I haven’t really paid attention to popular culture as a whole since around 2001, which was when I stopped watching television. There are reasons for that (mostly socio-polito-emotio-spiritual), but when I say “as a whole,” I mean by not having an eye on the big picture that TV provides, there are huge trends and phenomena that simply pass me by. What I experience I have to seek out or get online,  so I frequently have no idea whatsoever who the hell is on the cover of People magazine, and I’m pretty much okay with that.

I bring this up because today’s topic, “Most Over-hyped Movie” was giving me quite a bit of trouble. I don’t get overwhelmed with things that make everyone else crazy (coverage of the Royal Wedding, Michael Jackson’s death, celebrity trials, etc), because I’m not tuned-in to any of it. Therefore, though other people mentioned Avatar in this slot, I have to admit that I hadn’t really heard of the movie until it was nominated for a Golden Globe. Likewise, while I’d certainly heard of The Dark Knight long before its release, it wasn’t to the point where my expectations were so high that they would be dashed no matter what. So you see my trouble here. I don’t have enough experience with hype to have a movie that fits, so… how have I decided to twist this meme to fit my egocentric needs? By making it, essentially, “Movie That Was Most Obscured by Hype Surrounding The Film.” Hence, we’ll be talking about Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

I’m not going to belabor the point, but Brangelina vs. Aniston was tiresome to me almost before it began. I’d like to quote the brilliant Jessica (of Heather and Jessica) over at Go Fug Yourself just today, in fact: “[W]e’re going to all be 90 years old and Us Weekly’s hologram (or whatever) will pop up on our forehead to wonder if Aniston is mad because Angelina stole her plot at Forest Lawn.” Indeed. Every bit of publicity for the film was all about whether or not Brad and Angelina were together. If they were together, when did it happen? Is dear Jen-Jen devastated? Is Angelina the bitch femme-fatale we always knew she was? Is sweet little down-to-earth Jenny going to lose it over this and accidentally consume some calories in a fit of depression? And oh… are men ever even remotely responsible for their actions, or does everything all come down to it always being the women’s fault?

It was infuriating and exhausting, and it completely overshadowed what is a truly fantastic flick. I can’t say it actually hurt the movie’s box office, because I’m not sure if 90 million profit is considered good enough, but I only saw the damn thing a year or so later, since I’d heard nothing about how good it was over all that noise. And really, it’s freaking great; somewhere in the first half-hour or so I realized that what I was watching was the closest thing to my favorite genre (as I’ve mentioned twice before), the Screwball Comedy, as I’d seen since the forties. It’s not exactly the perfect fit, but you’ve got contentious leads who will neither give an inch to the other, whose battle is really a stylized mating dance. There’s heightened emotion channeled into action, snappy dialogue, and brilliant supporting characters. There’s a huge dramatic arc on which the big, damn action movie rests, but underneath it is the through-line of a couple coming to a crisis in their marriage. Will they make it through or kill each other in the process? We know what’s going to happen, but it’s the ride that makes it thrilling.

I have a theory that the filmmakers (or at least the screenwriter) were deliberately paying homage to the beloved genre with the title. Alfred Hitchcock loved the Screwball Comedies of the thirties and tried one on for size in the early forties with a movie titled… Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It starred such towering comic actors as Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery, but it was, in truth, a bit of  a dud. It’s fine, it’s just neither very funny nor particularly screwy. It has nothing to do with the 2005 film; that’s not a remake as some have thought. But what I find very interesting is when pondering, “just what would a Hitchcock Screwball Comedy be like,” the Brangelina version comes much closer to what you’d think you’d get from him. I think it was intentional, and I think that they were trying to infuse movie comedy with something it’s lacked for decades. I love them for it and I love Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Try it on yourself, and just pretend you don’t know the minutiae of the stars’ lives. Or, better yet, just tune it all out, and you can live in a blissful state where you don’t have to care.