Ending Movies

On Friday I saw two movies: The Devil Wears Prada and The Whale Rider. I thought both were good, but found myself a little disappointed in the endings (stop reading if you haven't seen them).

If you saw the ad for The Devil Wears Prada and thought, huh, that actually could be pretty good, it is. Meryl Streep is having a great time as the bitchiest boss ever, and they do a nice job of exagerating the fashion world just enough to be funny w/o going too far. I got so into it that I found myself wanting to quit my teaching job and start working 13 hour days for a souless company. Not for the money and not for the glory, but just so I could prove I could overcome a terrible boss and insane expectations. That's why I was oddly disappointed when the eventual disillusionment came and the star leaves to go to work at a serious paper. I guess they didn't have a choice, but I would've preferred it if they'd gone out on a limb and instead pushed for a capitalist fairy tale.

With Whale Rider my issue is even more ridiculous. So many parts of this movie were great. Besides it being about a population you never hear about (Maoris), it was an interesting story and I loved the acting jobs by the mom and fat brother. And, I really shouldn't have been surprised that the movie would end with the ever-cute granddaughter riding a whale and being the chief the grumpy tradionalist was searching high and wide for. But here is my problem. The whole movie was about traditions and how important they were. But then they have a girl take over the chief role? It felt like the directors wanted the best of both worlds. And I know this is a ridiculous take (for contrast, as I was getting annoyed by this my wife was sobbing), but I just couldn't fully buy the women's lib meetes Maori myth thing.

I'm probably alone here and I don't know what this means in general, maybe that being a do-gooder public servant makes me need an unhappy message on my free-time. Not sure...