Print
Discuss
Most of the time, I do not show my emotions. This is blatantly untrue: I have the worst poker face of all time and it is very easy to discern what I am thinking about based on my facial expressions. That said, it is true that I rarely am brought to the point of tears by anything: especially not movies. I think I am the only person on the planet who does not cry at the end of A Walk to Remember. However, there have been a few rare moments in my life when something I watch does cause me to have a powerful emotional response during which I start crying like a small child. Not all of them are sad tears, and some of them are really silly and I have no explanation for why they affect me so much, but here they are: the five moments on screen that make me want to curl up in a ball on my bed with a bucket of cookie dough and sob.
1. Up. Literally the second that movie starts playing, I tear up. After the opening sequence I sniffle and calm down a bit, but then about three quarters of the way through, the old man flips through the second half of the photo album, and the waterworks resume. Sometimes even the thought of the movie gets me going. In high school, my friend Bre would start describing the plot of Up just to elicit my tearful response. She would say, “and then they look up at the clouds and they all look like babies, but…” Before she could finish, my face would be all contorted, my nose red and lower lip quivering.
As Tajwar Mazhar ’13, Marcela Cabello ’13, Michael Cirillo ’13, Suzanne Donovan ’13 and Chris Cassano ’14 all said in unison, “I cry everytime I watch Up!” So apparently it’s not just me.
2. Wall-E. Pixar just gets to me apparently. Wall-E doesn’t affect me the same way that Up does. I only cry at the part when EVE is reviewing the security tape footage of Wall-E taking care of her. It’s just so cute. Senior year of high school, we watched Wall-E as a class, and of course I was unable to prevent myself from doing an unintentional impression of the girl from Mean Girls who just has a lot of emotions. There are consequently a number of really attractive pictures of me crying my eyes out at a children’s movie at the age of 18 that I am sure will come back to haunt me at some point when I am off doing something important in the world.
3. Waitress. If you haven’t seen this movie, you need to. Immediately. It’s an adorable tale about a waitress (Keri Russell) who makes the most amazing looking pies and is trapped in an abusive relationship with Elton from Clueless or Detective Cyrus Lupo from Law & Order (Jeremy Sisto). The pies in the movie are enough to bring one to tears. I get so hungry watching that movie, hearing her recite the recipes for “Marshmallow Mermaid Pie,” “Falling in Love Chocolate Mousse Pie” and “Baby Screamin’ Its Head Off In the Middle of the Night & Ruinin’ My Life Pie.” Anyway, at the end of the movie (I’m not spoiling it because everyone knows there’s going to be a happy ending), there is a happy ending. Specifically, Keri Russell kicks Earl (Elton) out of her life, and it just delights me. And I start crying. I get a really creepy weird look on my face that is a combination of smiling and crying at the same time. So I just end up looking really confused and conflicted and again just not terribly attractive.
4. Bridesmaids. I love Chris O’Dowd a lot in that movie. He is actually my perfect man. He is so nice to Kristen Wiig, and he is funny and Irish. I love him and I have no qualms about saying that. It is therefore unbelievably painful for me to watch Kristen Wiig say that their night of fun was a mistake when all he wanted to do was help her rediscover her passion for baking (apparently desserts trigger a lot of emotions for me). At that point in the film, which I have probably seen upwards of eight or nine times, I both start crying angrily and yelling at the screen, “What’s wrong with you Kristen Wiig? He’s so perfect!” (In case you’re wondering I did not do this any of the three times I saw Bridesmaids in theaters last summer. I’m not that weird).
5. The Michelin commercial in which the Michelin man finds his dog. I’m not quite sure what this says about me, but every time that commercial comes on the air, you can count on me to start sobbing. The plot of this commercial, if it can be called a plot, is that the Michelin Man off-roads it on a dark and stormy night looking for his dog (complete with white fat rolls just like his owner’s). He gets out of the car looking worried, but then the dog runs up into the Michelin man’s arms, licking his face. I don’t really know if the commercial can be called a success, because it doesn’t really make me want to buy Michelin tires, but it does make me want to hug my dog, or any dog. I think that they should replace the Sarah McLachlin SPCA commercials with this one – probably more people would donate to the SPCA because they won’t have that annoying song stuck in their heads forever.