It's a Herculean task: how to make Gerard Butler acceptable in a romcom. How about if it's disguised as a save-the-prez thriller?
Gerard Butler has a romcom problem. Whenever he tries to make a romantic comedy – which he does with alarming regularity – it always ends up stinking. Perhaps it's because he's always typecast as the lovable douchebag. Take The Bounty Hunter, for example, where he kidnapped women for a living. Or The Ugly Truth, where he essentially allowed a child to use a sex toy on Katherine Heigl. No romcom is sweet enough to make Gerard Butler seem in any way likable, it seems.
But perhaps his new film will change this. It's called Olympus Has Fallen and, while that title makes it seem more like a lunkheaded action movie than a romantic comedy, I'm convinced that it represents Butler's big shot at romcom redemption. The Olympus Has Fallen trailer went online last week, so let's run through the plot and see whether or not Gerard Butler can salvage this side of his career.
Gerard Butler was just your average tuxedo-wearing chauffeur with a broken heart and a mouth permanently set to "kiss". But then he met …
… Her. It's Ashley Judd, from that film about the dolphin that couldn't swim properly. Immediately, Gerard Butler is struck by her beauty. Her sweetness. Her weird compulsion to salute herself in mirrors like some sort of impossibly twee knitted soldier. The instant his eyes fall on her, Gerard Butler decides to win her heart the only way he knows how.
By staring at her, pulling on an imaginary steam train whistle and yelling "Tickets please! All aboard the Butler Express! Next stop, Sexytown! Population: my pants! Parp parp!" like the world's most enormous douchebag. Clearly, he needs to refine his approach.
However, there's a problem. Ashley Judd is married. Worse, she's married to Gerard's employer. Worse, Gerard's employer is the president of the United States of America. So Butler does the only thing he can to prove his love for her.
He drives his car off a bridge, killing Ashley Judd instantly. Obviously Gerard Butler is fired for this. Not for killing the first lady, you understand, but for being such a gigantic douchebag. He really is unbearable, isn't he?
The years pass and Gerard Butler sees the error of his ways. His strange addiction to being a tediously laddy berk has cost him everything. He vows to change his ways. Admittedly he fails – because he's wearing sunglasses and a black shirt together, which is basically the universal douchebag uniform – but it's a start.
But then, disaster. Terrorists from an unidentified but probably North Korean country launch an attack on the White House, killing dozens of people. The president's whereabouts are unknown. This is the biggest disaster ever to happen on American soil, and only one man can save the day.
That's right, it's Gerard Butler. He knows that if he can only gain access to the White House and defeat the entire army of heavily-armed terrorists all by himself, then he'll be able to erase his reputation as a swaggering, borderline-misogynistic romcom knucklehead.
So Butler charges inside with barely a thought for his own safety, and rescues a child in a hail of gunfire in slow motion. His mission was a success. Because of his patriotism and devotion and selfless heroism, Gerard Butler has made it impossible to anyone to call him a douchebag ever again. He's a hero. A truehearted hero in every sense of the word. His name will become synonymous with bravery. Statues will be erected in his honour. One day, maybe he'll even become president himself. But wait. Is that ...
... It is. It's a bluetooth headset. Gerard Butler is wearing a bluetooth headset. Ugh. Take back everything I just said. The man is a douchebag. An incontestable douchebag.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2013/jan/31/olympus-has-fallen-gerard-butler-trailer
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