The Top Gun and Twilight reviews killed me.

i am pretty positive that i would feel literally completely differently about this book had i read it myself instead of listening to the author read the audiobook. but since i went that route, i can say that it slays. this is so funny, in so many places. i had to pause it over and over again to actually laugh out loud, which i virtually never do. and i thought i'd never pick this up because even though i like lindy west, i don't get pop culture stuff and figured i'd miss all the references. turns out that even though there is like maybe 1 movie in this entire book (top gun) that i both have seen and remembered probably enough of to really "get" the essay, i found pretty much every one of these essays so funny and/or worth listening to anyway. i enjoyed this so much. ( )

Road trip audiobook!

Lindy West recaps 23 movies from start to finish, interjecting her snarky thoughts on their faults and strengths as she goes. The first thing I learned is that West and I have similar taste in what we're willing to watch as I have seen 22 of the films (I have never seen Jurassic Park though I have seen tons of spoilers for it). It helps that most of them are from the '90s, so there has been plenty of time to have caught them on DVD or streaming in the ensuing decades, though I saw most of them first run in the theater.

Though it leans a little too heavily on describing the plots of each movie, I did enjoy West's criticisms and laughed out loud several times while driving around Wisconsin and Iowa.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents:
• Introduction
• The Fugitive Is The Only Good Movie: The Fugitive
• Shit, Actually: Love, Actually
• On Marriage: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
• Dude, You Gotta Stop Listening to Your Mom: Forrest Gump
• Literally a Bird’s Diary: The Notebook
• Harry Plot Hole: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• Big Boy Freaky Friday: Face/Off
• Time Travel Doesn’t Make Sense and I Think We Should Make It Illegal: Back to the Future Part II
• I’d Prefer a Highway Away from the Danger Zone, but Okay: Top Gun
• Fabrizio’s Last Meatball: Titanic
• Dead Man’s Pants: The Santa Clause
• Men Yelling Men Yelling Men Yelling: The Rock
• … Miami?: Bad Boys II
• The Real Monster Is Inspections: Jurassic Park
• No Toucan Will Ever Make ME Have Sex!: The Lion King
• Look at Your Little Punk British Ass: Rush Hour
• All the Kissing in the World Could Not Save It: Garden State
• Auf Wiedersehen, Kinderbjorn!: Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• Manual for Shitheads: Reality Bites
• Never Boring, Always Horny: Twilight
• Speed 2 Is Not Canon: Speed
• The Shawnsnake Redumptruck: The Shawshank Redemption
• Know Your Enemy: American Pie
• Acknowledgments ( )

Kind of an impulse selection at the library for the Feminist Book Club Readathon, because I have read the odd Lindy West essay here and there and loved them, but I hadn't gotten around to reading more yet.

I chose this book to start my second day of the readathon and it was SUCH a good choice. This had me not just cackling, but crying so hard from laughing so hard I literally couldn't read. I had to read a few choice excerpts out loud to my husband, and now I have a whole list of movies I need to rewatch.

Not going to lie, I am more than a little tempted to go out and buy my own copy just to keep on hand. ( )

The author rewatches a lot of 80s/90s popular films and cracks wise.

This book has a pretty slight "let's print a blog" conceit but is also very funny. Also, her take on Top Gun -- and the fact that Maverick is the villain of Top Gun -- is very wise.

The 2003 vibe -- culturally, socially, politically, spiritually -- was very "energy drink commercial directed by Mark McGrath, and not Mark McGrath in his prime, either." [136]

On growing up in the 90s: Can you imagine what that kind of demographic does to a person? To be of the demographic that has a Ron Burgundy quote for every occasion, without the understanding that Ron Burgundy is a satire? [230] ( )