Is ‘hitting your head’ a new genre of film? Following I Feel Pretty (in which Amy Schumer bangs her head and starts to believe she is the most attractive woman in the world), we have Isn’t It Romantic (Rebel Wilson bangs her head and starts to believe that her life is a romantic comedy) and What Men Want (Taraji P Henson bangs her head and starts to believe that she can hear everything that men think). Here are the top four pitches for some future box office gold …
I Can Have It All!
Dowdy housewife Elizabeth Banks feels like a failure. Constantly cleaning up after her family has forced her to abandon her long-held dream of opening a small-batch pottery shop. However, after a piano falls on her head during a thunderstorm, Banks wakes up to realise that the magazines were right: she can achieve a perfect work/life balance after all! Suddenly possessed with all the fervour of a “Day in the Life of a ‘30 Under 30’ Entrepreneur” profile, Banks starts waking up at 4am to read emails and do yoga. Then she cooks breakfast for her family and does a 10k run. After that, she sends her kids to school, has mind-blowing sex with her husband and puts in a shift at the pottery, which now operates in 15 countries around the world. Sacrifice no longer means anything to Elizabeth Banks. Truly, she has it all. At least for three weeks, because after that, she dies of sadness and exhaustion.
I Need More Shoes!
Dowdy housewife Emma Stone feels like a failure. All her life she has always wanted a really expensive pair of shoes, like the ones she sees advertised in magazines, but she is too poor and sad to afford them. But one day, after sustaining a serious concussion when a lump of concrete is flung at her head by a sneering aristocrat, she wakes up to realise that nice shoes are a basic human right. Stone begins lobbying the government to initiate a nationwide socialised shoe programme that would see every man, woman and child in America receive a pair of expensive designer shoes. Amazingly, it works, and soon Emma Stone becomes the postergirl for people who wear high heels a lot. Success is hers, until the very next week when she breaks her leg chasing a goose across a cattlegrid.
Hooray for Breastfeeding!
Dowdy new mother Jennifer Lopez feels like a failure. All the midwives and medical pamphlets tell her that she should breastfeed her new baby, but she cannot get the baby to latch. Consumed with self-loathing, she starts feeding the baby formula instead. However, when she’s knocked unconscious by a heavyhanded burglar, she wakes up to discover that all that the judgmental literature was right along: breast really is best. Through willpower alone, Lopez forces herself to lactate; first into her child’s mouth, then into a bottle, then into a jug, then a bathtub, then into a municipal swimming pool and finally into America’s water system. Soon the entire country is gorging itself silly on Jennifer Lopez’s milky goodness. She is Mother America now, and statues of her nipples are erected in every major city and port in the country. Breast is best for ever!
I’m a Celebrity Profile!
Dowdy florist Mandy Moore feels like a failure. All her life she has unfavourably compared herself to the celebrities she’s seen profiled in glossy magazines. “Why can’t I live like that?” she asks, two seconds before an asteroid smacks into her head and destroys half her brain. When she wakes up, Moore realises that she is suddenly living the life of a celebrity profile. She goes to McDonald’s and orders a quarter pounder, and everyone falls to the floor because she’s so relatable. A crying man stops her in the street and tells her how inspirational she is for not wearing makeup. People laugh at whatever she says, treating her most inane responses as profound statements. This is the life that Mandy Moore had always dreamed of! Two days later she goes mad with power and murders a homeless man for kicks.
