Blog #3 The Apartment. What works? What doesn’t work?

I enjoyed reading “The Apartment” very much. The story was simple, yet entertaining. Stories or scripts that I like the most involve normal human beings in your not-so-everyday situations. In this story Bud Baxter to me reminds me of a slacker. He’s had his fair share of problems in the past and he’s making himself more problems in the future just by being who he is. We find out that our unusual protagonist is rather infatuated with the elevator girl at work. The only problem is that the girl is in love with a married man, one of his many bosses. The whole story revolves around his bosses using him, and how he will eventually fight to stop this, and what the heck? Get the girl at the end too…Having said that I do believe that there are some flaws in the story as well as some questions.

First off, considering the time frame/era of this movie, I am wondering how conceivable it is that almost every adult male in this story, for the exception of two, are cheating on their wives. Was it not a faux pas to cheat on your wife in the past? I do, however, think that this convention made it easier to agree with our hero, Bud, in this story. I guess now considering our time women wouldn’t be so low on the social ladder. I find it hard to fall in love with Fran’s character. She almost seems very emotional handicapped and very stupid to say the least. Had Fran only fell in love with Mr. Sheldrake, I as a viewer, would take this as her one mistake. But, Fran has done this before many times it seems. This makes it hard to fall in love with her. I almost think that this movie would be more appropriate in our now more modern time.

Besides some of the flaws I see in this script I on-the-whole think this was a very entertaining story. I love the protagonist, CC Baxter (although his love interest could use some work) and I love the spiraling predicament Baxter gets himself into. I might just go rent the movie.

Discussion Questions:

1.) Do you think that if the movie was set in 2008 that it would be more believable? Or better?

2.) What do you think made Fran finally leave Sheldrake at the end? What did she realize?

--Scott Polcyn