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We spend $20 billion a year on drug and alcohol treatment programs -- without demanding much of any evidence that they work.

"[V]ery few rehabilitation programs have the evidence to show that they are effective.... And the field has no standard guidelines. Each program has its own philosophy; so, for that matter, do individual counselors. No one knows which approach is best for which patient, because these programs rarely if ever track clients closely after they graduate. Even Alcoholics Anonymous, the best known of all the substance-abuse programs, does not publish data on its participants? success rate."

By the way, I saw that movie "Rachel Getting Married," which begins with the main character graduating from a drug treatment program. (Here's the trailer.) I hated it. I felt like I was watching the actors doing improv scenes in preparation for a movie to be made later. Maybe you like that kind of thing. Did you like "Festen" ("Celebration")? I didn't. (Yikes, I'd forgotten all about Dogme 95. Scary flashback!)

But RGM wasn't just the actor-fest of a movie about a big dysfunctional family celebration. It also had music. Little bands playing in the next room while the actors emoted over here. Singers coming up to microphones and sometimes permitted to sing a whole song, perhaps to entertain us or perhaps to make us feel like the main character who's rather alienated from the whole affair. Overheard in the lobby after the movie: "It was like being at a bad wedding. If I want to go to bad weddings, I'll go to bad weddings."

There are way too many wedding movies and weddings in movies. I think it's because there's an assumption that women love weddings and if there's a wedding in the movie, women will want to see it. Not this woman.

Also, I complained before about how they always put actresses in bathtubs in movies. And sure enough, they get Rachel Rachel's sister into the bathtub. Want to see Anne Hathaway taking a bath? Yes? Sucker!

IN THE COMMENTS: Chip Ahoy says:

Is this post about spending $20 billion with uncertain results or is it about weddings in movies or actresses in bathtubs? Sometimes I get confused. Because, if it's about weddings, well, weddings make me hurl. I dread going to them. Except for one thing I found delightful. There's a blog I've become fond of, to me interesting, chiefly food-related but not entirely, written by Lucy, an expat living in Southern France. She describes a French wedding that held my interest all the way through.

She writes about weddings at other times too, but I especially like this one....

Charming!

fivewheels says:

"there's an assumption that women love weddings and if there's a wedding in the movie, women will want to see it."

Sadly, it's not an assumption, Ann, it's a fact. American women are so Pavlovianly wedding-obsessed that any movie with "wedding" or "bride" in the title will make a mint, even if they're horrible.

Wedding Crashers? Huge hit. Wedding Singer? Hit. My Best Friend's Wedding? Hit. My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Biggest indie movie ever. Crappy movies that made over $100 million? -- American Wedding, The Wedding Planner. The entire indie revolution was started by? Four Weddings and a Funeral.

The alternative explanation, of course, is that all of these enormously successful movies are wonderful examples of cinema. Right.

I've managed to avoid all those movies, except "Four Weddings and a Funeral" -- which I saw because I had reason to think it would be good and it was.

Full post as published by Althouse on December 23, 2008 (boomark / email).