By Emi Gruender and Mia Hanuska
Welcome back to Groovy Movies, where The Shield writers Emi Gruender and Mia Hanuska scour Amazon Prime’s movie selection to find the most hilariously terrible movies! This episode, after accidentally originally landing on a film we very much could not review, we popped some corn, downed a bag of TJ’s Scandinavian Swimmers, and prayed this movie would be better.
Episode 12: You Don’t Say!!
★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ — 2/10
*Beware! Spoilers below!*
We’ll be completely candid—we can’t remember a single thing about the plot of this movie. Even looking over the notes, it’s hard to remember the scenes they correspond to, nor the context of said scenes. But we’ll try our best, for your benefit.
We open with a very long pre-credits scene to a very riveting church scene, where the priest is giving his sermon about how in today’s world, no one can say anything anymore without offending someone. Great start, huh? Cut to the end of church, when Bobbi—our protagonist—and her 15-years-older boyfriend, Jerry, are frustratedly waiting for someone in a Honda Civic to stop blocking their parking spot. Bobbi reluctantly confronts him, but when he tells her to go away because “I’m on the phone, sweetheart,” she concedes immediately. Jerry, on the other hand, goes to confront him angrily and gets punched in the face.
As Jerry and Bobbi eat dinner together, we get more of a glimpse into Bobbi’s meekness. And by “glimpse,” I mean that we got bludgeoned over the head by it over and over and over again. They just could not stop talking about how much of a pushover Bobbi was, and how she never “said what [she] really thought.” Ironically, Bobbi confronted people several times throughout the exposition, and we didn’t think she presented as much of a spineless pushover as the movie insisted.
Bobbi and Jerry go to this little emporium of trinkets and odd stuff, where Jerry finds this mysterious green amulet that is advertised as the “Speaking Stone,” making the wearer say whatever’s on their mind while wearing it. Like the good boyfriend he is, he buys it for her, and she wears it to work the next day.
Needless to say, the following one-and-a-half hours were a marathon of watching Bobbi verbally abuse everyone around her, including her family and unsuspecting coworkers. While the movie clearly is trying to speak to the virtues of speaking your mind (“It’s the things you don’t say that really hurt people!), it does not do a good job at communicating it, because the necklace brings Bobbi nothing but workplace drama and strife. There was a whole bit where Bobbi was on the phone call with her mother and said the N-word multiple times (with the hard r) insisting that “it’s just a word, mother!” while wearing the necklace. Needless to say, we had to pause the movie the moment this white woman dropped the bomb, and recover for a few minutes as we grappled with our whiplash. You Don’t Say! was made in 2013, by the way.
If you can’t tell, this movie was so boring. Turns out corporate America really can’t be made interesting, even if you involve a woman roasting all her coworkers. Bobbi regularly gave us far too much second-hand embarrassment—and not in the funny way. And don’t even get us started on her boyfriend/financé, their age gap grossed us out so much, and his behavior towards her just felt so icky! By the 45-minute mark, both of us gave up on taking notes, quotes, and (for Emi) paying attention. Mia kept checking how much time was left, praying it would end soon, then discovering another HOUR was left. How they managed to stretch out a truly dull storyline to almost TWO HOURS is simply baffling. It’s hard to even form a thought on most of the characters due to literally forgetting all of their characteristics immediately after the film ended. Spend your valuable time watching any of our other Groovy Movies (except Birdemic: Shock and Terror) instead of this one. Better than the original movie we watched for this issue, but not by much.
Notable Quotes:
- “Many of us today in this world of politically correct thinking are afraid of what we want to say inside”
- “Had a slight encounter with some guy’s fist this morning”
- “They’re MY t**s!”
- “I can smell that unbathed body… ugh Old Spice overdose”
- DAD: “Tell us why it’s been a secret for more than 2 years, [Bobbi]”
- JERRY: “I’m 45”
- DAD: “That’s why”
- “Home of the free, land of the wussies”
- “The s*** you take is equal to the s*** you give”
- “I wish there was a stone here I could throw at people so they could just STFU”
- “At least they’ll be coming into the country legally”
- MOM: “The I-word”
- BOBBI: “Intercourse?”
- MOM (accusatory): “You know it!”
- “Roberta! !You should never say the N-word!”
- About a baby: “She has your feet!”
- “All babies are cute. But this one? Ehh…”
- “As his clothes smell like 10-year old cat urine in a carpet”