>though, to be sure, she's holding this summer comedy to an unusually high standard: "Her character becomes a cipher, a foil ... without being allowed any epiphanies of her own."<

Oh, come on, Tracy--that's a disingenuous arguement that's contradicted by the movie's own characterization standards. KU goes into much detail about its hero and his motivations, so why shouldn't it do the same for its herione, whose conflicts are just as crucial to driving the story? Stevens is right to smell a rat with this movie--it stacks the deck and reduces the herione's motivations down to "Forget all that women-want-lives-of-their-own stuff--down deep, Alison and every 'ambitious career woman' out there _really_ just want to be wifey/moos and change their men into good husbands/daddies." Since the movie really refuses to face up to Alison's options (abortion, adoption), her character is pretty much reduced to "she's a good person because she wants to be a mother."

If KU has proved anything, it's that critics (and media) are still vulnerable to conservative guilt-tripping over the "spouse and kids always equals a happy life" issue. As the book SINGLED OUT noted, people _want_ to believe marriage and children is the only formula for happiness. It's become such a heated issue in the last twenty years because real life keeps proving that's not the case. The more such examples crop up, the more society insists that marriage _has_ to be the way. Relatedly, for someone who's written a movie about the joys of wife and family, Apatow himself doesn't sound like family is the perfect happiness he thought it was supposed to be. In a NYT Sunday Magazine interview a couple weeks back, he sounded like he enjoyed hanging out with this friends and making movies more than he did family life. Honestly, the more I see of marriage-rabid media folks, the more I respect someone like George Clooney. He knows he's not cut out for marriage/kids; likes his career and hanging with his friends; and refuses to be shamed into living a life that's not right for him. Those are _real_ values and thinking for oneself--not following someone else's script.

>What absolutely baffles me is how people can eat heavy, fatty, food all the time and go about their business as usual....

Don't people who eat badly just feel sluggish and sick and tired *all the time*?<

Well, for one thing, there are a lot of other reasons people consider first. Stressful jobs; overwork; having a lot to do; problems; daily-wear-and-tear are all causes people are more likely to think of before food. For another thing, no, one doesn't feel badly all the time. One just figures one ate too much, not that the food itself is poor quality.

>...do you do that to yourself if it makes you feels so bad, or do people just not realize that it's the food making them feel like that because that's the only kind of food they eat and they've never felt the difference?<

Yep. As others have noted, nutrition education and fresh-food availability aren't as easy to come by as they should be. And if you grow up not knowing this information, it's easy to develop bad eating habits and gain weight in a short amount of time. Relatedly, the "fat is evil; you are all just slobs" harassment overweight people face doesn't help any. Losing weight is a long, frustrating process no matter how hard you try, and unless you make crash-diet kind of progress, you get no points for being anything but a perfect hardbody. And why should overweight people want to listen to folks who regard them as less-than-human no matter what they do--and whose advice doesn't match up to reality? Down deep, one knows those people don't have one's best interest at heart--they just want to take out their insecurities and hatred.

...is that some of the best work on TV is being done by Broadway/Off-Broadway playwrights who can't make a living in the theater. Check out the writing staff on any of the LAW AND ORDER franchises, particularly L&O: CI.

>What's really a little disturbing is that, light comedy notwithstanding, there is a whole set of the population that wants to believe that true love or at least happiness should be a function of luck notwithstanding a zillion bad choices.<

Hey, it's all part of The Script--the "happy ever after means being married-with-baybee, period." It doesn't matter how you get to the point--in fact, the more haphazard and unthinking the process, the more "romantic" and "sweet" it is. And it really doesn't matter if you are happy. Abiding by TS; pumping out those babies; and getting trapped into becoming a consumer is the _only_ way you become a mature/worthwhile/"real" person. Family courts and divorce lawyers' offices are full of people who learn too late that TS is not the only way to live.

>My problem with this movie isn't her "wow" reaction, since it is typical of Hollywood, but with the idea that it's funny to make the guy "grow up" by springing a pregnancy on him, and that deep down guys are really just longing for this kick in the pants.<

It is a mystery to me why guys like Brightstar and Ben Dover aren't as angry at this assumption as they are at women in general. Trust me, no woman with sense 1) wants to make a guy "grow up;" 2) thinks that men want/need this kind of kick in the pants. Those attitudes are espoused primarily by right-wing conservatives, not women, and they are insulting to men and women alike.