I Love You, Beth Cooper

With the one-two punch of the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday combo rapidly approaching, the high school comedy I Love You, Beth Cooper serves up a timely eye safety message.

The movie opens up with the class valedictorian, Denis, delivering a graduation speech professing his secret love for the popular cheerleader, Beth Cooper.  Wouldn't you know that wacky antics ensue, and that, against all odds, these two crazy kids manage to get together?  I'd put a spoiler alert warning before this brief recap, but I think you'd be justifiably insulted by it!

The above-mentioned antics kick off with a cork flying out of a champagne bottle and toward Denis' right eye.  Incidentally, the bottle is provided with parental approval, and the father of Denis is acted by that guy who played Cameron, the friend in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Champagne cork injuries to the eye are actually somewhat common, and can be devastating.  From the British Journal of Ophthalmology 2004:

Among [eye injuries from] bottle tops, the champagne bottle cork remains the main culprit. A 750 ml champagne bottle contains 4.125 litres of carbon dioxide with a pressure of 6.2 bar—almost three times higher than a typical car tyre’s (Champagne France Information Bureau, 2002); this can shoot the 30 g cork up to 13 metres. The blinking reflex offers no help: from the typical opening distance of 60 cm, the cork needs less than 0.05 seconds to reach the eye.

Fortunately for Denis, the cork impacts his right orbital rim, rather than the globe, and he escapes serious ocular injury.  Unfortunately for the viewer, this means that the movie continues its absurd storyline, rather than perhaps a more interesting plot involving a trip to the emergency room, and an engaging consult with a friendly ophthalmologist.

Most champagne bottles in the US apparently "carry conspicuous warning labels explaining the dangers to the eye and showing the correct way of bottle opening."  I can't verify this at the moment, but I'll check on it the next time we open a bottle.  From a press release by the American Academy of Ophthalmology, here are some tips on opening a bottle of champagne properly:

• Make sure sparkling wine is chilled to at least 45 degrees Fahrenheit before opening. The cork of a warm bottle is more likely to pop unexpectedly.


• Don’t shake the bottle. Shaking increases your chances of eye injury.


• To open the bottle safely, hold down the cork with the palm of your hand while removing the wire hood. Point the bottle at a 45-degree angle away from yourself and from any bystanders.


• Place a towel over the entire top of the bottle and grasp the cork. 


• Keep the bottle at a 45-degree angle as you slowly and firmly twist the bottle while holding the cork to break the seal. Continue to hold the cork while twisting the bottle. Continue until the cork is almost out of the neck. Counter the force of the cork using slight downward pressure just as the cork breaks free from the bottle.


• Never use a corkscrew to open a bottle of champagne or sparkling wine.

Other than its vivid demonstration of the potential ocular hazards associated with champagne corks, I cannot find a lot to recommend about I Love You, Beth Cooper.  I sort of liked the first scene when Denis gave his speech, and I think the two buddy actors share a few funny moments, but almost everything else about the movie seems forced and awkward.  Further, what might pass as harmless merriment in another high school comedy setting comes off as lurid and irresponsible here.  Maybe I'm just getting older or something.  For a much better movie about the tired theme of "seize the day", check out Jim Carrey's Yes Man.  For a better high school comedy, just cover your eyes and pick any DVD out of the 80s bargain bin.  I Love You, Beth Cooper gets a D .

The Expendables (2010)

You don't stroll into Applebee's seeking out a culinary epiphany, right? Similarly, The Expendables will almost certainly deliver the expected goods to its target audience, satiating ones appetite for automatic weapons, knife-throwing, beheadings, and flimsy plots of government corruption by ex-military personnel. But can the eye-content hungry movie-goer find a morsel of ophthalmology in The Expendables? Read on!

Early in this mercenary flick, Jet Li delivers a ferocious kick with a steel-toed boot to Dolph Lundgren's left upper eyelid, causing a superficial laceration. Dolph's character even comments on the injury, stating that it will probably require sutures, and he expresses his dislike for sutures.

Later in the movie, the viewer notes that his laceration has been repaired with simple Steri-Strips, thin adhesive strips produced by 3M. They are applied across the laceration in a manner which pulls the skin on either side of the wound together. Their purported benefits compared to sutures include less scarring, easier care and application, and enhanced patient comfort. A major drawback is the loss of integrity when wet, something that a badass New Orleans-based soldier of fortune might want to take into consideration.

I won't go into a long treatise on the relative benefits of wound closure by suture versus Steri-Strips versus Dermabond, but suffice it to say that like with many areas of medicine, this issue is surrounded by heavy dogmatic declarations. ER doctors (read "I'm never going to see this patient again in follow up") will have a greater preference for quick and easy wound closure, whereas plastic surgeons (read "I'm not the one knee-deep in an ER swamped with drunkards and screaming kids at 3 AM") will pride themselves on meticulous suture closure with a grateful, well-insured, and sober clientele.

It's hard to judge The Expendables, because you get exactly what you signed up for. It's still pretty tough to overlook the banal plot and shabby dialogue. There should also be a law against movies where people run, out in the open, away from an army of people firing machine guns from less than 20 feet, escaping any serious injury. The whole theme of Jet Li repeatedly getting his ass kicked by a shady white person and then getting rescued by a noble white person got a bit old for this Asian-American male reviewer, too. Where is the Chuck Norris-spanking Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon when we need him?

I'm going to give The Expendables a C - , which pains me, because I went to high school with one of the executive producers (see if you can guess which guy in the picture!) Sorry, Jason. Let's see if we can get just a little more ophthalmology content in the sequel, OK?