Five Films that Make You Glad You’re Not Married

Posted by Tara Settembre (tara@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 11, 2007

Here’s a list of films that ruin the cute Meg Ryan romances with their harsh portrayal of marriage.

5. Ruthless People (1986)

This is a harmless 80s comedy has some big cast members including, Bette Midler, Danny DeVito, Judge Reinhold and Bill Pullman, however the plot is a bit disturbing. Danny DeVito’s wife (Bette Middler) has just been kidnapped… and he doesn’t want her back! She later aligns with her kidnappers to get back at her husband for not wanting to pay her ransom and hoping that she was dead. It’s more than a little disturbing and the hatred is hardcore, but it sure is funny to watch, just glad it’s not me.

4. A Perfect Murder (1998)

This is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial “M” for Murder and stars Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen as a powerful husband, an unfaithful wife and a jealous lover. All of them have a motive to create the perfect murder and each of them has a plan. Dunt dunt dun! Definitely not a romance, but a sick love triangle that is minus the love.

3. Fargo (1996) / Double Indemnity (1944)

These two films feature one spouse plotting the other’s death in order to cash in, yet in the end something always goes wrong and that’s why we watch despite the chill that runs down our spine due to the coldness of the marriage shown.

2. The War of the Roses (1989)

The tagline for this film reads, “Once in a lifetime comes a motion picture that makes you feel like falling in love all over again. This is not that movie.” True that. I’ve never been more depressed and scared about marriage than after seeing this film. Once again paring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, the film starts off romantic enough with the couple falling in love and becoming successful but then quickly turns to them hating each other trying everything to get each other to leave the house in a vicious divorce battle. They hate each other so much that they fight to the end to keep their mansion and punish the other to the point where they kill each other’s’ pets and literally beat each other up. The final insult I think comes in the end but I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it yet. Overall It’s sick, it’s twisted, and it’s good cinema.

Trivia: Danny DeVito directs this film and co-stars with the duo in this film as well as in Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile. Also, notice that Danny DeVito and Michael Douglas are in two of the films on this list.

1. American Beauty (1999)

This Academy Award winner proves that marriage in the burbs isn’t always so rosy, especially when those roses fall out of a young teenager’s breasts in an elicit and illegal affair fantasy. The married couple, played by Annette Benning and Kevin Spacey, are estranged both physically and emotionally and it’s painful to watch how indifferent they are to one another and how unhappy they are with their own lives.

Lester Burnham: I am sick and tired of being treated like I don’t exist. You two do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it, and I don’t complain.
Carolyn Burnham: Oh, you don’t complain? Then I must be psychotic, then! What is this? Yeah, let’s bring in the laugh-meter and see how loud it gets.
Lester Burnham: [Lester throws the asparagus plate at the wall] Don’t interrupt me, honey!

I left the theater wowed by the acting and rawness of the film, but also depressed, jaded and feeling like I was going through a mid-life crisis as well.

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