Because I Said So and The Messengers

Feb 2 2007: The Final Year of Cinema Week 5

Because I Said So

When I began this project, calling 2007 “The Final Year of Cinema” was not me saying that movies aren’t made anymore, it’s not even me saying that good movies aren’t being made anymore. It’s me lamenting the death of a kind of cinema ecosystem where competent filmmakers make acceptable movies with midsize budgets and make those budgets back. In such an ecosystem directors can be given an assignment for such a film, put their whole ass into it, and occasionally turn in a classic. Someone might be given a project to adapt a Norwegian crime movie for an English-language audience, and they turn in Insomnia (2002) and Christopher Nolan’s career is born. Someone might be given a project to make a teen romance, so they hire a young Nicolas Cage to turn in a performance in Valley Girl and suddenly we have a new American treasure of acting. There’s no way to predict which of these movies will be treasures and which will just be another acceptable rom-com, though. Success in the arts isn’t firing a sniper rifle with extreme precision, it’s firing a shotgun and hoping that something connects. You’ve gotta have the middling films that quietly make their budgets back and are completely acceptable to support the ecosystem that allows for the cult classics to break through. Because I Said So and The Messengers are exactly this type of film.

Because I Said So is the story of Daphne (Diane Keaton) and her three daughters Maggie (Lauren Graham), Mae (Piper Perabo), and Milly (Mandy Moore). Daphne is an overprotective and slightly unhinged single helicopter parent who decides she needs to help Milly out with her love life after a series of failed relationships. She decides to take out a personals ad to find Milly a boyfriend. Through this ad she meets Jason (Tom Everett Scott), a slightly stodgy but cute and rich architect who is interested in Millie and agrees to take her out, but also outside of the ad confides her scheme to a cute and charming musician named Johnny (Gabriel Macht) who also starts dating Milly. Rom-com zaniness ensues, and the film ends with a wedding.

Nothing about Because I Said So is egregiously awful, but also nothing about it is exceptionally charming or funny. It has its moments. Maggie discovers her mother’s meddling because a patient at her psychology practice played by Tony Hale is one of the men who had responded to her personals ad in a pleasing and silly scene. The opening credits play out over a silent scene where Daphne and Milly prepare their respective pasta dinners for one alone in their homes underscoring how similar the women are despite their continual clashes. There’s also moments of absolute cringeworthy anti-humor. Daphne is perpetually portrayed as “boomer who doesn’t understand the computer” in several joke-shaped scenes where she accidentally brings up some pornography on her computer and when she nearly kills several people while failing to operate a GPS mid-drive. Later she has a moment where she admits to Milly that she’s never had an orgasm, which I think is meant to come across as tender and tragic, but instead it just feels hacky and rote.

Because I Said So probably has the most cultural relevance as the final wide release film directed by Michael Lehmann to date. Lehmann has had a wild career. His first feature film is an example of the exact kind of meant-to-be-disposable-but-accidentally-enduring-classics this project is built to celebrate: the teen murder and croquet comedy Heathers (1988). He then followed it up with two questionable choices. First is one of the most bafflingly bad films I’ve ever seen in my life: Meet The Applegates (1990), a film about a family of mutant shapeshifting Brazillian bugs who move to a suburban town in Ohio to covertly trigger a nuclear meltdown at a nearby power plant¹. Next was the Bruce Willis vanity vehicle Hudson Hawk (1991) in which Bruno plays a cat burglar who times his heists by singing jazz standards and romances a nun played by Andie MacDowell². He then spent the next sixteen years making a lot of completely acceptable but forgettable movies that end up being the kinds of things one watches at 3:00 PM while folding laundry like the headbanger comedy Airheads (1994), the pet-focussed rom-com The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996), and the lent/boner comedy 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002).

Because I Said So is right in line with these pictures, and each of them made money even if none of them end up on anyone’s Sight and Sound ballots. Still, despite the fact that he turned in over a decade of moneymakers. Still his next feature Flakes (2007) was relegated to opening on a single screen and grossing $778 at the box office³ and he hasn’t released a film since. He’s still working, spending his 2010s and 2020s directing episodes of prestige-y TV shows, but he hasn’t directed a film in 18 years. I can’t help but wonder, did he give up the Hollywood rat race after a decade and a half of making not-quite-blockbusters, or did Hollywood give up on him for having only modest success?

The Messengers

It’s very fun to see artists in their early years as they start to become themselves. I’ll forever remember the day as a young Clash fan that I found a copy of the only LP released by Joe Strummer’s prior band The 101ers. While Strummer’s lyrics with his early rockabilly pub rock band lacked the righteous political anger of his work with The Clash, you could hear the manic energy and intense delivery in his singing all the same. Today if I feel like listening to Joe Strummer sing I’m going to reach for my 101ers LP pretty rarely, but I’m still happy to have it. As someone who delighted in seeing Kristen Stewart portray Princess Diana in the anti-royals biopic Spencer (2021) and especially loved seeing her murder and fuck her way through Love Lies Bleeding (2024) it was fun to see her in her first starring role in The Messengers. It is in no way an inspired picture, but you can see the spark of what she would eventually become, and that’s always fun.

