The Script – “For The First Time”

  We start out with shots of a lovely young lass filling out a postcard. Apparently she’s living in New York City, but has a hankering to follow that postcard back across the water to Dublin. Something about missing her some brown bread. I suppose this is a really important thing that one can yearn for, but I don’t really know and it didn’t seem an appropriate time to ask questions. The woman (we’ll call her Katie, that sounds Irish enough) finishes up her dissatisfied missive  and then stares forlornly around the room at things that are obviously not the brown bread that she wants.

  This is the cue for lead singer Danny (more of the Irish fest!) to kick off the sad beginning lyrics where we don’t know how “we got into this mad situation”. (Poor recreational drug usage decisions? A really high wireless bill? That really horrid woman at the corner deli who always gives you the crappy corned beef?) While Danny warbles in the black-and-white part of the video where the band lives, Katie turns to gaze upon her boyfriend, who is probably also sad because he doesn’t appear to own a shirt. He’s rushing around and getting ready in a hurried manner that indicates some fool hit the snooze bar too many times. (Probably Katie, mad that it wasn’t a loaf of brown bread making the noise.)

  The boyfriend (we’ll call him Sean) finally manages to snag a shirt and he prepares to leave the apartment. But before he can head out to wherever it is that Seans go in NYC, he leans in to give Katie a little smooch. Instead of allowing this little peck of love, however, Katie makes a face and pulls back. (So she’s one of those kinds of girls, who get into a funk and wants everyone else around them to suffer as well. These are the same girls who are completely stunned when their husband/boyfriend/Soviet same-sex lover gets fed up with it all and starts trolling porn sites.)

  Anyway, Sean eventually gets away from Katie and her co-dependent blues, hopping on his motorcycle and zipping away to his workplace where he makes things or sells things or plays Angry Birds all day. As he travels, the building scenery in this part of town is kind of blurry, so we don’t know if the pollution has gotten seriously out of control or if Sean has lost a contact lens. Meanwhile, Danny and the band continue to play the song over in that place that looks like the first part of the movie Pleasantville. Their story is just not as interesting as the tale of the estranged lovers, so we can ignore them for a while and focus on the next episode of All My Irish Children.

  Now we’re at the part where they’re sucking down “cheap bottles of wine”, (I guess Sean’s job only lasts 7 seconds and then he’s home again) and it initially appears that Katie might be in a better mood, because she actually laughs and doesn’t seem to be looking for any of the questionable and missing bread. They share a tender moment where they gaze at one another lovingly while a soft light enhances the fact that neither of them have any body fat whatsoever. It’s very sweet, but we know that Katie is going to want a sandwich sooner or later.

  And there it is, with Katie back in her sulking room, fighting back tears as she ponders the painful drawbacks of moving from a city where relatively little happens to a city where absolutely everything happens, 24-7. She has a flashback to another drinking session where she was happy, and then she cries some more. (Is she missing the obvious point that she is much more fun to be around when alcohol is involved? Perhaps we should text her.)

  We roll into a montage of Sean rushing about town and doing presumably important things, shots of Katie possibly lying on the grass in a park and staring up at silent trees that refuse to assist her with the quest for special bread, and images of the band playing where we now have a bit of color seeping into the cinematography. (And they’ve turned up the lights a bit so we can realize there are other band members besides Danny, and not just quick glimpses of disembodied fingers strumming a guitar or banging on a drum.)

  Now Katie has managed to find a camera, and she’s wandering among the buildings and trying to get decent shots so she can show the folks back home what a skyscraper looks like. This leads to a confusing moment where Katie seems to be stuck on a chain-link fence but isn’t trying very hard to escape. (Girl has some serious issues.) This is followed by more frenzied images of Sean still rushing about for his job (some type of messenger service or drug courier, not clear), actually making a living instead of pining for baked goods while the laundry goes undone.

  Oh wait, we seem to have zipped back to happier times again, where we have Katie wearing a fetching hat and smiling while she and Sean pose in front of the Statue of Liberty across the bay, a picture angle that no one in the world has ever tried before, right? Sean also appears to be happy, wearing a festive stocking cap of his own, so he probably hasn’t yet learned that he’s living with a character from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  We take a short break from the drama so that Danny can do an interpretive dance on his little stage, an energetic bit of choreography that seems to involve the invention of the helicopter, sharp objects on the floor that you should avoid, the Running of the Bulls, and an unsupervised bottle of cooking sherry. The end of his performance signals another rolling montage, with more of the happy/sad imagery, the buildings that are still blurry, somebody driving a car down a busy street like a total dumbass, brief moments of bed aerobics, and Danny kicking over a piano bench that has displeased him in some way.

