Everybody's Got One

Usually I'm jazzed about the Oscars. Not this year.

The other day I had a conversation (well, not so much a conversation, more a heated debate, really) about movies. What started it was one of my dear friends saying on Facebook that she would not be spending her hard-earned cash on going to see the new Gerard Butler flick (despite his devilish good looks and all-round general buffness, not to mention his rakish Irish brogue that makes women go all moist and fluttery), purely because she found his 2009 movie, The Ugly Truth, in which he starred alongside the lovely Katherine Heigl, to be utter codswallop. She also mentioned that since the new movie, The Bounty Hunter, co-stars the also-very-lovely Jennifer Aniston, that will give her extra reason not to see it, describing it as a "stinker move".

This started a debate in which one person put forth the theory that any movie starring Ms. Aniston, or indeed anyone named Jennifer, is utter crap, citing a stack of movies starring La Aniston, along with titles by Lopez, Garner, and indeed, Ms. Love Hewitt. Now that got my goat.

I am a fan of all of the above. Ms. Aniston's  The Break-Up and Along Came Polly are among my favourites. I love Jen Garner in Daredevil and Elektra. J-Lo did some sterling work in Enough, The Wedding Planner and even Maid In Manhattan.


In the end we agreed to disagree. It's clear that when it comes to movies, it's all a matter of personal taste. People like different things in different ways for different reasons. For some obscure reason some people like gory slasher movies, some do not. You don't see Hostel 2 or Saw V sweeping the Oscars, yet people like them and watch them. So all I can say is, you like what you like and you hate what you hate. No amount of debate on Facebook is going to alter anybody's likes and dislikes.

For this reason, I am avoiding the Oscars like the proverbial plague. Because when you get down to it, the members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are just people after all, and their opinion may not be representative of anyone but themselves. They have their opinions, and you know the old saying about opinions...

But I will not hear a word against the Jennifers, or Gerard Butler.