Word: subplot
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fill time? To create characterization? In a movie about movement, it is the actions that speak louder than words, and the dialogue often comes second to the acting as a means of establishing personalities. In addition, the script offers plenty of promises with no payoffs. A romantic subplot involving Tanto and a female reporter leads absolutely nowhere, and could easily have been excised without affecting the movie in the slightest. Ditto regarding a plot strand concerning Tanto’s ex-wife. And the character of Sophia, so integral to the first half of the movie, becomes nearly invisible...
...cable network (and yes, I'm counting "The West Wing"): a hilarious allegorical story of independence, relationships and mortality, told through scary stories (just as "The Twilight Zone" did), that has gotten ever more touching and audacious in its fifth season. See this year's outlandish subplot, in which Whedon introduced Buffy's younger sister Dawn - we'd never seen her before but the cast acted like she'd been there all along -who turned out to be an ancient mystical "key" disguised by a spell that made her friends and family believe they'd known her for years. What...
With this dear-daddy subplot, the film finally tries to persuade you that George is a man worth feeling sorry for. O.K., so his father loved him, his mom didn't. He loved his kid, she deserted him. What's this got to do with the price of coke? In truth, all George deserves is the grudging respect one might give to any captain of industry who, with guts and a shrewd sense of an expanding market, made a bundle selling people something they didn't need. That's not quite enough for a wannabe-great movie...
...helicopter - see you later, Amber, I got work to do - for a big lunch and a snorkel. And there amid the coral occurred a great, G-Rated Romance, Hollywood-style. (Fast-action "happiness montage" included.) They were destined to be together, you see, and besides we had a subplot to plumb: Jerri making her move (and her moves) on the king of the tribe that maybe needed a reason to keep her around. Very "To Catch a Thief," with maybe just a touch of "Pretty Woman." (Though the repartee was more like "Home Improvement." Sample conversation, on the way over...
...when she kept her "promise" and turned on Maralyn amid the glow of the torchlights? Quite possibly. But in the end, the overarching story held: Only the young survive. Because Tina's brush-off - not much softened by the little frownie face she put on her vote - was just subplot window dressing...