FIRST SENSIBLE LINE ANYONE’S SAID FOR THIS ENTIRE MOVIE.
Fat Daughter: You’d better not say yes, Father.
The Dad: Shut up, Miss Dunkin’ Donuts 2003.
DAD, I WON A CONTEST. BE HAPPY FOR ME.
Oh, also Jojen Reed has now chased Joanna all the way to the airport, where he’s broken through security and is leading agents on a “wacky” chase to the gate. Do I need to mention that this kid is white?
Colin Firth and this entire French village (who, again, apparently all speak only Portuguese) finally arrive at the restaurant where Aurelia works. Rumors are running wild among the crowd at this point:
“Apparently, he is going to kill Aurelia!”
“Cool!”
GOOD JOKE.
When they get there, Aurelia looks horrified and is like, “What the fuck are you doing at my work!? I don’t even know you, dude! Get out of here! Oh my god, I’M TRYING TO RUN A RESTAURANT HERE. GO AWAY, YOU CREEPY ENGLISHMAN.”
No. Just kidding. She agrees to marry the guy. Forever. Even though they have never spoken.
In a painfully fitting finale, Colin returns from America with the woman he got, and it’s Shannon freaking Elizabeth. He literally brings her back to England with him like an airport souvenir. But don’t worry, Tony, HE IMPORTED AN OBJECT WITH NO AGENCY FOR YOU TOO. HERE, PUT YOUR MOUTH ON IT.
That’s love, kids.
Oh, wait. Actually, it’s shit.
RATING: 0/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
On Marriage
We’re taught, from when we are very young, that the ultimate purpose of marriage—the work of love—is to become one of those elderly couples you see in People magazine, who met in the one-room schoolhouse when they were eleven, who were each other’s first kiss, who stayed true through the war, who never said an unkind word, who died holding hands in their sleep at one hundred. Aren’t they sweet? Look at how he looked at her. Look at her little hat.
I already know that I’m not going to die in a bonnet in People magazine because I’m nearly forty, and that’s not my marriage. I married a difficult, crazy guy. My husband married an anxious, insecure woman. Sometimes our shortcomings rub against each other painfully. Sometimes things get dark—occasionally in an active, explosive way, but more often in a passive, resentful way, where you snap to and realize you haven’t really looked at each other in months. He creates chaos. I micromanage. We’ve both had to forgive each other for a lot of things.
Having been through a real marriage, it’s hard for me not to feel like those perfect old dead couples are lying, or in denial, or maybe they just didn’t go deep enough, maybe they were always too scared. 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.
My husband and I met when we were twenty-three, became best friends and started dating when we were twenty-nine, and got married when we were thirty-three. We’re thirty-eight now, and that means we’ve seen each other through selfish youth and the onset of back pain and the deaths of parents and the disorienting transition from fun to tired, and somehow we still want to be together. Even in our worst moments, we still crack each other up and hold each other at night.
The true work of love isn’t staying together when things are perfect; it’s staying together even when things are awful, weathering catastrophic mistakes (within reason) because, well, you decided to, and because you know the potential is as real as the now. It turns your partnership into something that grows instead of something that atrophies. You’re promising another person not just passion and love but a safety net, some degree of stability and certainty in a fucking terrible world. You’re saying, “I promise I will stay with you even if you suck for a while,” an almost narcotic comfort that we all deserve.
I don’t dream of dying adorable; I dream of dying calloused and wise, of looking my husband in the eyes and saying, “Remember that thing we almost didn’t survive? Aren’t you so glad we did?”
At the same time, though.
I cannot fucking imagine.
The look.
On my face.
If my husband came to me and said…
“Honey…”
“Yeah?”
“Honey.”
“What is it?”
“Honey, I have something to tell you.”
“Just tell me!”
“Honey…I shrunk the kids.”
You did what???? YOU DID FUCKING WHAT!?!?!?!?!???!??
Imagine the years of frustration. Imagine how much she’s already had to forgive to stay in this marriage. How many times she must have needed his help carrying in the groceries, vacuuming the stairs, weeding the flower beds, not to mention the subtler, more invisible tasks that so often fall to women—scheduling, delegating, nurturing, knowing what’s done and what needs doing. She probably tried every angle with him: asking, at first, then “joking,” scolding, begging.
But no, don’t bother Wayne, the genius! Don’t ask anything of Wayne, the world’s foremost expert in…size science(??)! He’s busy. He’s in his fucking lab, working on his precious machine—as though Diane’s time isn’t innately as valuable as his, her energy just as precious. What about her career? What about the untapped greatness that lies inside her? What passions did she shove aside to be the caregiver for this gibbering little turkey boy?
And for what? For WHAT??
I’m sure they fought once in a while. I’m sure she’d lose her temper: WHY DO WE EVEN NEED A SHRINK RAY, WAYNE? Seriously, literally, what need does this fill? You’re sick, Wayne! Sick! EVERYTHING IS ALREADY THE RIGHT SIZE!
Mostly, though, I’m sure she breathed deeply and smiled, for him, for years, because she loved him, and because she took a vow—and, hey, he forgave her for the way she tended to nag. Night after night, she lost him to the lab, the empty bed cold beside her, but this was his thing, and she loved him, and he promised her it would be “worth it.”
WELL, GUESS WHAT, WAYNE? IT HAS NOT BEEN WORTH IT.
YOU SHRUNK THE KIDS.
YOU SHRUNK ’EM.
And now, I’m sorry, you want me to what? Climb into this harness so you can dangle me over our lawn with a magnifying glass in hopes of saving our only two living children—whom I fed with my blood and pushed out of my body and WHOM YOU SHRUNK—from being killed by a scorpion?? Why do we even have scorpions in our lawn, Wayne? WHERE THE FUCK DO WE LIVE????
It’s survivable, though. Again, this is the work of love. Any good couples therapist will tell you: sometimes the dork you married accidentally shrinks the kids and they get imprisoned in a Lego by a scorpion and their pet ant sacrifices himself to save them and they ride the dog into the house and then your son falls into the Cheerios and your husband almost eats him for breakfast and then your husband reverses the shrink ray and re-biggens them all again and you all eat a big turkey.
She could do it. They could make it.
But now imagine.
Now imagine.
You’ve gone through the Herculean task of forgiving your husband for all of that. You’ve healed, slowly, with trepidation but also with grace. You’ve made it through. You’ve moved to a new town, had a new baby, found a fresh start. Parts of you are still raw, but you know that forgiveness is growth and those scars will make the pair of you stronger than before. This is your person, and he’s worth it, and he’s learned.