My dear friend Aly, blogging extraordinaire, is about ready to resort to Ghandi-like passive resistance because all of her friends are not updating their blogs. In an effort to avoid an Internet crisis, I am going to blog today. Aly gave me the topic. I am to blog about my favorite movie.
I love different movies for different reasons, so it can be difficult to crown one movie as "My Favorite". Right now I am on a Jane Austen kick (thanks to PBS) so I have enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility of late. I also simply adore movies about football (Christ is life - everything else is football.). Near the very top of my list of favorites is the movie We Are Marshall. It is a beautiful movie about the resilience of the human spirit and how healing takes place in different ways for people. I highly recommend it. (Buy a box of Puffs before you push "play". That way you won't have to wipe tears on your sleeve and you can support my retirement fund at the same time.) But if I absolutely HAVE to name one movie that I love more than the others, it would have to be the movie Angus.
"Huh?", you say. "Angus? Never heard of it."
Well, it is out of publication now (which I know isn't the right word, but I can't think of the verb used for making copies of movies...), but if you are very lucky you can find a VHS copy floating around on eBay. It is worth the $.99 they will charge you for it (shipping may be $3.50 or so, but again, worth emptying the change in your car for). It stars George C. Scott and Cathy Bates and a young man Charlie Tolbert as the lead character, Angus.
Angus is the story of an overweight teen who is good at science and fair at football. He is in love with Melissa, the head cheerleader who is dating Angus' arch-nemesis and the captain of the football team, Rick. While the plot sounds like just another teen movie, so much more goes into this script and it becomes a movie for anyone who has ever dared to dream big even though the world tells them they'll never measure up. It is a comedy (and some parts are laugh out loud, pee your pants if you aren't careful funny), but there are sweet moments that speak deeply to your heart, and some painful twists and turns that remind you how unexpected this life thing can be.
While I am in general a fan of the "high school movie" genre, Angus is a film for anyone of any age. We all need to be reminded that you can't be brave while being indestructible. Risks in life are scary, and we never know how they will turn out and how we will be left feeling in the end. We all need to think about how far we are willing to go to have the life we dream of.
So head on over to eBay and spend $4.50 on what I think is one of the greatest movies ever made. If you can't find it there, give me a call. Maybe you can come on over and watch it here!
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