Reviews by Joreth

The Summary tells us that Lola is pregnant and doesn't know which of the two men she loves is the father. I had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, I was let down. It was "poly", but the movie sucked.

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This was on a list of poly movies, and the Netflix description reads:

Packing double entendres and boudoir innuendos galore, director Ernst Lubitsch's racy comedy Design for Living stars Gary Cooper, Frederic March and Miriam Hopkins as an inseparable threesome living in a Parisian garret and immersed in a ménage à trois.

Made in 1933, I sat down to watch it thoroughly prepared to hate it.

I loved it.

This was a quirky little film that, for once, didn't feature people doing stupid things. zen_shooter decided about 4 movies ago that all poly movies should come with a lable that says "Warning! Stupid People Inside" because they all seem to feature people doing the most godawful, inane things to each other.

But not this one.

And it was made in 1933!

Y'know, the fundies want to re-write history and tell us that "traditional marriage" is the nuclear family and has been the standard family model since the Flintstones, and that teen pregnancy and sex outside of marriage never happened except in a few scattered scandals that we try to ignore.

That simply isn't true. Popular media and entertainment created in previous eras still exist and reflect the morality of their society.

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Micki & Maude is a bedroom farce-style romantic comedy that I was expecting to disappoint me. I'll be honest, I'm not really a big Dudley Moore fan and the idea of a poly movie put out in the last 30 years in America, rather than a movie about being torn between 1 suitable lover and 1 unsuitable lover making it appropriate to dump one of them and live monogamously, seemed far fetched. But this movie had two major redeeming features that lead me to include it on a list of Poly-ish movies, regardless of how "good" the movie is otherwise.

Rob is a man who loves children and wants nothing more than to raise a huge family. Unfortunately, he is in love with, and married to, a career-driven woman. If the roles were reversed, since the women have the babies, she could just have one and be a stay-at-home mom and he would support her with his money-making but emotionally-distant career, and that would be the end of it. But since it is the husband who wants the kids, even if Micki were willing to be the "workaholic father-figure" and let Rob be the stay-at-home Dad, she would still have to be the one to get pregnant, carry to term, and deliver - all of which threatens her very tenuous position as lawyer-bucking-for-judge. So Rob is just shit out of luck without her cooperation.

Then he meets Maude during a particularly busy time at work for his wife, in which they manage to have not seen each other in roughly 5 weeks in spite of living under the same roof. Maude is a cellist who doesn't work very much. She is spontaneous and creative and free, and she adores Rob. So while Rob is feeling particularly isolated and abandoned in his relationship with his wife, along comes a woman who has the time and ability to make Rob her whole world. He finds himself quickly infatuated and begins an affair.

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It's so much worse when they manage to get you to like a movie before they turn it to shit.

I watched "Paint Your Wagons", a cheesy movie made in the 1960s based on a musical written in the 1940s based on life in California in the 1840s.

I fully expected this movie to suck - after all, it's a musical staring Clint Eastwood, and it got terrible reviews even from people who like musicals. It was incredibly cheesy, even for a musical, but it managed to suck me into the story and make me care about the characters. It was surprisingly deep and progressive in places.

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On the recommendation of zensidhe , I watched Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs (available streaming on Netflix). It's a poly story. Seriously. No, I mean it, it is!

I enjoy Futurama, but I wouldn't call myself a "fan". I find it mildly amusing and don't object to it being on, but I like Simpsons and Southpark better. Futurama goes higher on the preferred watch list than most other adult-oriented animations though. So I found this movie to be about on par with my overall impression of Futurama - mildly amusing. But, personal preferences aside, it did, indeed, have a strong poly content.

Spoiler alert!

So Fry (basically the main character) falls in love with this girl, Colleen, and on the day he moves in with her, he discovers that she's living with 4 other guys. What follows is an amusing hyperbolic dinner conversation (amusing for it's not so-hyperbolic content) that spans enthusiastic embrace of polyamory to in-fighting & ad hominem attacks. After Colleen admonishes everyone for misbehaving and shames them into just being happy, Fry starts to try and accept his new poly family, but she jumps up and runs out the door to go on yet another date, leaving her 5 men at home without her.

Fry decides he can't handle a group relationship after all and breaks up with her. Then goes back to his crewmates to sulk, where he once again decides he can't live without her.

So, while Fry is bouncing back and forth between desire for Colleen and feelings of rejection and abandonment because of her interest in other men, the universe is threatened by a giant tentacle monster from a rift in the universe. The tentacle monster finds Fry and attaches a tentacle to the top of his spinal column, whereby Fry becomes the tentacles' spokesman and champion. He founds a new religion preaching the gospel of the tentacles, which is to love the tentacles and the tentacles will love you. That seems to be the entire message.

