Monday, July 14, 2008

There may be hope yet


While we were in Mesa this past week, Joy was kind enough to babysit Booker so Marg and I could take in a movie. That's going to be harder to do in Tucson at least until we get to know the young women in the ward. We went to see Baby Mama. Marg and I both are pretty big Tina Fey fans and we weren't terribly disappointed. The love interest in the movie is a fairly bland ex-lawyer turned hippie juice bar owner played by a likeable Greg Kinnear.

I think the Kinnear character represents a new trend for lawyers in movies. Lawyers have been bad guys in stories since the pharisees. You will still see the cutthroat scumbag lawyer - he's not going anywhere. But I think we'll start to see a new, cuddlier lawyer. Of course, since the attorney has to come off as a good person, it is absolutely imperative that they no longer practice law. Once the lawyer is, well, no longer a lawyer, they become the perfect love interest. Bright, ambitious, wealthy from all that lawyering, but reformed back into humanity. Now that they've got the evil out they can move onto their better selves as purveyors of natural fruit juices or warm cookies.

The only problem with my little theory is that I can only think of two examples. Baby Mama and the Maggy Gyllenhall character on "Stranger than Fiction." I'm convinced that there are more, but I haven't been able to think of them and it's not a subject that lends itself to a google search. So if you can think of any other ex-lawyer-turned-love-interest story leave it in the comments.

2 comments:

blaine and michelle said...

Okay, I have one. In the show FRIENDS, the guy that Phoebe marries is an ex-lawyer turned freelance pianist.

Eli said...

The opposite of what you describe - non-lawyers acting like lawyers - are also likable characters in movies; I'm mostly thinking of Erin Brochovich and Vincent Gambini (My Cousin Vinny).