To be fair, Elaine never wanted to see The English Patient. Even though her date notes that the film is up for a bunch of Oscars, she prefers to catch Sack Lunch, an apparently wacky comedy. “Don’t you wanna know how they got in there?” she says about the movie’s poster featuring its cast poking out of a paper bag. “Do you think they got shrunk down, or is it just a giant sack?”
Castle Rock
Unfortunately for Elaine, comic blockbuster Sack Lunch is sold out, so The English Patient it is. When the couple exits the movie, Elaine is furious: “God, that movie stunk!”
Her would-be boyfriend, Blaine, eventually breaks up with her over the opinion. “To tell you the truth, Elaine, I don’t know if I can be with someone who doesn’t like The English Patient.”
Don’t Miss
It gets worse for Elaine. Everyone professes to love the movie, including the waitress at the diner and her boss, J. Peterman. Afraid to tell him that she thought The English Patient sucked, she professes to have never seen it. Unfortunately, he drags her back to the theater to suffer through it a second time. She does her best to endure, but finally can’t take it one second longer. While the film is still playing, she rages.
“No. I can’t do this anymore! I can’t. It’s too long,” she complains before yelling at the screen. “Quit telling your stupid story about the stupid desert, and just die already! Die!”
Peterman fires Elaine on the spot, though he reconsiders when she agrees to visit Tunisia, the movie’s desert location.
David Sims of A.V. Club lauded Elaine as a hero, speaking for the masses when she proclaims her hate for the Oscar winner. Another A.V. Club critic, Noel Murray, wondered if the movie’s slow decline in reputation over the years has anything to do with Elaine calling it out as overlong and boring.
Everyone agreed that the episode was very funny, even Anthony Minghella, director of The English Patient. While he was out promoting his next movie, The Talented Mr. Ripley, he was asked if he was aware of Seinfeld’s disdain for his award-winning film. “I love Seinfeld, so I was incredibly flattered,” Minghella said. Not so flattered that he actually watched the episode, however. “I didn’t ever see it,” he admitted, but “I hear it was very funny.”
Bring on the comedy critics, Minghella said. “There was a marvelous thing they did in England about The English Patient. It was called The Toy Patient — it was with puppets, and it was a much better version of the film than I made.”
To Minghella, getting poked by comedians was the sincerest form of flattery. “It’s great when the film is sufficiently in the public consciousness that it can be teased,” he said. “I was delighted.”
Source link
