I took Debbie out for a meal and a movie today. We saw Rachel Getting Married – a drama with Anne Hathaway portraying a woman who left rehab for her sister’s wedding. The documentary/handheld camera made Debbie feel motion sick, but it was a meaningful film about dysfunction, tragedy, and forgiveness.
Afterwards, I asked Debbie what she thought about the movie. Her response: “Well, it wasn’t as funny as I thought. What is the name of the movie with Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson? It took me 30 minutes to realize this was a different movie, and it wasn’t going to be a comedy.”
You can imagine how disappointed she was to watch Rachel Getting Married when she was emotionally prepared for Bride Wars.
My parents have rented the wrong movie a couple of times. As a kid, my parents went to run some errands and let us watch Trading Places, an R rated film with a topless Jamie Lee Curtis. They had thought they had rented another lesser known movie called Carbon Copy. Both were comedies, but they had very different audiences in mind.
Another time my parents watched American Pie thinking they were watching the Oscar-winning film, American Beauty. I haven’t seen either of these films, but I have heard that although they were released in the same year, American Pie doesn’t really fit the Academy Awards standards.
So what’s in a name? A great deal actually. Just because something has a similar name or seems similar doesn’t mean it is – in movies and in life. We need to take the time to pay attention to the details and discover the uniqueness of each person, organization, or city rather than wrong assumptions.
My grandparents went to Hawaii when I was in high school and brought me home a t-shirt. The graphic was a big pot plant with the words “Kona Gold” above it. They thought it was a coffee plant and didn’t realize what it really was.