riddle me this

Why is it that people in movies always seem to fall in love within absurd time frames? It's always two days, or a weekend, or hours, depending on what you're watching.

Note to Hollywood - just cause your characters have been humping like bunnies for a few minutes does not mean they're in love.

I was watching Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and I don't have any real comment on its political message - it was  liberal as fuckall for its time and it had good intentions, but watching it now with some of the obviously outdated terminology makes me wince through parts of it.

Whatever. The point is, these bitches have been together all of ten days and then spring their parents with the news that they're getting married. Fuck, if I was Spencer Tracy I'd be pissed too.

So says the cynic in me, anyway.

But when Tracy gives his big speech at the end (and if you've never seen it I'm probably spoiling the best part - not counting the half a second you get to see Sidney Poitier shirtless of course) I bawl my bloody eyes out. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he died seventeen days after they wrapped filming, or the fact that he was so sick they used two shooting scripts, one with him and one without.

Mostly it's that when he looks at Katharine Hepburn and says "The only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel, for each other. And if it's half of what we felt- that's everything." And in that moment, when her eyes are completely welled up with tears, she's either the greatest actress in the world or she's not acting at all.

It's also the most clever way to sell the ludicrous notion that two kids who spent ten days in Hawaii are actually in love. By implying that twenty five years later they could maybe, if they're really lucky, turn into Tracy and Hepburn.

And if that doesn't make you cry, please continue on with your life of puppy kicking and soul killing.