Minor Thing, Major Problems
This weekend's review: Her Minor Thing.
I decided to check out Her Minor Thing because it sounded like it had a more creative hook than your typical romantic comedy. Sadly, I don’t think the writers fully knew what to do with the hook, because it mostly stops being relevant after a while and starts focusing more on the typical romance tropes. And since I’m generally not fond of those tropes, I soured on the movie by the end of it.
The heroine of the movie is Jeana (Estella Warren), a young woman who does I.T. for the Sacramento Fire Department. She’s also dating Tom (Michael Weatherly), a handsome TV reporter, and after a series of bad relationships, she’s really hoping Tom is “the one”. Then one night, Tom attempts to have sex with Jeana, and she rebuffs him, giving an explanation we don’t see. The next day, Tom is preparing for his news broadcast, and the studio cuts to him just as he’s telling his cameraman (Christian Kane) that Jeana is a virgin. The news spreads like wildfire (he doesn’t use her name, but it eventually leaks out), and Jeana ends up getting a lot of unwanted attention, from lewd phone calls to women wanting her to join their pro-virgin (rapidly turning into anti-men) groups. Based on the title, I’d assumed Jeana’s virginity would play a large role in the plot, as a topic of discussion or a source of conflict. Instead, it mostly becomes set dressing as a slightly more pedestrian romantic comedy plot unfolds.
You see, before the announcement, Jeana and Tom had been preparing to go on a cruise, something Jeana had always wanted to do and had saved her money for. When Tom doesn’t apologize for revealing something so personal on TV and seems more focused on having sex with her, she breaks up with him, only to learn that thanks to a variety of circumstances, she can’t cancel the cruise and the tickets are in Tom’s name. He refuses to give them up, and in fact plans to use them with his former girlfriend, who he went back to after the breakup. Jeana is understandably angry and starts trying to figure out how to get the tickets back, including conspiring with her firefighter co-workers to fake a news story and then trade the information for the tickets, thus getting her tickets and giving Tom another humiliation. And on top of all this, we get a third plot; Jeana keeps having run-ins with the cameraman, Paul, and sparks start to smolder despite both of them being hesitant about getting into a relationship. Plus, Tom starts to wonder if he’s actually in love with Jeana, so a love triangle is now officially in play. All of these plots blend together reasonably well, but it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting when I first started the movie.
Leaving aside that the movie glossed over its main hook, my biggest problem with the movie is the one I generally have in romantic comedies; I don’t like any of the main characters. Jeana has every reason to be angry at Tom and snappish at Paul, but her willingness to lie in order to get revenge on her ex doesn’t paint her in a good light. Paul starts out okay, but he eventually becomes the one guy who knows the whole story (he only realizes after spending some time with Jeana that she’s the woman Tom was dating, and Tom comes to him for advice on how to woo her without knowing that Paul knows her), and then falls into the “person keeps information from someone that’s guaranteed to cause a fight when it comes out” trope. In addition to not liking that trope, it also makes him a little jerkish when he’s clearly keeping things to himself to make things better for him. And Tom…I’m not sure how to feel about him. Clearly, he’s supposed to be the handsome but arrogant “wrong man” in this triangle, and his early actions, from the announcement of Jeana’s virginity to his keeping the cruise tickets, support that take. But about halfway through the movie, he appears to be changing his tune, and at least trying to change, even if he’s not great at it. I still didn’t like him much, but I thought maybe he was undergoing a character arc, which generally doesn’t happen in these stories. Then, at the end of the movie, he appears to have gone back to square one, and while that sort of thing certainly happens, it left me wondering if his previous development was sincere or just an act he was putting on to get what he wanted. The former fits in better with how things play out (right up till the end, at least), but that wasn’t the feeling I was getting. I can’t tell if that means Weatherly is a bad actor or better than the script called for.
I also don’t particularly like the way the two more interesting plot threads are handled. While the movie seems neutral on the subject of virginity itself, the revelation of Jeana’s virgin status only seems to get used for two things; leading to her breaking up with Tom and creating a running gag about groups of women who band together after the announcement and start to embody the worst stereotypes of modern feminism. Part of me thinks the movie is trying to be satirical, because there’s a later scene where we see a fat health club leader eating a bucket of chicken while giving a tour of the club, but if that’s the case, I didn’t find it very funny. Then again, maybe this is a case of me running into my nemesis black comedy, so that may be my problem rather than the movie’s. As for the cruise ticket plot, it takes up so much of the runtime that I figured there would be a big payoff for it, though I wasn’t quite sure what form that payoff would take. Instead, the whole thing just kind of peters out in a way that I guess was supposed to be symbolic but instead left me feeling like the characters were idiots. All the more reason I ended up disliking them, I suppose.
