I’m not going to bury the lead: Sheila E. is in this movie.
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Yup, THAT Sheila E. If you’re unawares, Sheila E. was a drummer/singer that actually started in the early 70s. By the 80s she was renowned enough to be working with artists like Prince. While I think it’s awesome that bands like The Warning and Band Maid are selling out stadiums, ‘back in the day’ women who rocked got a less credit, and there were some drummers like Sheila E., Denise DuFort, and Karen Carpenter that were AMAZING and never received the recognition they deserved. By the way, #flex, I knew those women WITHOUT googling “female drummers from back in the day”, and now you know them too. I would actually encourage you to google “female drummers from back in the day” and go down that rabbit hole, because it’s pretty freaking rad, and I love seeing them now get the credit that they didn’t get back then. So, I was pretty stoked to see that Sheila E. was in “Nobody Dumps My Daughter”, and while she might not have the acting chops of a Judi Dench or the what have you, it was quite enjoyable watching her fortune teller trying to navigate a convoluted web of blackmail and deceit!
The strands of that web include our three protagonists: Theresa, the hot girl at school saving herself for marriage, Jimmy, her ex-boyfriend that I will call the “Lil’ Dumper” since “Big Dumper” is already taken, and Mary, her complete psychopath of a mother.
Since Jimmy is the real hero of the movie, let’s do some fun facts about him.
1) The character’s name is Jimmy Simpson. There also happens to be an actor named Jimmi Simposon. Umm... Not to hand Jimmi Simposon a burn notice, but if you were going this route, you can do a lot better... You do realize that “Rudolph Valentino” was on the table? Or “R. Lee Ermy?” I mean, who didn’t want this dialogue:
“Hey, R., what’s the haps?”
“Six seven!”
I am *in tune* with the youth and their lingo!
2) Jimmy is white. I have my ear to the digital ground, and I know that the woid on the street is that liberal hollywood has been systematically taking down the white male for the last 15 years, and depriving an entire generation of young men role models that they can look up to. Well, fear not, rudderless gen Z males, because now you have JIMMY! Jimmy is, genuinely, the nicest person in the movie. His GPA is 3.9, so he’s driven and smart! He sleeps with all the hottest girls in school, and it’s not presented as “toxic” at all, it’s presented as “High School Kids Finding Themselves”. Jimmy is the great white hollywood hope.
3) Jimmy doesn’t actually dump Teresa, she dumps him. Jimmy gets drunk and hops in the sack with the other hottest girl in school (again, not toxic, just kids having fun), and before he can get up in there Teresa’s psychopathic mother, Mary, who has been stalking Jimmy, bursts in on him. Now... Instead of saying “Why was your crazy mom stalking me?!?!” Jimmy BEGS TERESA FOR FORGIVENESS. He says he made a mistake, he still loves her, and asks if she will forgive him. He doesn’t even bring up her insane mom! She SLAPS HIM IN THE FACE and dumps him. Who is the ‘toxic’ individual in this scenario? Spoiler alert: It ain’t Jimmy!
This is where Mary reveals her psychopathic nature. After Teresa and Jimmy break up, and Teresa admits to her mom that he has plundered her female treasure, Mary decides that if Jimmy dies... Teresa gets her virginity back. This leads to some questions. Such as... WHAT THE @#$!ING @#$!?
Why exactly does Mary believe this nonsense? What is the root of her psychosis? The movie doesn’t actually tell us. The only thing we know about Mary is that her son died in a car accident when he was 25ish, and that her son and Teresa were born 18 years apart (which is it’s own form of insanity... 18 years between children?? What?? Why??). This doesn’t really explain anything. Therefore it is up to us, the audience, to figure out why Teresa is crazy, and we can jump to the following reasons:
1) She’s female.
2) She’s latino.
Booooooooooooooooooooring. These reasons might or might not be valid... But what they are not is *interesting*. If you only take one thing away from this review, it should be that Sheila E. is awesome, and she is still touring and you won’t be disappointed if you catch her show. But if there’s a second thing, it’s that you shouldn’t use movies to reinforce your weak sauce stereotypes and prejudices about gender, race, or anything. That’s what the internet is for! To find the root of Mary’s psychotic behavior, we need to take a critical lens and look deeper. Which I did... And this line really struck me:
This is not a direct quote, because I don’t actually remember the line, but the gist of it is this: “Honey, there can only be one.” Now, ostensibly, Mary is talking about boys that Teresa will marry, since Mary is a strict monogamist. However, when Mary says “Honey, there can only be one” I think she is actually referring to the number of people allowed on earth from her home planet: Zeist. Mary is from Zeist. Now... What she is *supposed* to be doing on earth, is killing her fellow Zeistians until only one remains, and that person earns the prize, which is right to travel back to the motherworld. However... Mary went off mission. And can we blame her? We can’t. If you’re looking at it from an alien perspective, Earth is NUTS. People be killin’ each other for no reason... Once you leave high school, sex becomes this insane thing that destroys relationships rather than builds them... It’s all nonsense. Of *course* Mary didn’t survive that exposure with her mind intact. She processes all those nonsensical earthling hangups, and since violence is normalized of course she thinks about murder, and since sex is stigmatized of course she uses her daughter’s deflowering as an excuse to commit said murder.
When you look at it like that, it seems borderline impossible that anybody from Zeist would retain their sanity after coming to earth. You know what? Maybe they haven’t. Maybe coming to earth does them all in. You know what they say, if you roll with the bitches, sooner or later you’re going to come up smelling like a bitch. Spend too much time on earth, and sooner or later you’ll starting thinking like an earthling. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. If Jimmy is our unequivocal hero, then *Earth Itself* is the villain.
Unless you listen to Karen Carpenter, Denise DoFort, and Sheila E. Then Earth is pretty cool.
3/10