A short meditation on Cameron Diaz in a bikini

For some reason I think I want to see this one---

I don’t know what the reason is, but it’s not to see Cameron Diaz in a bikini.  I swear!  By the way, there’s this little Ursula Andress and Sean Connery homage going on here, and I hope at least a few bars of Underneath the Mango Tree play on the soundtrack, but does Cameron Diaz really look good in a bikini or is she another anorectic Hollywood star starving herself to look seventeen with a personal trainer so if she flexes and is posed just right and the camera is at the exact right angle she can give the impression of looking good in a bikini for a couple of seconds?

At any rate, I think I want to see Knight and Day for the fun of it, even though, the way Hollywood summer blockbusters are, it probably won’t be fun, it’ll be completely predictable---I already know there’s not a hope in hell that Cruise’s character will turn out to be truly crazy and and there’s less of a chance that Diaz’s character will wind up with her safe and dull but nice and heroic in his own ordinary way police officer boyfriend than there was that Roz Russell would take a flyer on Cary Grant and train it to Albany with Ralph Bellamy.

Movie heroines don’t arrive at the final credits in the arms of men named Rodney.

Also too many cars will blow up.

So why would I want to see it?

Maybe it’s because Cruise cracks me up.  I’m serious.  He’s a very good comic actor.  I wish he had let his career be more defined by Risky Business than by Top Gun.

Ok.  Diaz may or may not look good in a bikini but Ursula Andress sure did.

And you know who else can crack me up?  Sean Connery.

Comments

[Linkmeister]

Imagine Ms. Andress in today's bikinis rather than the ones society would accept when the film was made.

Now wash your imagination with soap.

[mac macgillicuddy]

Lance, the trailer doesn't make me think it's worth seeing the movie for any reason. But that's just me.

Now, Shrek Ever After, that would be different.

[scribbler 50]

I'm gritting my teeth as I type this, Lance, but I have to agree on Cruise being good at comedy. Tropic Thunder immediately comes to mind. Perhaps that's why I've had trouble taking him seriously as a serious actor, the cartoonish mugging that serves him well in the yucks department (where he's almost doing a campy Tom Cruise impression) has the opposite effect when he's pounding out a drama. Beyond of course his turns as an action hero.

As to Diaz... pretty enough and decent enough when it comes to comedic chops, but seeing her in a bikini is not enough to draw me to this film. I'm from the ancient school called Sophia Loren and curves, a Tinker Toy in a two-piece doesn't get it for me.

[chachabowl]

When watching "Goldfinger," I always crack up when Sean Connery addresses Honor Blackman as "Pooh-see."

[actor212]

If Cameron Diaz is in a bikini, ain't nothing going to be short...

[El Jefe]

mac,

If they would get back to the virtues of original-recipe Shrek that might make it worth it. Although I have to say cute, buxom, redheaded, twinkly-eyed, barbarian-armor-clad ogre Fiona is teh hot. Probably because she reminds me of my wife (right down to the Xena armor which is there in spirit) but chaucun a son gout (anyone know how to make HTML type a circumflex?) I still think Maid Marian in Disney's Robin Hood is, well, a fox.

chachabowl,

I still marvel that they got away with that in 1965, even in Swinging Britain where that still mostly meant "female cat."

scribbler,

Word. One thousand times over. Sofia Loren is to female beauty what the little shiny pond that's not a ripoff of the concept of the Force if any of George Lucas' lawyers are listening is to the island on "Lost." Both the anchor and the source. One isn't likely to see her true modern heir, Christina Hendricks, in such a getup either. There are powers which Tinker Toys (and I think Diaz is both cutest from the neck up and likeable for her own dorky self-deprecation) can neither reckon with nor contain.