To end this review on a lighter note, there’s one other aspect of the movie worth talking about, which is some odd transition decisions. The opening credits are played over a simple but nice enough animation, and I thought it was a charming little thing the filmmakers had thrown in to give the audience something to look at as the credits rolled. Later, we find out it doubled as a sort of backstory summary for how Jeana and Tom met, so it pulls double duty in a nice way. I don’t have a problem with any of this; where things start to get weird is when the animation continues to pop up sporadically throughout the first half of the movie before vanishing entirely. It’s generally used for daydreams, so at least it’s consistent in that regard, but the transitions or lack thereof are jarring. Similarly, at certain points in the movie, text pops up on screen to indicate a new section of the plot-chapter titles, if you will. There is no reason for the movie to do this, and there’s nothing about the characters and their jobs that would make it work as a conceit. Like the animation, it’s odd and pulls you out of the movie a bit, but it’s mild enough that it’s easy to accept as a quirk. Which is more than I can say for the majority of the movie.
As is probably pretty clear by now, I don’t recommend this movie. Maybe it’s decent enough if you’re a fan of romance/romantic comedy tropes, but if you’re indifferent or disinclined to them like I am, it’ll become harder and harder to enjoy. As for the hook that first drew me in, I know there’s at least one other movie out there that deals with virginity as a major plot point. Then again, the question is whether or not the subject is handled with respect in these movies. Given the trend towards raunchy comedies of late, I have my doubts on that score.
CAT ALERT, sort of: At one point, some of Jeana’s firefighter friends create a distraction by running some practice drills, including getting a cat out of a tree. It’s a stuffed cat, but at least thirty seconds are dedicated to them “rescuing it” and throwing it onto the ground, causing Tom to freak out. It doesn’t officially count, but it was given enough focus that it’s worth mentioning.
I decided to check out Her Minor Thing because it sounded like it had a more creative hook than your typical romantic comedy. Sadly, I don’t think the writers fully knew what to do with the hook, because it mostly stops being relevant after a while and starts focusing more on the typical romance tropes. And since I’m generally not fond of those tropes, I soured on the movie by the end of it.
The heroine of the movie is Jeana (Estella Warren), a young woman who does I.T. for the Sacramento Fire Department. She’s also dating Tom (Michael Weatherly), a handsome TV reporter, and after a series of bad relationships, she’s really hoping Tom is “the one”. Then one night, Tom attempts to have sex with Jeana, and she rebuffs him, giving an explanation we don’t see. The next day, Tom is preparing for his news broadcast, and the studio cuts to him just as he’s telling his cameraman (Christian Kane) that Jeana is a virgin. The news spreads like wildfire (he doesn’t use her name, but it eventually leaks out), and Jeana ends up getting a lot of unwanted attention, from lewd phone calls to women wanting her to join their pro-virgin (rapidly turning into anti-men) groups. Based on the title, I’d assumed Jeana’s virginity would play a large role in the plot, as a topic of discussion or a source of conflict. Instead, it mostly becomes set dressing as a slightly more pedestrian romantic comedy plot unfolds.
You see, before the announcement, Jeana and Tom had been preparing to go on a cruise, something Jeana had always wanted to do and had saved her money for. When Tom doesn’t apologize for revealing something so personal on TV and seems more focused on having sex with her, she breaks up with him, only to learn that thanks to a variety of circumstances, she can’t cancel the cruise and the tickets are in Tom’s name. He refuses to give them up, and in fact plans to use them with his former girlfriend, who he went back to after the breakup. Jeana is understandably angry and starts trying to figure out how to get the tickets back, including conspiring with her firefighter co-workers to fake a news story and then trade the information for the tickets, thus getting her tickets and giving Tom another humiliation. And on top of all this, we get a third plot; Jeana keeps having run-ins with the cameraman, Paul, and sparks start to smolder despite both of them being hesitant about getting into a relationship. Plus, Tom starts to wonder if he’s actually in love with Jeana, so a love triangle is now officially in play. All of these plots blend together reasonably well, but it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting when I first started the movie.
