It’s all Shit, Actually

Am I the only person who was holding out some small amount of ridiculous hope that the change of the year might, I dunno, change something? But here we are, a new year and still just as much in the midst of global pandemic as ever, only also with a good dose of SAD and post-holiday melancholy. There’s something in the air, because we got an extra week of vacation from school, but all that did was serve to extend this vortex of in between where time seems unsubstantial except for the what feels like hours of putting to bed and waking up too soon. Meals are still mostly chocolate and any resolutions I might have tinkered with in more buoyant years feel like shouting into a void. So needless to say I’m in a post-holiday slump, the tree went down yesterday, half its lights petered out. Half the branches fallen off. Regrets about ever buying a fake tree to begin with, and now, three years later at the curb. Everything feels like a waste, least of all the time spent reading. But this is me trying! Let’s claw back the slightest bits of joy we can and divest ourselves of the worst part of 2020 Part Deux that never seems to end.

So into this cloud of negative energy Lindy West managed to shine the slightest of bright lights—the last twinkly Christmas light if you will—with her collection of essays on iconic movies that don’t always hold up. Some like the titular Love, Actually we realize on rewatch are truly terrible, and others like The Fugitive by which all other movies are rated, we find timeless perfection (her word). Truly, I could read 1000 more pages of Lindy West just tearing apart my favourite childhood films with giddy acerbic wit. We can love what we love and still acknowledge the giant gaping plot holes or capital P Problematic casting and story issues.

EVERYTHING IS FAIR GAME AND EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE. Every time I picked up this book over the past few weeks it was so easy to slide into a happy state of amused distraction, laughing out loud enough times to entertain curious inquiries from my four-year-old. Which is really the best five-star review we can hope for in times like these.

Shit, Actually by Lindy West (Hatchette Books, 2020)