Cynical Cinema

I hate to be a downer here.  I understand that the vast majority of men find Jessica Biel to be ridiculously hot.  But I just don’t get it.  She has a strange, round face, and I suppose that it’s her body in many movies that inspires the lust of so many of my compatriots, but I’m a face guy.  And she just doesn’t do it for me.  Which means that there is actually no reason whatsoever for me to watch Seventh Heaven.  Season Seven comes out on DVD today, courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment.  And it really depressed me.  Because it sucks.  You see, there is this family with seven kids.  Some of which are their actual kids, and some of which seem to be former girlfriends and boyfriends and brothers and sisters of girlfriends and boyfriends and…I gave up trying to figure it out pretty fast.

This is basically a soap opera, only incredibly PG-rated.  Teens at the age of 17 or 18 trying to “decide” whether to have sex or not.  Decide?  Sex?  What place is this?  Where does this show take place?  It doesn’t appear to be SET in the 50s.  And yet it has that Leave It To Beaver quality that drives me nuts, and hot chicks could maybe make it worthwhile.  So Ashlee Simpson is a bit of a help.  But even Jessica Biel is barely in this season (part of that contractual dispute where she wanted to play sluts in movies and not loser goody-two-shoes in this show).  There are lots of daughters.  Lucy, who is a maniac who is studying to be a minister.  Ruthie, who is that standard sit-com kid who is wise beyond her years but still just a kid…boring.

Everything about this show is boring.  The father is a minister, and he is not nearly as wise and understanding as one would anticipate.  In fact, he’s a neurotic, unbalanced man who would make a pretty obnoxious father.  And an even worse minister.  He and his wife, who is an enabler and a bit of a jerk, hold quaint little “family meetings” for situations that barely demand a conversation, let alone a full-fledged meeting.  This family is, of course, fictional, but they are so VERY fictional that it’s disconcerting.  Even the involvement of Ashlee Simpson and Rachel Blanchard is not helpful.  No amount of eye candy is worth sitting through this garbage, especially since they will obviously never take any of their clothes off.  I’m pretty upset with Warner Brothers right now.  I might have to buy some porn just to balance out my own chi.