Overall: 🐢🐢🐢🐢
Storyline:
Writing Style:
Personal Growth:
Enjoyment:
“Keep this metaphor with you always—it is very useful when you have more than one problem at once. Sometimes you have to let the T. Rex fight the raptors.“
Shit, Actually by Lindy West
The Story:
New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Lindy West was once the in-house movie critic for Seattle’s alternative newsweekly The Stranger, where she covered film with brutal honesty and giddy irreverence. In Shit, Actually, Lindy returns to those roots, re-examining beloved and iconic movies from the past 40 years with an eye toward the big questions of our Is Twilight the horniest movie in history? Why do the zebras in The Lion King trust Mufasa – WHO IS A LION – to look out for their best interests? Why did anyone bother making any more movies after The Fugitive achieved perfection? And, my god, why don’t any of the women in Love, Actually ever fucking talk?!?! From Forrest Gump, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and Bad Boys II, to Face/Off, Top Gun, and The Notebook, Lindy combines her razor-sharp wit and trademark humor with a genuine adoration for nostalgic trash to shed new critical light on some of our defining cultural touchstones-the stories we’ve long been telling ourselves about who we are. At once outrageously funny and piercingly incisive, Shit, Actually reminds us to pause and ask, “How does this movie hold up?”, all while teaching us how to laugh at the things we love without ever letting them or ourselves off the hook.Shit, Actually is a love letter and a break-up note all in to the films that shaped us and the ones that ruined us. More often than not, Lindy finds, they’re one and the same.
Key Elements:
Humor, Nonfiction, Essays, Film, Feminism, Critique, Pop Culture, Childhood movies, Reviews, Ratings
Why This Rating?
I fell in love with two quotes for this book and I felt like sharing the second one with you even though the Jurassic Park quote one top vote from me!
“The truth is that you simply can’t make it into adulthood unscathed. And if somehow you did, you wouldn’t have the perspective and empathy to properly care for another human being for the rest of both your lives. It’s impossible. Everyone’s going to have their shit.”
Shit, Actually by Lindy West
Ok, on to the review!
This one starts off strong with a letter to the audience. – Oh, also I read this one via Audiobook which is read entirely by the author herself. Loved that we got to hear this as she intended the inflections to be – The letter and the whole book for that matter was written during the dark times of Covid-19. It is a tad crazy to be reading something from a time that we all just want to forget ever happened at this point. Her opening letter gives us a perfect taste of what is to come. Buckle in for a woman who isn’t afraid of her thoughts or words! Lets Go Girl! She is ready to take on and dish out thoughts and feels towards some of the most widely known movies pre-2020. And from the line up I see in the synopsis, most of them are ones that I have greatly enjoyed or was swept up in the fan-mania as they came out. Movies like, Jurassic Park, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Shawshank Redemption, *cough* Twilight *cough*. Hey, don’t judge, I was happily a Twilight fan as they were coming out! Those were the books to read and the fact they got a movie, holy shit that was amazing! I went to all of those midnight releases! Ya’ll! For those who lived through the the Avengers era, it was like going on opening night to watch those movies – Utter chaos and bliss mixed together! West’s favorite movie is The Fugitive and she has her own rating system based on how good other movies are compared to this. Remember, this is a book based on her own opinions about very popular movies. I loved it!
Each of the movies were fully recapped in here. So Warning! If you intend to watch any of the movies she discusses, you’ll be getting the whole thing – beginning, middle, and endings. Here is the list of movies she talks about and rates throughout her book:
- The Fugitive
- Love, Actually
- Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
- Forrest Gump
- The Notebook
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
- Face/Off
- Back to the Future II
- Top Gun
- Titanic
- The Santa Clause
- The Rock
- Bad Boys II
- Jurassic Park
- Lion King
- Rush Hour
- Garden State
- Terminator 2
- Reality Bites
- Twilight
- Speed
- The Shawshank Redemption
- American Pie
The recaps that West gives us are absolute gold. I love that she brings in her own voice and humor in every single line. And humor would be the biggest take away from this. She is so freaking funny and her writing is wonderful for this kind of book. It is full a conversation or a debate happening between close friends chatting movies. But Dang, when she takes on the movies I grew up with and lays them out in her recaps, they kind of take on a whole new light both in good ways and bad. I think it is more to do with, I watch these older nostalgic movies now to turn my mind off and just enjoy them. I NEVER thought about the how some of the movies have portrayed women or some of the f-uped things that are actually happening during the movies – this thought is from finishing Back to the Future segment. Again, I’ve turned my brain off to watch them so to speak, but now rewatching some after reading this book, I’ve picked up on more from what West has been saying.
I think this was a fantastic read and I fully recommend this one to any other Cinema fans out there or fans of the series above. West’s opinions and thoughts might have made me rethink some of the movies I’ve grown up with, but honestly her words have only made me enjoy the movies more. Plus her summaries are so freaking funny, I’ve walked away with some new phrases that will forever stick around. Like the metaphor from the quote above: “Sometimes you have to let the T.Rex fight the raptors”. Or the “Wizard hack: don’t send fully one-quarter of your children to Evil School, and maybe end up with 100 percent fewer evil wizards.” It was such a fun read!
Time to get lost in the next story!
