For every loved up couple trying to enjoy each other’s company this Valentine’s Day there will be at least a dozen single people voicing their disapproval of Valentine’s, love and the idea of teddy bears as gifts for grown-ups.
To combat the compulsive urge to prove one’s own proud single status, here is a guide to surviving February 14th through the medium of films. Gather your comfort food and/or alcohol and settle in with one or two of these cupid-defying flicks.
Watch films about friendship…
If there’s one thing that keeps single people sane, it’s their friends, and when it comes to films about friendship ‘Stand By Me’ always sits top of the pile. Adapted from a Stephen King novella, it’s a coming of age tale about a group of four young buddies trekking across Oregon in search of a dead body.
Films about children searching for corpses may not be the most enticing prospect on the day of love, but this is a film about friendship and its power in the face of anything, in particular bullies played by Kiefer Sutherland.
Perhaps the ultimate film about girl power, Ridley Scott’s ‘Thelma and Louise’ concerns two friends – one single, one a bored housewife – who go on a two-day road trip in a Ford Thunderbird convertible.
As you either know or can guess, things don’t exactly go to plan, and as it gets worse the friends’ bond grows every stronger until the emotionally-charged finale.
Now for a sort of ‘Thelma and Louise’ for blokes, just without any of the deep meaning and with Socrates being a total dude. ‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ is, naturally, all about Bill and Ted, two idiotic but well-intentioned best friends who go time travelling obviously.
As they travel through time in an attempt to complete the most awesome history assignment ever they meet Abe Lincoln, Billy the Kid, Sigmund Freud and that very excellent barbarian Genghis Khan. Can you think of a better way to spend a Valentine’s Day?
Films about not being sad but being awesome instead…
For films about friendship that tangle with the thorny issue of love see ‘Swingers’. Written by and starring ‘Iron Man’s Jon Favreau it concerns an aspiring-actor unable to get over a relationship which ended six months prior, and his friends attempts to get him back out there.
Also featuring a rare Vince Vaughn performance that isn’t totally annoying, it’s a film about friends picking you up and dusting you off for your own good.
‘(500) Days of Summer’ may well be a tale of boy meets girl, but as the famous opening lines of, let’s face it, the best rom com of the 21st century state, “this is not a love story”.
With the impossible-not-to-love twin-leads of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, this ends up being a tale about moving on and rolling with life’s punches. As bad as things may ever seem, life will get better.
Films about/with BLOODY VIOLENCE…
As we all know, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and there is no finer cinematic example of this than ‘Kill Bill’ – Volume 1 being the best of the revenge films that have littered the latter half of Quentin Tarantino’s career.
With her fiancé and child gone and having been in a coma for four years, Uma Thurman’s The Bride has nothing left to live for… except REVENGE! Hijinks of the most violent nature ensue. If Valentine’s Day brings out a bloodlust in you, this is the film for you.
There needs to be an old school action movie on this list and I’ve settled for ‘Lethal Weapon’ – a buddy cop action movie with a big emphasis on buddy… and action… and movie for that matter. Okay moving on.
Mel Gibson is the psychotic suicidal widower, Danny Glover is the cop feeling too old for all this proverbial. Together they form an unlikely alliance, and an even unlikelier friendship in the face of Gary Busey’s completely barmy villain.
One of Hollywood’s greatest bromances.
And that’s your lot! Have a very happy February 14th everyone. Not because it’s anything of any importance, just because.