Dammit, Jake. (Prophecy Girl Reviews End of Watch!)

Two days ago, I put up an entry about Taylor Swift's attempt to outdo me in the arena of artistically expressing irritation toward the common-sense-challenged man-child known as Jake Gyllenhaal.

"HAHA, THAT TAYLOR," wrote I (well, not literally; I'm dramatizing). "She is saying some of the same things I say, except is less pathetic for it because Jake has acknowledged her existence in public."

I was speaking, of course, of Tay-Tay's Jake-bashing breakup hit, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," and its accompanying scarf-filled video.  I thought the song was hilarious, and the video even more so, both because of the Jake-specific details, and because the song itself comically lent itself to the preset narrative about Jake that I, personally, wrote about online from 2006 to 2007 and then 2010 to early this year.

But Jake, you see, occupies a certain role in my life:  to call him a "weakness" does not do justice to the word "weakness."  He is the crystal meth of my pop culture world.  I took one hit, one time, back in late 2005, and it took me years to kick the habit.  And then I was stupid enough to take another hit in 2010, and I'm still dealing with the aftermath.

Upside?  My tolerance has improved greatly with time.

Downside?  That doesn't mean I'm fully resistant.

An hour into End of Watch...goddammit...he had me rooting for him all over again.  Do you hear that, Jake?  Are you happy?  I was rooting for you.  I was rooting for you because you did a really good job with this movie, and you took a risk in making it - not like the risk you took in making a Viagra-themed love story or a sand-filled Disney video-game flop (which I now look at as part of an experimental phase as you attempted to find yourself, and I forgive you for them because I know you learned from them).  But a risk in going back to being Jake Gyllenhaal.  That guy who makes weird indie (or at least indie-esque) films that are maybe hard to watch but that make people think and bring Big Issues to average movie-goers.  The Jake Gyllenhaal who's not in it for the money, but for the art.  The Jake Gyllenhaal who yes, was probably a total effing dick to Taylor Swift but you're a dick to everyone, and you know what, part of growing up is learning that sometimes guys are dicks.  That music video, which I garnered an unhealthy level of voyeuristic pleasure from, I now see as kind of mean.  Taylor Swift isn't exactly a saint, and Jake, maybe I don't give you enough credit for being a real person in a world where you earn your living by being fake. 

End of Watch was a good movie.  Not the type of movie I would ever see under any other circumstances, but that's maybe the entire lesson of my futile exercise in being a Jake Gyllenhaal fan:  he has always pushed me a little outside my comfort zone.  Sometimes that's meant jetting off to a poetry reading, or going to Los Angeles completely on my own, or pushing my way through the press at a film festival to demand I get what I came for; and sometimes it means watching movies that upset me - that push the boundaries of what I want to believe about humanity and that make me think just a little differently about things in my own life that I take for granted.

So FINE.  There you have it.  I will never watch End of Watch again because the camera-work gave me nausea and the storyline full-on dry heaves.  But I have to give it two thumbs up, because after I watched it, a teensy part of me - a part that is small but whiny and persistent nonetheless - wanted to punch Taylor Swift in her smug face for being so bitchy in that video.

Dammit, Jake.  You came back a little bit with this one.  You may annoy the hell out of me at times, but it's only right to give respect where respect is due, and you got some from me with this one.