For this month's movie review, I wanted to review a college romance since the whole Game Day Series is now available. I googled around, trying to find something suitable, but I wasn't super excited about any of my choices. Then I mentioned it to my husband and he immediately said, "So you're gonna do Beautiful Disaster, right?"
Ah, Beautiful Disaster. We watched this movie about a year ago for the How Did This Get Made podcast, which reviews bad movies. They've done some classic bad rom-coms like The Hottie and the Nottie and Teen Witch, but they really excel in the Bad Christmas Rom-com oeuvre. The podcast introduced me to such master/disaster pieces as 12 Pups of Christmas and Holiday in Handcuffs. I owe much of my library of snarky rom-com reviews to them. Anyway, I was jazzed when they announced they were doing Beautiful Disaster. It's been more than a decade since I read the book it's based on. I remembered thinking that the MMC was way too possessive and the FMC was absurdly naive, but it was a fun read anyway. That's a good recipe for a bad movie!
Abby Abernathy (Virginia Gardner) is determined to leave her seedy past behind and be a good girl from now on. She joins her best friend America (Libe Barer) for her first semester at college, only to find that America is already enamored with a guy who wants to take them both out on the town. The coolest, hippest event in town? Bare knuckle underground MMA. That's what college girls like, right?
Within seconds of arriving, Abby meets Travis (Dylan Sprouse) when he punches a guy, spraying the man's blood all over Abby's face. Sexy! And she's not the only one who thinks so. Ladies are hurdling out of the crowd to smother him with their breasts, but he's only got eyes for Abby. For #reasons she ends up living in his house and sharing his bed, and she bets him that he can't keep his hands off her for 30 days. But soon, it's Abby who can't keep her hands off Travis, even though he's exactly the sort of bad boy that will drag this good girl down.
The bulk of the movie takes place in this apartment while Abby and Travis fight and America and her boyfriend have a bunch of sex. Then, inexplicably, there's a Vegas interlude where Abby has to save everyone with her poker skills and Travis has to win some sort of pop-up MMA battle, followed by the two of them destroying a hotel room with the power of their attraction. This all takes place within the first six weeks of Abby's freshman year of college, by the way. Six weeks into my freshman year, I was still perfecting the placement of my Klimt and Kerouac posters over my TV/DVD combo.
In my memory, the book was way more angsty, which makes sense with a title like "Beautiful Disaster;" that's the title of a tumblr blog if I've ever heard one. The movie is goofier, and works hard to make Travis's possessive, obsessive behavior seem like relatable boyfriend stuff rather than the regatta of red flags it is. But it can't quite cover that he blows his top every time Abby even talks to another guy. Abby is actually a little savvier than she was in the book; instead of insipidly naive, she's trying too hard to be something she's not. That still doesn't mean she should be with a guy like Travis, who has the emotional regulation of a toddler and the communication skills of a stressed Rottweiler.
Something tells me these two crazy kids haven't solved all their problems... and that something is the existence of a sequel, Beautiful Wedding, which is even more ridiculous than the first movie. It would be a fun double feature to watch them together, especially if your idea of fun is screaming at the TV, "why would you do that?"
If you like your romances with a little more emotional damage than your average rom-com, you might want to take a detour from all the bad decisions and questionable boyfriends. The Greatest Hits is a very different kind of romance, built around the idea that sometimes the hardest part of moving on isn't finding someone new—it's letting go of the person you're still trying to save. [Read my review of The Greatest Hits!]
What's your favorite "so bad it's good" movie? Let me know!