Kirsten Dunst Vs. Coasters

The Case For Kirsten Dunst

Have you ever gone to to the IMDb to look up a celebrity you think of yourself as holding in extremely low esteem, only to see that, over the past decade or so, you have not missed a single entry in her filmography? It's uncomfortable. It reminds you that those times when you were complaining especially vociferously about some particular title, you were the only person present who'd seen the film in question. It causes you to confront the reason you could plot out a timeline of her various haircuts and colours. It throws into doubt whether you actually even dislike her at all. Such is the kaleidoscope of memory and sensation we have just experienced in looking up Kirsten Dunst for this very item before you, and it would not be overstating things to say that we are not entirely sure who we are in this moment.

Anyway, since this part of the page is supposed to contain the case for Dunst, we should examine the queston of what drew us to the theatre all those times to see all those movies -- and surely it wasn't just so we could be fully informed as we dissed her. The shameful truth is that if a movie is extremely girly, and is supported by a marketing strategy that busts out snippets of all the right sunny pop songs, we're going to see it. We just are. We will not only pay full price to see a chick flick we know is awful and is getting horrendous reviews, on the pretense that we just want a reason to eat either a Wetzel's Pretzel or a box of Junior Caramels (depending on where it's playing, and don't think that doesn't play into where we end up going, because it so does); we will also record it, later, on our DVRs, and just fast-forward the recording to the parts that actually managed to charm us (not coincidentally, those are usually the parts used for the TV ads that made us see it the first time); and much later, if it's on TBS on a Saturday afternoon when we're answering some email, we'll put it on -- "just in the background." This is how a chick movie penetrates our consciousness and becomes part of our lives. We're not proud of it, but we can't fight it, either. We think this sort of feeling toward girl movies is hard-coded into our DNA, on the same strand that makes us have to go look at the New Arrivals section of Anthropologie several times a week.

A good chick flick doesn't have to do much to draw us in: all we really require is that it be cute, unchallenging, and, especially, predictable, so that its eventual happy ending is never in doubt. And who better to headline such films than a star who is also cute, unchallenging, and predictable, just like Dunst herself. The girl is about as edgy as an oven mitt -- despite her status as Young Hollywood royalty, the worst we can think to say about her real life is that she is frequently photographed while braless -- and her roles accordingly find her being bubbly and winsome in an inconsequential story. Over the years, we've watched her mature from an adorable pixie vampire (Interview With The Vampire) to a fizzy Richard Nixon antagonist (Dick) to a superhero's girlfriend (the Spider-Man franchise). She can play a cipher of a character whose main purposes is to help her male love interest to figure out who he is in life (Wimbledon, Elizabethtown). In a fancy, respectable feature, you can slot her in for a role that's small enough for her not to embarrass herself among all the superior actors, but pivotal enough to entice a performer at her fame level to do it (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, The Cat's Meow). Yes, Dunst has anchored two of Sofia Coppola's three feature films (The Virgin Suicides, the current Marie Antoinette), but in both cases she still seems to be playing versions of herself -- perky charmers gamboling guilelessly toward gruesome ends they plainly don't foresee. (Here's a funny exercise you can do in your head: consider the two current films examining the lives of iconic female monarchs, and then switch Helen Mirren into Marie Antonette and Kirsten Dunst into Mirren's role as Elizabeth II in The Queen. Even if Dunst were fitted with aging prosthetics...like, no.) Dunst knows her niche, and she pretty much stays in it -- which seems like damnation with faint praise, but which is actually a rare quality we really admire. We wouldn't be subjected to that brutal South African accent, trying to sound all hardcore even in that still-adolescent-sounding voice, in the upcoming Blood Diamond, if Leonardo DiCaprio had Dunst's professional self-awareness.

But ultimately, we could have summed up the case for Kirsten Dunst in three little words: Bring. It. On. Girlfriend bought herself a lifetime of credit with that one.

The Case For Coasters

You like beverages served at extremes of hot and cold. You like fine wood furniture. Why must your drinks and your tables be at odds with each other?!

Your first piece of investment furniture always has a special place in your heart. Looking at it, you can remember everything about the experience of buying it -- how you visited it in the store four or five times before finally giving in, how you justified the expense by amortizing it over the next five or ten years, how setting it up in your home made you realize that you had crossed a line into adulthood by getting a piece of furniture that wasn't made out of MDF and that you didn't have to assemble yourself with an Allen key.

Once you've bought such a piece, though, you realize what kind of vigilance is involved in protecting your investment. If a party guest slops cocktail sauce onto your gorgeous new coffee table, she earns herself the glaring of a lifetime. You hesitate to leave magazines strewn across it for fear that they'll camouflage the beauty of the surface beneath. And if anyone puts a cup of hot coffee on it...well, if you stabbed him, no court in the land would convict you. Even so, it's a good idea to keep some coasters around to encourage guests not to violate your table with their sweaty-ass drinks -- if for no other reason than the blood loss resulting from a stabbing might ruin the first throw rug you've ever bought from a store other than Pier 1.

The Decision

As we get older, our incomes rise, and our decorating budget grows, we generally find that we want to spend more on home furnishings. But as much dough as we may drop on throw pillows, floor lamps, and the like, unless we're preparing for an Architectural Digest, it's probably not more than a studio spends on a movie. Hiring a reasonably famous movie star for a reasonably budgeted film -- getting a Kirsten Dunst to headline a Crazy/Beautiful -- is a form of movie insurance, just as scattering coasters around your living room is your way of insuring the finish of your coffee table. Which represents a more effective policy? Well, let's just say this: much as we have enjoyed Dunst's films -- against our will and better judgment, most of the time -- for every Bring It On, there are a couple of Jumanjis. Dunst can't always guarantee a movie that will be a classic (or even recoup its costs), but a coaster will provide a barrier between beverage condensation and wood varnish every time.

The Winner

Coasters