"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is So 2005
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This past Friday for date night my wife chose "Mr and Mrs Smith" for us to watch. I had never seen it and she hadn't seen it since she went to the theaters to watch it.
I thought the movie was fine. It was fun and the perfect popcorn movie. I didn't have to give it my full attention, but since I had never watched it, I did. But I am not here to review the movie today. Well, maybe you could call this a review. But this is more about that time in the world and movies like this.
This movie is quintessential early 21st century. There are so many things that just put me back into that time in my life while watching this movie. The movie came out in 2005. I had been out of high school for four years and had just finished up my career ready college. I was fully in as a dental lab tech and my wife and I would start dating in about a year. I was single, living at home and working. I had money to go out every weekend, and did sometimes, and I would go to the movies all the time. But "Mr and Mrs Smith" was not on my radar. I remember all the hubub surrounding this movie. It was all people could talk about. This was the movie that broke up Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. Pitt and Angelina Jolie were a couple shortly after the movie premiered and they were soon married. But that is not even why this movie is the perfect early 2000's movie.
While watching it the other night there were things that just screamed 2005. The movie is rated PG-13, but there is an inordinate amount of violence. The two main characters are assassins and they brutally kill people left and right in this movie. But the bad guys had foreign accents and were doing bad things, so it was deemed okay. Hell, some of the kills were played for laughs. But they also never showed any blood. It was almost like watching a modern superhero movie. Most of those get away with a PG-13 rating because they do not show blood. That is exactly the same thing that happened in "Mr and Mrs Smith". The murder count is massive, but no bloodshed means no R rating. The kills were also crazy. Bad guys would get gunshots to the chest and fly 100 yards in the air to their death. Houses would blow up. People got ran over. It was wild. But that was the thing back then when making these action comedies. They would kill tons of people, but with no blood, and undercutting them with jokes, we just would turn a blind eye. I know it was only 17 years ago, but it feels like a fully different lifetime.
Then we have the acting of the two leads. They have dynamite chemistry in this movie. It does ooze off the screen, especially when they are doing the therapy scenes. But it did not blow me away like I was expecting. I thought it was going to be palpable. I assumed they would be all over one another the whole movie. I had a fully different idea of what was going on on set. Sure, they played well off one another, but it wasn't the sexiest thing I have ever watched. I have seen much better movies where the two leads have way better chemistry. Hell, I probably have seen much worse movies with better chemistry. I think of a movie like "Accepted", that is not very good, but Justin Long and Blake Lively had as much chemistry as Pitt and Jolie do in "Mr and Mrs Smith", in my opinion.
The thing that makes this movie take me back so much is the look. The way the movie looked is very early 2000's. You can see that CGI is getting better, but it is still a work in progress. The costuming is great. Jolie looks wonderful, but she wears very mom-ish clothing during the rough part of the marriage. And when she put that bondage outfit on while doing a hit, most actresses would turn that down nowadays, and rightfully so. Brad Pitt wore goofy hats, looked like a downtrodden rich golf playing dad and had a shaved head. I think he looks better with long hair, but that is neither here nor there. That was the style back then. I remember saying to my wife that Jolie was far too good looking for Pitt in this movie. She disagreed but got where I was coming from.
So while I think "Mr and Mrs Smith" is worth a watch, it is not because it is some chemistry filled good time of an action movie. I think it is fun to transform yourself back to a time when you were younger watching a silly popcorn movie. That is why you should watch this movie.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.
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