  Things slow down a bit as we watch Sean the boyfriend pausing at some shoreline to reflect on things like what to do with his life, where he might be able to find some decent sushi, and what the hell are we going to do about the missing bread. While the band plays out the last part of the song, Sean comes to a decision, and we see scenes of him selling his beloved motorcycle to a man who apparently can’t stand all the way up but likes to wave goodbye with one finger. (Is that man just really tired or what?)

  After an another dancing exhibition from singer Danny, we watch as Sean strolls up to Katie sitting on the stoop of their building, with her still looking sad despite wearing a clever little dress. They head into the building as the song fades, and Sean hands Katie an envelope. She stares at it suspiciously (probably because it’s not a loaf of bread) and then finally asks what it is. “It’s a plane ticket. I quit my job and I’m taking you home.”

  It’s very touching and somebody should probably make a Hallmark movie about it. But I can’t help but wonder if Sean realizes that, if it’s this hard keeping Katie happy in New York, it’s going to be even more so in Dublin when Katie is surrounded by her family and they ALL gang up against him when she gets blue over not being able to see the Statue of Liberty out her parlor window. (Irish families don’t play when one of their own is not happy.) Sean might have just made a poor life decision, especially if they get Tori Spelling to dye her hair and play the role of Katie…

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One Direction – “What Makes You Beautiful”

  We start out with a nice shot of a beach at sunset, or possibly sunrise, it’s never really clear what’s going on when saltwater is involved, and everything is very peaceful. But two seconds later we get a “Directed By” credit popping up on the screen, and instantly everyone in the viewing audience is horrified that this might be one of those artsy vanity videos full of symbolism, heartbreak and people wearing grunge clothing whilst looking sad.

  Happily, our fears of a Swedish black-and-white film about loss and desperation are quickly quelled. As the opening notes of the song kick in (the notes that always make me think Danny and Sandy are about to sing on the bleachers at Rydell high), we get a shot of the One Direction guys lined up on a sort of cliff thing at this beach. They seem non-depressed and they’re all wearing cute outfits, so it’s all good. (The one blond guy is standing apart from the others, so he might have done something he shouldn’t have, but there are no other signs of disharmony and we don’t see Yoko Ono trying to break up the band.)

  We get a few different shots of the beach from various angles, because if you’re going to hire a cinematographer you might as well put him to work, then we get a close-up of the guy who sings first in the song. (Sorry, I don’t know the names of any of the band members, which probably makes me the Anti-Christ in the eyes of all 12-year-old girls, but I’m old and don’t care.) Singer A warbles for a bit, while a gentle sea breeze reminds us why it’s sometimes very important to get haircuts.

  Then we roll into a travel montage explaining that the guys all piled into an outdated camper van earlier in the day so that they could drive to this here beach. (I’m glad they shared that with us, because I don’t know if I could have fully enjoyed the video if they hadn’t explained that particular detail.) As the guys wander around on the sand, Singer B gets his close-up, then all five of them suddenly run up the side of a hill for no apparent reason. (I guess impromptu mountain-climbing is very trendy with the youngsters these days.)

  Right about here we get our first glimpse of The Girl flipping her hair just as the guys are singing about how overwhelming it is when she does that, so kudos to the editor.(Side note: If you pause the video during the flip, it appears that Girl is actually a bit terrified of her unruly locks as they whip around her head, so maybe “overwhelming” is not necessarily a good thing, but we’ll see how it plays out.)

  Cut to The Girl and her Girlfriends tooling along a highway in a VW Beetle with the top down, the old-school kind of Beetle before they revamped the vehicle and made them look like a toy you would get out of a gumball machine. Girl is not paying proper attention, and her cute little hat gets caught by the wind and goes flying off to Jesus, a second sign that Girl might not be sure of where she’s at or what she’s doing. But she’s cute, so we’ll forgive her at this point.

  Now the guys have taken over one of those long stairways that lead down to the beach, so they can give a mini-concert on one of the landings. Then they’re suddenly back at the water’s edge, so they’ve obviously been drinking Red Bull and they can’t stay still. Back to the stairs, back to the water, tight shot of them standing in a circle like they’re about to kick off a Wiccan ceremony, in the water, on the beach, back on the stairs. This probably explains why The Girl has to flip her hair around so much in the first place, since she’s trying to keep them in sight as they dash about like ants on steroids.

