BEAUTY AND THE GEEK - television

I’ve found a way to feel great about myself. It’s cheap and really easy to do. Want to know what it is?

Of course you do.

Well, set aside an hour from 8.30pm on Thursday night to watch ‘Beauty and the Geek’ on Channel 7.

The male geeks are generally loveable characters, whose social ineptitude will make you want to take them under your wing (and/or just give them a big pash) and tell them that they’re great people who deserve to be in happy, loving relationships. Cue warm, fuzzy feeling.

The female beauties are perhaps a bit less charming, but no less entertaining. Last week’s trivia question ‘What kind of animal is a koala?’ was answered by one beauty with ‘A placenta?’. Cue uproarious laughter. 

When the intellectual shortcomings of the beauties is starting to look goofy and loveable (and it will), remind yourself of their likely motivation for going on the show – a gig in Zoo Weekly. For the geeks, it’s a noble mission – to find love. Or in some cases, more like lurrrrve...

In a new innovation for the show this season, they’ve introduced a female geek and a male beauty. Watching the female geek have a little meltdown last week when she was asked to chat to strangers (a task clearly very foreign and uncomfortable for her) genuinely made me shed a tear (and wonder why the hell she’d signed up for the show). But it was a compelling, can’t-look-but-can’t-look-away moment.

And the male beauty, what’s he like? He’s orange. Desperately, hideously orange. But he did run to the aid of the female geek in her hour of need, so he can’t be all bad.

At the end of the show, you will feel like a genius and you will have had belly laughs to boot. That’s a great return on an hour in front of the box these days. 

CRAZY STUPID LOVE - film

Loving Steve Carell and Julianne Moore felt like a good start. That and the generally positive reviews I’d seen. But ‘Crazy Stupid Love’ fell a little flat for me. Not a write-off, just not the gem I’d hoped. It’s certainly not the first film to be built on an implausible premise but the idea that the very hot Jacob (Ryan Gosling) would take a 40-something whinging stranger (Carell) under his wing was a bit hard to take. I wasn’t alone in feeling a bit let down. In the session I attended, two couples and one other person left about half way through the film and didn’t return.

But if you can suspend reality there’s some good laughs to be had and at least one genuinely surprising moment. Don’t want to ruin a plot surprise but will say there was some great casting of relatives.

An audible whimper from the audience when Gosling removed his shirt did make me giggle (that body’s certainly whimper-worthy) but appreciation for him went beyond the body. And the face. He had a great chemistry with Carell and Emma Stone, who stars as Hannah, the woman who gets under his womaniser skin.

Too high expectations coupled with some douche bag audience behaviour (OTT pashing and answering a phone call were stand-outs) soured my experience with this one a little, but still worth the $18 I reckon.