Jason abandoned on the table when he left, and simply turns up at Milly's work to talk to her and ask her out. As you do. It's all pretty normal to want to meet someone you know nothing about, to track them down to their workplace, and to ask them out several times in the space of five minutes, even after they say no. That's not a red flag. At all. Yes, their relationship was portrayed as kinda cute. Johnny seemed together, and the relationship he shared with his young son Lionel was adorable. But was this enough to ignore how weirdly it started? No.

G- As is shown pretty early on, Daphne does not have a single clue what boundaries are when it comes to the relationship she shares with her three adult, independent daughters, two of whom are happily married, and one of whom is a mother. They are on the phone all the time. They have group calls every day and, when it is not convenient for one of them, Daphne still tries to keep them all on the phone regardless. See, when you say "group call" on the telephone, I think of two pieces of filmed fiction. The first one is Mean Girls, a satire of all things teen rom-com. The second one is Lizzie McGuire, where all the protagonists are fourteen-year-olds who mostly chat about their impossible homework, how much they hate school, and their crush on Ethan Craft. My point is: group phone calls are a kid thing. They are the kind of thing I would have maybe liked when I was thirteen, not thirty, let alone an adult married with kids. Maybe I am a hyper private person, too, which I definitely am, in some ways, but watching people who are related by blood talking about sex so explicitly was uncomfortable. I wouldn't want to know what kind of sex life my sisters, daughters, or mother have. It feels extremely weird to me. But anything goes in this film, apparently, and the Wilder women have a casual conversation about orgasms while trying on shoes at the mall.

H- The Wilder women like to sing together at family gatherings, which is thankfully only shown twice. It does not seem to have any sort of background or explanation, there are no musical instruments anywhere, and the film soundtrack is pretty bland and forgettable. I'm expecting they chucked it in there because Mandy Moore is a professional singer, a damn good one at that, and they wanted to do something with it, as if two nonsensical singing scenes were enough to save this trainwreck of a film. The first of the two takes place at Daphne's sixtieth birthday party. She and her daughters are gathered around a piano, and they belt into song in front of all their relatives. Daphne interrupts the singing because Milly decided to take the soprano part instead of leaving it to her, which turns into a full-blown fight that results in Daphne losing her voice and moving in with Milly for a few days. Apparently, when this woman loses the ability to speak, which should be a blessing to everyone, she cannot take care of herself anymore and has to be babysat by one of her daughters. Standard, really. It is also a prime example of Daphne manipulating her way to what she wanted, by publicly humiliating Milly during a leisurely jam session and then crying because it was her birthday, and she did not deserve to be treated like this. The second singing scene takes place at Daphne's wedding, and the most awkward part of it is how uncomfortable Lauren Graham looks through it all. She looks so alarmed, you can tell she'd rather go back to Star's Hollow.

I- While she is being babysat by her daughter because she cannot speak anymore and cornering her into telling her what an orgasm feels like, Daphne meets Joe, Johnny's father. He turns up at Milly's flat at night, unannounced, because Lionel cannot sleep, and he doesn't know what to do anymore. They stick around, they get to know each other and, one thing leading to another, they end up kissing on the couch in what is the single most awkward make-out session I remember ever seeing in a film. They stay together, Daphne discovers the joys of good sex, and they get married at the end of the film. All could be well in the world if it was not for the fact that Daphne's daughter, Milly, is dating Joe's son, Johnny. Was this meant to be another Gossip Girl type of situation when Lily and Rufus got married, and then, Serena and Dan did too? Imagine how weird it would be to marry your mom's husband's son. By the time the wedding rolls around, Johnny is not anywhere around Milly, which could imply they have broken up again, which would be equally uncomfortable at family gatherings. They never resolved what was up with that, but having the love interests' remaining parents getting married together while the kids are dating was just the cherry on the cake of how truly tragic Because I Said So is.

That's an hour and forty-one minutes of my life I will never, ever get back, and I personally feel like I may be entitled to financial compensation for this.

(Watching the Candy music video on loop for an hour and forty-one minutes would have been a much more enjoyable experience.)