So, you guys know how I love stupid expensive overblown movies from the 90s, and I also love dumb 80s movies, possibly more than good 80s movies? Well, I've got one that falls somewhere in the black hole created at the nexus of shitty 90s and shitty 80s movies, and that's 'Only You,' yet another movie I can't believe was actually made in the decade it was made in. This derpfest was birthed like a goat with two heads covered in placenta juice in 1992?! Remember what came out in 1992? (I like doing these unfair comparisons.) Last O' the Mohicans. Glengarry Glen Ross. UNFORGIVEN. So I'm going to say that director Betty Thomas should remain unforgiven for making this movie.
This is a movie about Farmer Ted (as with every time I mis-label a character, I know it's Andrew McCarthy and not Anthony Michael Hall, and hopefully you won't take umbrage at my sullying of Farmer Ted's good name) trying to get it on with Mrs. John Travolta while Helen Hunt wishes he would fuck her instead. It's good already, right? Almost as good as that wig Farmer Ted wore at the end of 'Pretty in Pink'!
Thanks to some intern working at the Netflix Instant, 'Only You' has been weirdly chopped up from whatever its original aspect ratio was into something that looks like it aired on channel 2569 at four in the morning sandwiched in-between an infomercial for Nads and a static shot of a local dog park. Whatever Netflix is showing MIGHT actually be someone's old VHS tape they pulled out from their hope chest. Makes it better, I say! We start with the camera moving through a doll house and into a party in a real house as though it were the point of view of a serial killer wearing corrective sunglasses. Farmer Ted (the designer of said doll house), looking puffy and bewildered (as was Andrew McCarthy's way in the 90s), is apparently marrying a hot girl who let him make a sexist Christmas card of her giving Santa a lap dance. When he calls her to remind her they're going on vacation in a couple of hours, she's apparently blown him off and left town, in the casually ludicrous way movies like this work. Surprised, Ted? Well, don't worry, I'm pretty sure you'll end up getting laid by the end of this movie regardless.
Although it's apparently like 9 pm on Christmas eve, Ted goes to a travel agency (YE OLDEN DAZE) staffed only by an Amish-looking Helen Hunt, who is frantically trying to appease two elderly Jewish stereotypes whose dialogue revolves around diarrhea. Ted gets mad at Amish Helen and calls her 'baby,' because this is the 90s, I guess, even though what he should have called her was a cab to the nearest travel agent training school, as she got the elderly couple tickets to Helsinki instead of Shreveport. COMEDY GOLD!
After Farmer Ted has a daydream about his former fiance servicing him whilst wearing an apron (I mean - seriously - a woman directed this!?), he decides to go down to the bar, where he fortuitously meets Mrs. Travolta, who also just got dumped. Sporting a deep fried perm and a Marilyn Monroe accent about on par with Dennis Rodman singing 'Happy Birthday Mr. President' to his bestie Kim Jong Un, Mrs. Travolta does the following, in order: motorboats him, tries to jerk him off and then stands in front of him so her vagine is in his face. What the shit is in the water in this movie!
Because the 90s, Farmer Ted takes Mrs. Travolta to a resort on the exotic beaches of Oxnard (thank you, IMDB), where, yep, he gets laid, even though in the morning Mrs. T doesn't remember a thing. Farmer Ted can't believe that's the case, though, as he is apparently a sensational lover: he calls himself 'Big Cliff' and says the hotel is going to have to change the springs on the bed. Who knew! After Mrs. T freaks out Farmer Ted emotionally rapes her a little by refusing to let her leave and doing creepy shit like bugging his eyes out and smiling while saying "You forget, we got very close last night." When she points out that she got so blackout drunk she could have been picked up by a rapist, Farmer Ted has to pause and consider her logic. Jesus wept!
Because the 90s again, Farmer Ted dominates poor Mrs. T and forces her to stay with him. But guess what! Amish Helen shows up (on Christmas Day?). FLY IN THE OINTMENT! When Farmer Ted ruins a brochure photograph for the resort she's taking (on Christmas Day?), he threatens to kill her with a huge butcher knife. The fuck!
The next day the tables begin to turn. Where Farmer Ted was once controlling and manipulative, now it's Mrs. T who's making him her bitch. She walks onto the beach in black latex, eliciting a definitively inappropriate catcall from a four year old with a bowl cut, and proceeds to make Farmer Ted do a bunch of emasculating shit that he clearly deserves. When Farmer Ted gets her a drink, she bails on him to go sailing with a bunch of hot guys. I'm having so much trouble deciding who's side I'm on!
Farmer Ted is nearly drowned by a sentient bed of kelp and rescued by...Amish Helen! He blows HER off, though, to go yell at Mrs. T for not fucking him all day long and instead going off 'sailing' (I'm using that as a euphemism for 'fucking,' in case you couldn't tell). So guess what happens? She fucks him in a swing on the beach! Now I REALLY don't know whose side I'm on.
Because Mrs. T blew him off again, Farmer Ted embarks on a series of photographic shenanigans with Amish Helen, including: getting shipwrecked, wearing pink shorts, and playing with the kid with the bowl cut. The latter makes Amish Helen - sporting a pair of overalls that Uncle Jesse would have felt at home wearing - get all warm in the baby maker, as the Lifetime piano music tinkling in the background tells us. They even fake a romantical dinner for the brochure, and we know it's romantical because Amish Helen is wearing her best Sunday-go-to-meetin' dress and Farmer Ted's wearing the shit out of a white suit like he's the fifth member of Color Me Badd. But Mrs. T snaps her fingers, and Farmer Ted jumps! INTO BED!
I feel that deserves the big boss Drop the Mic gif.
After a couple of inconsequential shots of a bunch of old people doing water aerobics and a postcoital shot of Mrs. T dreaming about those big blue dormitories on Fountain Avenue, she tries to run out on Farmer Ted again. He convinces her to stay by putting on those bug eyes again and emotionally raping her some more, but it's no dice, leaving Farmer Ted to pass New Year's Eve with Amish Helen. Are the Amish allowed to party on New Year's? Well, Amish Helen certainly thinks so, because she wears the Judy's version of Julia Roberts's 'Pretty Woman' dress in order to seduce Farmer Ted at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance!
If only they'd gotten Cassandra to play the gig! I guess she must have already been booked at the Dew Drop Inn.
So at the end here it comes down to a real Sophie's Choice for Farmer Ted. Should he shit all over Amish Helen yet again, even though he just made out with her and she clearly hot-rollered her hair for him, or should he move in with Mrs. T, who keeps yanking his dick? Well, Farmer Ted goes as far as getting on the plane with Mrs. T, who's generously offered to induct him into the Mile High Club, but then he bails on her (YAHTZEE!) and leaves her to fuck the goombah in the seat next to him.
What do you guys think happens in the end, after Farmer Ted runs Amish Helen down at a Target, nearly blowing her off one last time for some hot girl on aisle 7 inexplicably holding a trumpet?
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