Eventually, it is discovered that the tentacles are not just hooking into the brainstem and causing feelings of love, but that the tentacles are actually "genticals", er, having sex with the humans and other aliens through the tentacle and the spinal column. So the people all get grossed out, and now the tentacle monster comes forward to speak with his own voice.

Yivo, the tentacle monster, admits to originally wanting a quickie with all the sentients, but when he hooked up, he discovered our loneliness. He is lonely too. You see, "he" is actually an entire universe with no one to talk to. So, although it was originally "just sex" for him, now he's in love and wants the chance to woo everyone properly.

So, all the sentients get together and decide to give the tentacle universe a chance at a first date, to see if they really do have something special together without the subterfuge. A bunch of humans and aliens go on dates and report back. At the meeting, it's decided to continue dating the tentacle universe.

But soon, that's not enough. Fry proclaims that he has received no intentions of a commitment, and he doesn't think he can go through the heartache again of a comittmentless relationship. It is then decided that they should all "break up" with Yivo. So they go in person to do the deed, whereby Yivo surprises the emissaries with a giant diamond engagement ring. Once again, the humans and aliens in our universe are convinced to remain in a relationship with the tentacle universe. Yivo then invites everyone to move in with him and sends down golden escalators to bring everyone through the rift to the tentacle universe.

Make note that this whole courtship was only towards the biological sentient beings in the universe. Robots were not included. This means that Bender, the robot with the attitude ("you can bite my shiny metal ass!") is left alone on Earth with only other robots & he has lost his entire crew.

Back in the tentacle universe, the people have arrived via golden escalators to a world of fluffy white clouds with harps just lying around everywhere, and a species of dumb "birds" that look suspiciously like human angels with white wings and robes that eat the parasites off Yivo in a mutually beneficial sort of symbiotic relationship. Fry finds himself lying in a post-orgiastic puppy pile on Mattress Island wondering why they used to all be so jealous, and isn't this so much better?

Back in our universe, Bender decides that it's up to him to rescue his crew from Yivo, now that (as he imagines) the rush of infatuation must be wearing off and the realities of cohabitating life must be disillusioning Fry and the rest of the crew. So ensues a quest to the rift and a battle between Bender and his demonic robot army dressed as pirates, and the tentacle universe.

Fry tries to stop the battle & convince Bender that he's actually really happy there and to please leave, when Yivo stops to question how Bender got the mysterious material he coated his sword with that allows him to penetrate the previously impenetrable hide of the tentacles. Fry has to admit to sending a letter back to Bender telling him how happy he is, in direct violation of their explicit agreement for Fry not to have any contact with any other universes (the letter was written on the material that Bender used to coat his sword that gave him the ability to chop through the tentacles).

Yivo decides he can no longer trust Fry & the relationship is too damaged to continue, and sends everyone else back to their own universe. Yivo does keep Colleen, though, as the only one who truly understands him, leaving Fry still partner-less. Fry asks why Bender caused all the trouble in the first place, after all, everyone was happy and in love. Bender says "Love? That's not love! ... Bender knows love! And love doesn't share itself with the world. Love is suspicious. Love is needy. Love is fearful. Love is greedy. My friends! There is no great love without great jealousy!" and he proceeds to choke his crewmates with his hug and his proclamation "I love you meatbags!"

I could use this to write a whole journal entry about how the Monogamous Mindset* does, indeed see love in such terms and why and how that's the problem with the world. But I won't. I'll let you all hear those words spoken in your head tinged with the irony and sarcasm I'm so well known for and let that make my point, for now.

I enjoy sarcasm and irony, and I, in particular, enjoy media that uses irony and sarcasm to make political and social commentary. So if you enjoy Matt Groening's animation and humor style, I recommend this movie. If you don't, I still recommend that it go on a list of poly-ish movies. It has been added to my Netflix Poly-ish Movies list (which you can now see even if you don't have a Netflix account!), and I will include a copy of it in the Poly Movie Library, available at orlandopoly meetings if the group ever decides to have a movie screening for a meeting.


*The Monogamous Mindset is a particular mindset found within monogamous societies that seek to justify and protect the institution of monogamy in direct opposition to contrary evidence and with many faulty assumptions as premises. It does not imply every single person who engages in monogamous relationships - that is why it is in capital letters and why I didn't just say "monogamy" or "monogamous people". One can be monogamous without having the Monogamous Mindset, and one can attempt to engage in non-monogamous relationships while still maintaining the Monogamous Mindset. In other words, if you're monogamous and don't do this, then I'm not talking about you.