You know what I’m really tired of? Friggin’ architects. I
mean, does anyone out there really know an architect? And before you say, “You’re so full of shit, Brent. My dad’s actually
an architect,” is this the same father that lives in a neighboring state but
hasn’t seen you in 12 years, and once told your mother to “give you a cut” of
his monthly alimony check for your Christmas gift? I rest my case. Dude is
probably not an architect. “Pharmaceuticals redistribution manager” is more
like it…

Not to be impolite, but architect is one of those
bullshit jobs that Hollywood screenwriters seem to lazily trot out when they need some hot-shit occupation to
attach to a desirable young guy who, golly gee, at his core really wants to settle down and
have a family, or is already a nice young family man. When lawyer has a bit too much of a negative occupational
connotation for your protagonist, doctor is a bit too pointy-headed, and
advertising executive is a bit too in danger of puncturing the movie’s
entertainment value, architect is seemingly settled upon as the perfect
white-collar big screen job (see Adam Sandler in Click, Luke Wilson in My
Super Ex-Girlfriend, et al). It’s professional and lucrative — even vaguely
scholastic — but its day-to-day specifics seem to dance beyond our
intellectual grasp, and you never see any one of these characters do something related to their job except maybe deliver a passing line of dialogue about the “sleek angles” or open spaces of an area. If you believed the movies and television, 75 percent
of us are cops, lawyers, doctors, forensics investigators and architects.

The incidental trigger for my rage comes in the form of this
week’s Because I Said So, in which Tom
Everett Scott’s somewhat rakish, entrepreneurial architect competes for Mandy
Moore’s affection with a guitar player played by Gabriel Macht. He easily wins
over Moore’s mom (Diane Keaton),
but the moment he reveals his occupation, you know that he’s a shit-heel in
waiting. Well… because of how that occupation doesn’t jibe with Moore’s
creative catering business, as well as the fact that he answered a mother’s
personal ad for her daughter, went along with contrived meeting with said
daughter, entered into relationship with said daughter, and never saw fit to
tell said daughter about the truth behind their meeting… though of course he (sort
of) tells his own mother. Idiot
architect…

So I caught Catch and Release for review last week, and it triggered another big screen irritation with insert shots for the lowest common denominator. A week after his death, after she’s already discovered a secret bank account with a hefty balance, there’s a point in the film where Jennifer Garner’s bereaved Gray comes across her deceased fiancé’s cell phone, and further cements the discovery that she didn’t know quite everything
she thought she did about him. Someone was calling late at night, you see; “10 missed calls,” reads the cell phone.

So eventually (which is to say, the next scene, the following day) Gray has to try to call this person back. We see her fiddling with the established cell phone, obviously to pull up the number to call. She then dials from her office phone. Instead of conveying this with one shot, though, director Susannah Grant gives us another look at “10 missed calls,” with Gray scrolling to the number. Why 10? Well, so there’s a full screen of the same number, of course, so there’s no possible confusion about what’s going on, even though the answering machine message that Gray reaches on the other end matches the voice of the messages she’s already listened to on her fiancé’s phone. Thanks Hollywood, thanks a lot. What a money shot. If you’re not engaged enough in the movie to pick up on and follow a simple detail like this, you’re an idiot. And don’t tell me this was for the technology-impaired, over-60 set. Is that Catch and Release‘s core audience?