Fucking Day: Beautiful Disaster

I’m going to be vulnerable with you guys this week and share something I personally find hilarious, but the fact that I spent so much time with it, I realize, also says something about my psyche. Jamie Mcquire’s 2011 novel Beautiful Disaster was optioned by Warner Brothers Pictures in 2012. Unfortunately, after purchasing the rights, they made the mistake of reading the book. The option was dropped in 2014 and languished until 2021, when someone got the idea to retool a highly dramatic romance novel into a zany sex comedy where the two main characters comically cannot figure out how to mash their genitals together correctly.

The book was a written personification of a tribal tattoo, and the woman who wrote it did some pretty serious tweeting and deleting about patriotism on January 6th. Yet, somehow, a movie studio looked at this and said, "Of all the romance novels on Earth, I want to make this one a movie!" Again, they clearly hadn't read it yet at that time, and once they did, they realized that it was impossible to adapt. There are two popular books you just can't adapt into films: Gravity's Rainbow and Beautiful Disaster.

Adapting Beautiful Disaster might have worked in 2012, but we know better now. The one thing this movie has going for it is a heroine with some backstory. It was born in a post-Twilight period where most romance heroine personalities were simply Brunette. Abby Abernathy is immediately introduced as a woman running from a dark past. She shows up to college dressed like a Catholic school girl because I guess her past is so dark that pornography is the only reference she has for what a good girl might even look like.

Immediately, her best friend, America, who knows she has come to college to escape her dark past, says, "I love that for you, no more dangerous stuff. Let's spend your first night at college someplace nice and safe– our school's illegal underground fight club."

Enter our hero, Travis, king of the illegal fight club. He's so good at punching he's become a campus-wide celebrity because they do talk about fight club at this college whose name isn't important; in fact, the illegal fight club is more popular than football in this universe.

Travis is instantly fascinated with Abby because she dresses like a nerd and rejects him, which no woman has ever done before! Travis is akin to a god in this universe. He's so desirable that women are constantly flinging their panties at him on the way to class. And now this man, this master of bareknuckle war and panty dodgeball, can't get a girl? Insane. Travis is mostly played by Dylan Sprouse, except for the many times when we see a close-up of his butt. Tell us who plays the butt cowards!

I'm getting ahead of myself. Most of this movie is based around a bet between Travis and Abby that comes about through the most insane, zany hijinks imaginable. Abby goes on a date with a nice, safe guy named Parker, who takes her to dinner and then asks her if she wants to go to a "show" which Abby assumes means a play, but by show, he means illegal underground fight club. Travis is all mad that Abby showed up at his fight club with a date, which is a faux pas Emily Post could never have imagined.

Travis then makes a bet with Abby that he will go without sex for three months if the guy he's fighting lands even a single hit on him, but if the guy doesn't hit him at all, Abby has to live with him for a month. Abby takes the bet for plot reasons but tells Travis, "Get it through your head. I am never having sex with you."

Travis responds, "I don't want to have sex with you. I want to be around you. You're good for me."

"He does want to have sex with you, Abby!" I scream at the TV. "Don't go in the basement, Abby! The Monster is clearly in the basement!"

If Travis were to stop having sex for three months, it would absolutely wreak havoc on the economy of Generic College Name. I can't stress enough how hot every woman at that college finds Travis's tribal tattoos. He fucks every single girl on campus on the couch of the apartment he shares with his cousin Shepley (the whitest name ever created). This is rude but honestly believable for the character. A man who absolutely refuses to have sex anywhere but the communal areas of his shared apartment is the ideal partner in this romantic movie.

When Travis inevitably wins the bet, he swings from the very nice cage the illegal fight club has and makes monkey noises of joy at Abby. Book Travis is straight-up violent all the time. The only interesting thing he does is smash things; he's The Incredible Hulk leading a romance novel. So to tone that horror down they made movie Travis something more puckish. He's a sprightly little guy with a fun sense of humor who does still smash things but in a fun way!

So, of course, there's a month of flirting and near kisses, and you know, a scene where she jerks him off a little bit in her sleep because she's dreaming about petting a cat. This movie takes wild swings from a deadly serious, sexy story where Travis is rubbing massage oil all over Abby, and you see his whole butt, to now Abby is puking directly on Travis's face because we're all having fun here!

Sometimes, it's 50 Shades of Gray, and sometimes, it's Good Luck Chuck. They couldn't pick a tone because, again, like Infinite Jest, you just can't adapt this book into a film. When Abby and Travis finally have sex, she says, "Is it in yet?" and then, "I got you!" like she's doing a full Groucho Marx routine while he's inside of her.

So, that tone is strange enough, but then we get an act three twist that involves a mobster showing up at school and demanding Abby get into his car so he can personally drive her nine hours from Sacramento to Las Vegas to save her Father from being killed by the Mob. That has to be the most awkward nine-hour car ride ever, and it is completely not included in this movie. Nine-hour ride with a mobster is a whole other road trip movie that I can’t believe they deprived us of since they hit every other genre.

You see, much as Travis is the greatest man to ever punch, Abby also has a secret hidden skill set which she is the best in the world at, and it's gambling. Her Father was a professional poker player, and he taught Abby to play, but as she got better, he got worse and decided that Abby stole all of his luck. Abby's scumbag Father is played by Brian Austen Green because this movie needed at least one more actor that you've almost kind of sort of heard of somewhere before.

Travis freaks out when Abby disappears after having sex with him, probably because the "is it in yet joke" tanked his fragile psyche so hard. He goes to her dorm room and tears it apart, discovering her mattress is full of cash, which you would think she would have grabbed to pay off her Dad's gambling debts, but I guess the cash mattress slipped her mind.

So now Travis and Abby have been soft on dating for an entire month, and he's like, "I don't even know this woman!" Which yes, you don't after dating someone for one month. You do not know them that well. Never let your guard down, Travis! Abby could have a graduate degree in clowning, or a DeviantArt account devoted to the Zootopia universe; or she could be a mannequin brought to life by Egyptian magic. Anything is possible at one month of casual mostly-not-fucking.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Abby has been conscripted by the mob into earning a hundred thousand dollars by gambling in exchange for her Father getting to keep all of his fingers. All of a sudden, this is a tense thriller movie; probably what we need is another zany sex scene where Travis and Abby try to fuck so badly they wreck an entire hotel room.

Then it turns out it was never a thriller; it was a heist movie. Abby's shitty dad organized this whole thing to coerce her into winning a hundred thousand dollars at poker for him. You would think Abby could figure this out because she's a master poker strategist, except she's not at all. They make it very clear that the only reason she's good at poker is because she sucked all of the luck from her father. She takes her dad and steals her hundred grand back for the old mattress bank, but it's too late. Travis has already agreed to fight for the mob in exchange for paying off Abby's fake debt to them. Could more things possibly happen in this movie? Oh yeah, and in the mob fight chain strangling is totally legal!

So naturally, the movie ends as Abby and Travis escape the burning Las Vegas underground fighting ring with a hundred thousand dollars and a bottle of tequila Abby restole from her father. The end credits reveal that after a month of mostly not dating, Abby and Travis get married in Vegas, and there's a sequel movie called Beautiful Wedding. I'm sure it will involve Travis turning out to be the best trapeze artist that ever lived, and Abby his reluctant supernatural ice sculptor. They will use their combined powers to burn the Metropolitan Museum Of Art to the ground with their clumsy attempts at fuckin– wait, no, I'm thinking of Gravity's Rainbow again.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: OrneryWeevil, who is the occasionally singing, maybe some light dancing poop of the continent. Who just wanted to muss up something cute.

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