{"id":11781,"date":"2011-06-16T07:53:33","date_gmt":"2011-06-16T11:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christandpopculture.com\/?p=11781"},"modified":"2011-06-16T07:53:33","modified_gmt":"2011-06-16T11:53:33","slug":"instant-watching-the-baxter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2011\/06\/instant-watching-the-baxter\/","title":{"rendered":"Instant Watching: The Baxter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In her weekly column,\u00a0Instant Watching<\/strong>, Christie Dean talks about recently produced obscure and independent films that are made available through Netflix\u2019s Instant Watch feature.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>According to this week\u2019s film, a \u201cbaxter\u201d is a nice, old-fashioned guy who possesses little quirks (e.g. has several allergies) and who is easy to be with\u2014who women settle for when they can\u2019t be with their dream man. He is the guy in the romantic comedy who gets left behind at the altar after the leading man barges into the chapel and wins over the bride-to-be with an endearing proclamation of love. Whatever happens to the stranded groom-to-be, while his fiancee goes on to live happily ever after with somebody else? The Baxter<\/a><\/em> begins with a scenario exactly like this.<\/p>\n

The Baxter<\/em> jumps around in time, showing first the end of the movie then back-tracking to when Elliot Sherman (Michael Showalter) meets his bride-to-be Caroline Swann (Elizabeth Banks) at the accounting firm where he works. After this, the movie fast-forwards to two weeks before their wedding. Elliot and Caroline are at a bar for a party, thrown by Caroline\u2019s high school friends, where an \u201cact of God\u201d reunites Caroline with her high school sweetheart Bradley (Justin Theroux), whom she hasn\u2019t seen in fifteen years. This puts Elliot on edge, since he has a proven track record of losing girlfriends to former flames, and he chalks this event up as another instance where destiny is showing him that he is a \u201cbaxter\u201d and will never get married. Similar to a lot of romantic comedies, the idea of finding your soul mate through strange coincidences and taking risks based on your gut feelings is prominent, and Elliot\u2019s focus on being content and safe prevents him from going after what, or who, he really wants.<\/p>\n

I thoroughly enjoyed The Baxter<\/em> despite its predictability; I made the mistake of reading some negative critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes before watching the film and therefore I hesitated for a while before giving it a chance. Sure, it\u2019s predictable, especially since the audience will know the end of the movie after pretty much the first ten minutes. But it\u2019s charming, hilarious, full of very familiar faces (including Michelle Williams and Paul Rudd), and it appealed to those who may be a little nerdy and awkward in their own right\u2026 which is probably the reason why I watched it twice.<\/p>\n

You can watch the trailer for The Baxter<\/em> on Rotten Tomatoes:\u00a0http:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/10005403-the_baxter\/trailers\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Whatever happens to the stranded groom-to-be in romantic comedies whose fiancee leaves him at the altar for another man?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1244,"featured_media":11787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[615,1252],"class_list":["post-11781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asides","tag-instant-watching","tag-the-baxter"],"yoast_head":"\nInstant Watching: The Baxter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""Whatever happens to the stranded groom-to-be in romantic comedies whose fiancee leaves him at the altar for another man?"\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2011\/06\/instant-watching-the-baxter\/\" \/>\n<meta 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