Leaving aside that the movie glossed over its main hook, my biggest problem with the movie is the one I generally have in romantic comedies; I don’t like any of the main characters. Jeana has every reason to be angry at Tom and snappish at Paul, but her willingness to lie in order to get revenge on her ex doesn’t paint her in a good light. Paul starts out okay, but he eventually becomes the one guy who knows the whole story (he only realizes after spending some time with Jeana that she’s the woman Tom was dating, and Tom comes to him for advice on how to woo her without knowing that Paul knows her), and then falls into the “person keeps information from someone that’s guaranteed to cause a fight when it comes out” trope. In addition to not liking that trope, it also makes him a little jerkish when he’s clearly keeping things to himself to make things better for him. And Tom…I’m not sure how to feel about him. Clearly, he’s supposed to be the handsome but arrogant “wrong man” in this triangle, and his early actions, from the announcement of Jeana’s virginity to his keeping the cruise tickets, support that take. But about halfway through the movie, he appears to be changing his tune, and at least trying to change, even if he’s not great at it. I still didn’t like him much, but I thought maybe he was undergoing a character arc, which generally doesn’t happen in these stories. Then, at the end of the movie, he appears to have gone back to square one, and while that sort of thing certainly happens, it left me wondering if his previous development was sincere or just an act he was putting on to get what he wanted. The former fits in better with how things play out (right up till the end, at least), but that wasn’t the feeling I was getting. I can’t tell if that means Weatherly is a bad actor or better than the script called for.
I also don’t particularly like the way the two more interesting plot threads are handled. While the movie seems neutral on the subject of virginity itself, the revelation of Jeana’s virgin status only seems to get used for two things; leading to her breaking up with Tom and creating a running gag about groups of women who band together after the announcement and start to embody the worst stereotypes of modern feminism. Part of me thinks the movie is trying to be satirical, because there’s a later scene where we see a fat health club leader eating a bucket of chicken while giving a tour of the club, but if that’s the case, I didn’t find it very funny. Then again, maybe this is a case of me running into my nemesis black comedy, so that may be my problem rather than the movie’s. As for the cruise ticket plot, it takes up so much of the runtime that I figured there would be a big payoff for it, though I wasn’t quite sure what form that payoff would take. Instead, the whole thing just kind of peters out in a way that I guess was supposed to be symbolic but instead left me feeling like the characters were idiots. All the more reason I ended up disliking them, I suppose.
To end this review on a lighter note, there’s one other aspect of the movie worth talking about, which is some odd transition decisions. The opening credits are played over a simple but nice enough animation, and I thought it was a charming little thing the filmmakers had thrown in to give the audience something to look at as the credits rolled. Later, we find out it doubled as a sort of backstory summary for how Jeana and Tom met, so it pulls double duty in a nice way. I don’t have a problem with any of this; where things start to get weird is when the animation continues to pop up sporadically throughout the first half of the movie before vanishing entirely. It’s generally used for daydreams, so at least it’s consistent in that regard, but the transitions or lack thereof are jarring. Similarly, at certain points in the movie, text pops up on screen to indicate a new section of the plot-chapter titles, if you will. There is no reason for the movie to do this, and there’s nothing about the characters and their jobs that would make it work as a conceit. Like the animation, it’s odd and pulls you out of the movie a bit, but it’s mild enough that it’s easy to accept as a quirk. Which is more than I can say for the majority of the movie.
As is probably pretty clear by now, I don’t recommend this movie. Maybe it’s decent enough if you’re a fan of romance/romantic comedy tropes, but if you’re indifferent or disinclined to them like I am, it’ll become harder and harder to enjoy. As for the hook that first drew me in, I know there’s at least one other movie out there that deals with virginity as a major plot point. Then again, the question is whether or not the subject is handled with respect in these movies. Given the trend towards raunchy comedies of late, I have my doubts on that score.
CAT ALERT, sort of: At one point, some of Jeana’s firefighter friends create a distraction by running some practice drills, including getting a cat out of a tree. It’s a stuffed cat, but at least thirty seconds are dedicated to them “rescuing it” and throwing it onto the ground, causing Tom to freak out. It doesn’t officially count, but it was given enough focus that it’s worth mentioning.