I always end up watching a romantic comedy on Saturday mornings. It's not because I really like them, in fact I can't stand them. But, every Saturday morning there's no less than 36 on television at a time. I guess it's to make people reconsider spending their lives with that one night stand from Friday. I can't think of any other reason. These movies are usually pretty bad too, good movies rarely make it to TV and when they do it's like a one night only special or something. I ended up watching Hit and Run this time, a movie from 2012.
The movie follows Charlie, who is in witness protection and his girlfriend Annie who needs to get to LA for a new job. Along the way they run into some crazy hijinks that test the bounds of their relationship and true love. It's a touching love story, or it would be if it wasn't so bad it was actually funny. US Marshall Randy Anderson was assigned to keep track of Charlie and really just lets him ride out of the small town without noticing. Randy also has this thing where he can't touch his gun without emptying the clip, it'd be funnier if that wasn't how police officers really act.
Before they leave Annie's creepy ex-boyfriend uses his gay sex obsessed police officer brother, Terry, to run Charlie's license plate to learn his real name is Yule Perkins. After a quick google he learns Charlie was the getaway driver in a bank robbery where someone was killed. He testified to get out of a prison sentence. But can we talk about how Gil, Annie's ex is a creepy bastard and the personification of middle aged nice guy white guy who think he's owed everything. I mean everything. He contacts Dimitri who Charlie had snitched on. They all head out to track Charlie.
Things go well and there's this running joke about rednecks who like Charlie's car because it's loud. There's this scene where Charlie calls one guy a "faggot" and Annie spends the next 10 minutes of the film giving a touching speech on why using that word is wrong and Charlie promises to never use it again. I'm only bringing this moment up to show how this movie thinks it's so fucking progressive but then throws all that out the window later.
They all track Charlie and Annie to a hotel where a Charlie has to steal a car and evade everyone. He explains to Annie that he testified against Dimitri because he was engaged to Neve who had planned the robbery and didn't want her to get life. Neve is now married to Dimitri. Annie is disgusted and demands Charlie drop her off so she can get a ride from Gil's creepy ass. Eventually they get stopped while Annie gets taken from Gil by Neve and Dimitri. Charlie goes to meet them and it's all revealed why they hate him.
It's not because they snitched but because Dimitri was raped in prison and he blames Charlie for that. We spend the next 10 minutes of the movie talking about how depending on what race the man was and how big his penis was, being raped isn't so bad. I'm serious. According to this film if a black man rapes you it's the worst thing of all, if a Latino man rapes you at least you know he'll be gentle and if an Asian man rapes you it's like sex with a woman because "they're so feminine." So, no matter how this movie tries to beat you over the head with equality for LGBTQ people, it's still racist as fuck and considers rape a joke as long as it's a man being raped. I mean, Neve is the only person of color in the whole movie, she says 4 sentences total between 4 different scenes. It's not like it's because she's a bad actress either. Neve is played by Joy Bryant who stared in 77 episodes of Parenthood and the currently leads the TV show Rosewood, which is in its second season currently. C'mon now, this movie is nowhere near funny enough to get away with this.
They take Annie and Charlie to his dad's farm where they reunite for the first time in several years. Charlie and Annie escape using one of his dad's race cars. Terry and Randy arrive now working as a team and capture Dimitri. They only started working together because Terry found Randy on a gay dating app and kept insisting they get together. Charlie and Annie make it to LA for the job interview. She gets the job. Randy and Terry become full US Marshalls.
This movie just sucked and it kept trying to do this thing where it made Annie the super progressive white lady who was okay with some racism but always had the ability to change the hearts and minds of everyone. There's also this thing where they try to pain everyone in academics as a secret drug addicts. It's weird and there's a lot of running jokes that just aren't that funny. The biggest problem isn't even the casual racism or rape jokes. It's the fact that the movie is nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is. Something about watching bad white movies just makes it worse than a bad black movie because you know that the black movie had to beat out 30 other movies just to get made on a minuscule budget and the white movie just got the green light because they knew someone and that's my casual racism Hollywood.
You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet. You can also check out his playthrough of Sleeping Dogs.
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