  (Side note, part two:  A little after the one-minute mark, one of the guys grabs his crotch. So two-thousand-and-late, right? I thought we’d moved beyond that. Carry on.)

  Another montage, this one involving the guys getting their stuff out of the camper van and screwing around with a soccer ball. This is followed by the lone blond guy getting his close-up, but he’s not actually singing in the shot, so he might still be in time-out from whatever he did earlier in the video. Then they find a giant piece of driftwood so they can climb on top of it and knock each other into the sand. (My version of festive beach-time activities is far less physical and much more alcoholic. Each to his own, though.)

  Singer C gets his solo appearance (he’s the crotch-grabber, by the way, in case you need to update your diary with the little lock that breaks quite easily so I don’t know why there’s a lock in the first place).  I guess word has already gotten out about his affinity for fondling, because the camera is kept firmly above his waist.

  Then The Girl and The Girlfriends roll up in the vintage bug, which is really impressive because they’re driving on the sand and using a stick shift and all of them are busy waving at the guys instead of watching where the car is going. The Girls pile out, there are hugs all around, and then the whole gang goes thundering over the dunes, propelled by their youthful exuberance and fluctuating hormones. They even scramble over the big-ass dead tree instead of calmly walking around it, so they definitely have some carbs to burn off.

  The Girls vanish for a bit so the Guys can walk and sing on the beach some more, which kicks off another montage of hair-flipping, mini-concerts on the stairs, the Guys back in that Wiccan circle, the Guys with their arms around each other in budding little bromances, and lots of splashing and running. (At one point, we see the Guys gallivanting back DOWN that huge hill, despite having just been spotted on the beach, so I’m beginning to suspect that there might be TWO One Direction bands, the original and a posse of clones that can be used to confuse the paparazzi  and/or make double the revenue until somebody figures it out.)

  Shot of The Girl and her hair sprawled on a beach towel, then a loving solo shot of one of The Girlfriends, so there might have been some recasting decisions while the Guys were jacking around on that pointless hill. Does Girlfriend B have a chance at overtaking Main Girlfriend based on online polling during the playing of the video? Stay tuned! (Note to the agent of Main Girl: tell your client that accessories are very important in this business and she should have held on that hat a little tighter while riding in the car. You piss off the wardrobe people and your career can plummet.)

  Anyway, we next have a shot of the guys all shirtless as they splash in the water, because you have to hit all the right demographics. (Well, except for the Blond Guy. What is up with him?) Then we’re back on the beach with the camera twirling around in a circle so the guys keep appearing and disappearing, making it seem like there are hundreds of One Directioners, an image that thrills the tweens (more of them to marry!) and causes the parents to reach for anxiety medication.

  Next up, as the sun is lowering, is some type of clap-along during the “na-na” chorus. This goes on for a while, so they throw in a few random shots of people being wrapped in blankets and then hurled down the beach (not sure what’s going on there, hope the proper insurance papers were signed). We eventually get to the really quiet part of the song where one of the Guys nuzzles up to The Girl (I guess she was able to fight off the second-tier girlfriend and remain the star) and tries to woo her with words. To be fair, it’s a bit difficult maintaining your composure when someone is bellowing right in your face, but Girl does an admirable job and only seems to be on the verge of laughing for one brief second.

  We wind things down with that inexplicable tradition of setting off sparklers as night falls on the beach. (I always thought this was kind of dangerous, especially if somebody has gotten into the alcohol, and you KNOW someone did, probably the crotch-grabber. Who wants a burning piece of metal shoved at their head by people who are wobbly and have blurred vision? Seriously.) But nobody asked me, so away the bouncing teens go, running and waving danger flame like they’re trying to help Air Force one land nearby.

  We wrap it up with a montage of all the revelries from throughout the day, just in case you didn’t write it all down in your security-breached diary. Singing and dancing and a mystifying lack of costume changes and campfire stories and death sparklers. The last shot is of The Guys disappearing around a bend in the beach. Without The Girls. No idea what that’s all about, but I hope they have fun wherever they are going…

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The Wanted – “Glad You Came”

  We start things out with the video literally following the opening lyrics of the song (the sun goes down, the stars come out) so right away I don’t care for the director, going for the obvious and all. Then we see that said director is none other than “Director X”, which usually means “this thing was mashed together by a marketing team and a drunken stylist with the main goal of filming somewhere tropical”. Who knows what kind of hot mess is going to come flying at us, so fasten your seatbelts.

