Wednesday, February 21, 2024

The Angela Lansbury conspiracy

 







Among the three dozen or so movies my darling wife and I seem able to watch over and over there are two we watched very recently that I'd like to highlight today:

Morning Glory and Always Be My Maybe.

These are clever, warm, charming movies, impeccably performed, shot, and written, and delightful to watch. But, alas, I am not here to discuss any of that. I am here to discuss two incidental jokes in these movies.


The first one takes place fairly early in Morning Glory. The main character played by Rachel McAdams is having a meet cute with her future love interest after a rough job interview. At that same time, on an elevator, she also meets a legendary, crotchety anchorman played by Harrison Ford whom she idolizes. Her meet cute person knows this Harrison Ford character and describes him as the third worst person in the world. 

Now we're almost to the joke.

A bit later the third-worst person in the world thing comes up again and Rachel McAdams asks "Who are the other two?"

The love interest replies "Kim Jong Un and Angela Lansbury, actually." Then he adds "She knows what she did."



The joke in Always Be My Maybe goes like this: We come upon our two love interests mid-conversation in the brief part of the movie where their relationship is humming along. The man, played by Randall Park is exclaiming "I can't believe she actually said that to you!"

And the Ali Wong character responds "Just because someone plays a singing teapot in a Disney movie doesn't make them a good person."

Angela Lansbury plays the singing teapot in the original Disney Beauty and the Beast.

Angela Lansbury!

Are all my favorite movies peppered with strange, off-the-cuff jokes about Angela Lansbury being a terrible person?

Maybe.

I mean, I hope so.


I looked her up. By all accounts, Angela Lansbury was an extremely nice, humble, talented, down-to-earth person. But as to there being a kind of running joke in movies where people reference her being a terrible person, I could find nothing.

But maybe the jokes aren't so easy to find, and thus far, we have merely spotted the simplest ones. What if there are hundreds of jokes about Angela Lansbury being a terrible person snuck into little corners of hundreds upon hundreds of all the most delightful Hollywood movies?


One can hope...








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