The Messengers is the story of the Solomon family. The dad, Roy (Dylan McDermott) having experienced some financial ruin has uprooted the family from their Chicago home to move to North Dakota to make a go at sunflower farming. Things go poorly until a local itinerant farmhand named John (John Corbett) happens by and tells Roy he’s happy to help out around the farm in exchange for room and board until harvest at which point the farm begins to thrive. Daughter Jess (Stewart) is clearly surly about the whole situation, but her surliness starts to turn to dread when terrible things only she can see start appearing around the house. Has Jess lost her mind from the isolation of the move or are there supernatural forces about? Will the family make it to the harvest and financial freedom? Only one way to find out!

The horror aspects of The Messengers are workmanlike if not groundbreaking. The film opens with a terrified teen running through a farmhouse with a ton of kinetic camerawork. I immediately thought “someone is clearly into Sam Raimi.” Naturally seconds after thinking this the opening credits rolled and I spied “Produced by Sam Raimi.” The Evil Dead (1981) this is not, but it has a kind of store-brand Evil Dead flavor to it. One shot of a ghost crawling on the ceiling gave me both the heeblies and the jeeblies. There are multiple crow attacks that look no sillier than anything from The Birds (1963). The central mystery of the ghosts in the farmhouse is resolved in a satisfying way that I both saw coming and gasped in surprise when I saw how it was revealed. Also, John Corbett is here! As someone who was and is a massive fan of Northern Exposure and has familial ties to the town of Wheeling, WV⁴ I am obligated to root for any project with John Corbett in it.

The clear importance of The Messengers though is Kristen Stewart’s lead performance. She sells the hell out of her character as a sullen teen relocated to a small town where there’s supernatural forces at play. Horror film acting is inherently deeply artificial. Actors on set working on a drama can say their serious lines to each other in a serious tone of voice and enter a serious emotional mindset because of it. Actors working on a comedy can work with the levity of the words of the script to create a levity to their performance. Actors working in horror, though, need to project fear in a world that is inherently not terribly scary. No matter how much a production assistant is slamming a door in the corner of the frame there aren’t really ghosts there and you need to tap into something artificial to project that fear. I’m not saying that this artificiality excuses the kind of bad behavior among New Hollywood Auteur-y Guys™ who purposefully terrified their stars on set while filming horror movies⁵ but I can see the (shitty) thought process behind it. K-Stew really nails it here though, despite all that artificiality. As silly and mid as the film overall is, you can absolutely see why someone making a movie where a sullen teen moves to a small town and realizes there are supernatural forces at play might see this and think “Yes, this is the person who should be the lead in my movie about sparkly vampires.”

look at that sulking

Because I Said So and The Messengers aren’t memorable movies, but they’re not awful either. No one goes to the movies hoping to see something of this quality, but they probably don’t feel cheated by the experience either. It’s the equivalent of going birdwatching and seeing a sparrow. There’s nothing wrong with seeing a sparrow, it’s just not not a california condor or something similarly exciting. You just start wondering about the state of the environment when you go out birdwatching and realize you haven’t seen a sparrow in years.

Ratings: ★★★☆☆ I neither regretted my time watching these movies nor do I think anything about them will really stick with me. They’re fine!

Economics: The Messengers opened to #1 at the box office on February 2nd, 2007 ahead of Because I Said So. It would go on to make $53.7 million at the worldwide box office plus $16.8 million in DVD sales on a $16 million budget. It is unquestionably the dress rehearsal for Kristen Stewart’s appearances in the Twilight franchise, for which she got paid $25 million + 7.5% of the gross box office (an additional $113 million) for the final two films alone, giving her the financial freedom to be a movie star who appears in weird arty shit — the best kind of movie star.

Because I Said So opened to #2 at the box office behind The Messengers and just ahead of Epic Movie in its 2nd week of release. It would go on to make $68.5 million worldwide plus $24 million in DVD sales on a $39 million budget. Michael Lehmann across his 9 wide theatrically released films grossed $230 million against a combined estimated $140 million in budget. He never had a flop except for Hudson Hawk. He has not made a theatrical motion picture in 18 years.

Biggest Douchebag Outfit: I know 2007 was a different time but Jesus do the dudes look bad in Because I Said So. Nothing tops this garbage fit from Johnny, who I must stress: is clearly the guy our protagonist is coded to end up with at the end of the film. A black trilby (indoors!) with a light blue striped shirt over a black tee with a brown nailshead vest and light brown slacks. Just an absolute dog’s breakfast of pieces failing to coalesce into a coherent outfit that just makes him look like a trombonist in an electroswing act.

Best Worst Hair And Makeup: Cheers to the person who styled John Corbett in The Messengers, who looks in every scene to have not showered or shaved in exactly two days and has a magnificent caterpillar trash stache as well. A lot of thought and effort went into making him look this greasy.

Next Week: Norbit

1. I know, it sounds awesome. It is not awesome. It’s really boring

2. not as abysmal as Applegates but also definitely a mainstay of the ‘so bad it’s good’ movie circuit

3. will I be writing about this movie? Maybe. Depends on if it actually exists and can physically be seen.

and find out!

4. Corbett is probably Wheeling’s most famous former resident. My father is probably Wheeling’s second most famous former resident

5. I love The Shining (1980) but hey Stanley if your ghost is reading this: that was a shitty thing to do. Fuck you man