  We first see the guys all lined up in a row, sitting on a cliff overlooking a patch of water. They appear to be gazing at something in the distance, which could be the setting sun but could just as easily be that drunken stylist doing something obscene with coconuts. Then we have the guys staged in front of a stone wall, in a stance that says “cover shoot”, so one of them can start singing while the others wait for panties to be thrown at them.

  Then we’re back by the cliffs, and the cinematographer gives us glowing close-ups of each acne-free face so we can cheer for our favorite, but I don’t know any of their names so the only way I can describe it is “five guys sitting around on boulders, with one of them considerably whiter than the others”. Then we get a long-shot rear view of the guys lined up again, staring at the now-annoying sun as it finally plops out of sight, thus making it harder for any witnesses to testify later about what they might have seen the boys doing in the darkness.

  And then bam, it’s the next day, the peaceful part of the song is over and we are plunged into some beach-party locale as the music ramps up and some of the guys’ shirts come off. The editor doesn’t waste any time letting us know that we are in Ibiza, where endless videos like this have been made in between rounds of massive alcohol intake and spontaneous near-nudity. (As if to highlight that second part, we get a montage of supermodels proving that you can indeed wear a paper towel as a dress and still look quite fetching.)

  Within about three seconds of arriving in Ibiza, the guys start hooking up with some of the supermodels, because things like that just naturally happen in a place where everyone is nearly-wearing the same minimalist designer fashions and you really can’t tell people apart. Might as well pair up with the first person you meet since they all look the same in the mirror over the bed.

  Then the boys head over to a nightclub (or dayclub, whatever, these places never really close in Ibiza) to sing part of the song, although it appears that most of the patrons are more interested in being served a cocktail rather than being serenaded by a singing group that can’t even manage to wear the same outfits. This is followed by the guys going back into the cliffs, where they discover a pack of chesty women lounging about in the crevices, looking like lionesses as they wait for somebody to wander their way so they can make a kill.

  Of course, all of these overheated women are staring at the guys like they’ve never seen anything else as desirable on the entire planet. Within a few more seconds of their arrival, the boys have managed to all hook up with one or three of the desperate non-housewives. Then we head back into town, or at least somewhere that the cliffs are not so noticeable, so we can watch the guys hunt down more prey, because having less than 15 available females on your dance ticket is so old-school.

  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is basically the plot of the entire video: the five guys are on a perpetual quest for women, though they apparently don’t have to try very hard to accomplish this mission. On dance floors, on speedboats, on sun-drenched beaches, on the top of a hotdog stand, the women are throwing themselves at the guys with the rapidity of a jackhammer, as if none of the hormone-dripping women can imagine living if living is without at least one member of The Wanted.

  This goes on for a very long time, because the women are everywhere in Ibiza. They return your volleyball when it bounces their way, they come out of the depths of a swimming pool, they fall out of trees, they pop out of the trunk of your car, they are awarded as door prizes at the supermarket, and they are neatly stacked in your underwear drawer. Even the white guy, slathered in SPF 150, has to deal with rafts of women floating up to him and yearning for his slipperiness.

  The mating rituals reach a high point when one of the guys actually makes musical and physical love to a woman in the bathroom, both of them knocking things off the vanity as they satisfy their burning needs. (It also appears that there is another couple going at it in the shower behind them, but this can’t be fully confirmed because the video editor is making jump cuts like a woodpecker on crack.)

  We stop having sex long enough for some of the guys to climb one of the cliffs and then leap into the ocean, as if they haven’t already proved their manliness, or at least their horniness, by bedding half the population. Then the gang heads back to that nightclub so they can sing about their exploits, reminding us that this is indeed a music video and not the Kama Sutra. The boys also exhibit some dancing skills by performing intricate choreography that involves putting their arms around each other’s shoulders and then bouncing.

  There’s an additional sequence where it appears that the guys are having a night parade thrown in their honor, but this might just be the line for the margarita stand. Again, the editor really doesn’t like to stay on one scene longer than three milliseconds. And the director doesn’t let anybody who isn’t pretty come anywhere near the camera.

  We end the video with hung-over people waking up on floors and tables and toilets, and some of the guys do seem a bit concerned that they might have overindulged a bit. But then their faces brighten as they realize that it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, and there’s an island of women out there. Maybe they can order a few with room service?

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