Before I go too far, let me qualify what I've already said a little bit. The newer of these two pieces of media is from 2010, which at this point is nearly a decade old. Is there a chance that Taylor has become a better actress since then? For sure, and between her other cameos and what we've seen in music videos I would say that she has likely improved a lot. But it still remains that these are her two largest roles. Her brief appearances in The Lorax and The Giver were both promising, but were ultimately too brief to significantly move the needle.
I don't care what anyone says, I love Valentine's Day. Sure, it completely lives in Love Actually's shadow but Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Biel, and Anne Hathaway are all solid characters and most everyone else is perfectly competent. I've watched it a few times now and it definitely has some major weaknesses, but I still find myself smiling and laughing at every viewing. The biggest thing going against this movie is how bloated it feels. A couple of the major romance plotlines are compelling but between the annoying kids and teens it definitely drags at certain points. Unfortunately there is no better example of this bloated feeling than the sections including Taylor Swift's character, Felicia.
Felicia isn't supposed to be a character we take seriously. She's classic comic relief, along with her boyfriend Willy, played by the famously hunky Taylor Lautner. But I suspect this wasn't always the plan. For one, look at the movie poster. They're featured dead in the center of the heart among many other big names. But that's just incidental, there are other posters where this isn't the case. What really got me thinking was the scene at the end of the movie. Look at this gif of them saying goodbye at the very end of the movie.
Hey, that's not comic relief! Make me laugh, dammit!
The song playing during this scene is, of course, Today Was A Fairytale, the track Taylor wrote for the movie. This is a recipe for a great ending, but it doesn't work at all for comic relief characters. An emotional ending doesn't make sense for a couple who's whole relationship is a joke. What's more is that we have no reason to believe that day was a fairy tale, because we didn't even get to see their date! Technically they showed up in the background of another scene of another character's date but that might as well be a cameo! You could watch that scene and understandably not notice them, it was very dark after all.
All of this leads me to believe that Taylor initially had a normal, non comic relief character that was eventually scrapped. We were left with a ditzy, tacked on character that has no relevance to the plot. Most of her screen time is in a scene where she and Willy are interviewed by a newscaster. This scene has nothing to do with the actual story, goes nowhere, and I don't like it. All I wanted was a story that made her and Willy's ending feel satisfying instead of out of left field. In short, I came for the Taylor Swift but stayed for everything but the Taylor Swift.
The Strange thing is that I noticed the very same thing in CSI, only in reverse. Taylor does a pretty alright job in her first scene with the highlight definitely being these bedroom eyes her character, Haley, gives to the detective twice her age. Nice.
That's what you get for being so hunky Nick. So the rest of this episode is absolutely nuts and you should definitely watch it. Basically the plot is that in exactly one year Haley goes from this girl next door to a rebellious teenager bullied into being a meth dealer and then gets murdered. Yes, seriously, and that's all in a year. Here's the transformation piece by piece.
That's her adoptive mother who stabs her by the way. And it's not a knife, it's a pair of scissors. She was mad that Haley dyed her hair and wanted to cut it off. Yeah, it's a great story, I know.
Each episode of CSI is an hour long and despite being the primary corpse, Haley is hardly featured in this episode. The scenes she does participate in feel weirdly shooed in and really make me feel like I'm missing some context. There's a chance that I wasn't paying enough attention but to me it really feels like the same effect as in Valentine's Day. It's like yet again they had a plan for this character and something just made it fall through. The gif where she flips the computer to reveal she's been cyberbullied kinda just comes out of the blue and doesn't really feel like it belongs in the story.
Do I know for sure that Taylor Swift's acting was the reason for these cuts? No, of course not. There are a million non Taylot Swift related reasons this could've happened, and half a million Taylor Swift based ones. Maybe she was on tour and had to film all her scenes in half a day. Maybe she had the flu and was on the toilet ten hours per day. Or maybe the scenes that were kept were the best ones and everything chopped was worse than what we ended up seeing. Personally I think this explanation is the most likely.
I don't exactly blame her, Taylor Swift is a musician and a good one at that. All of these appearances are glorified cameos, so I don't think it's fair to expect Taylor Swift to be the best actress in the world. Plus I enjoyed all of these scenes so really it's a win. I don't have a real criticism here, just a theory, some evidence, and a desire to laugh at old footage of Taylor Swift trying to act. I've had a great time, I hope you have too.
See you tomorrow,
-C
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