where I offer commentary – regarding, but not limited to – motivation, failure, rejection; the hypocrisy or obnoxious behavior or comments of liberal celebrities
The Inconsistency of Actor Chris O’Dowd Regarding Religion – His 2017 Comments
(This post has been edited to add additional links or commentary – latest edit: December 2018)
One of my previous posts, out of several, critical of actor Chris O’Dowd, is already fifty feet long.
Rather than add more commentary to that post, making it even longer, I thought I’d make a new post, so here we are.
At this point, I guess you could say I am “hate-watching” O’Dowd’s career. I am not following his career out of fondness, no.
Sometimes news about O’Dowd comes across my radar. I was on one of my social media accounts yesterday, and there was a headline saying that his “Get Shorty” cable TV show has been renewed for a season two.
So, I sometimes don’t go looking for stuff on O’Dowd, it crosses my path.
I started out sort of liking the guy.
I assumed (oh so very wrongly) that O’Dowd must be as nice and considerate in real life as the nice cop character he played in the ‘Bridesmaids’ movie, which is why I googled him a few months after I first saw the movie on cable TV in 2015.
I thought around that time, well, if he’s as nice in real life and has played similar characters in other movies or shows, I may follow his career from here on out.
But the more I read about O’Dowd, the more disappointed I became.
The movie ‘Bridesmaids’ was first shown in movie theaters in the year 2011, but I did not see it until I caught it for the first time on cable TV in spring or summer of 2015.
In this movie, actor Chris O’Dowd played a nice guy named “Nathan Rhodes” who worked as a cop (a state trooper, specifically), and Kristen Wiig, who ended up being his love interest, played down-on-her-luck “Annie Walker.”
Actor Jon Hamm played the sexist creep dirt bag “Ted,” who was using Annie for sex.
This movie was more than just a movie for me when I saw it on TV in 2015. I saw this movie at a very low point in my life, and it helped to cheer me up – for a time, at least.
TLDR
Too Long, Didn’t Read summary:
I saw the ‘Bridesmaids’ movie on cable TV after undergoing (and still undergoing) some very upsetting events in my life, including the death of my mother, who was a very loving person and who was also a Republican and a devout Christian.
I found the ‘Bridesmaids’ movie encouraging at a low point in my life.
I wanted to learn more about the movie, and the people who made it and acted in it, so I did research about it on the internet, including interviews with actor Chris O’Dowd, who played the nice guy in the film (the role of the cop, Rhodes).
From what I saw, in real life, O’Dowd insults and ridicules Republicans and people of faith and concepts they believe in (such as prayer) on his Twitter account and in some interviews he’s given.
O’Dowd is into kind of vulgar or slightly sexist humor in real life, as well, which is a turn off to me – I prefer men who behave like gentlemen and who treat women with respect.
I was stunned and saddened to discover that the guy who played such a friendly, pleasant guy in the ‘Bridesmaids’ movie is, in real life, rather rude and condescending towards other people he doesn’t even know – specifically, he’s rude and insulting towards conservatives, Republicans, or theists.
One result of this is that I can no longer really enjoy watching the movie any more.
Aug 2017 update: I also predict, further below, that I wouldn’t be surprised if O’Dowd and his wife, Dawn, divorce in several years, because she’s basically living for weeks or months at a time like a single mother, raising their two sons alone, while he’s off jet-setting around the world filming movies and TV shows.
MY BACKGROUND
I’ll explain my background here, (and I’m sorry it’s going to be quite long), so you can understand my position better, before I state some of my grievances with O’Dowd much farther below, because my background plays a part in my disappointment with O’Dowd and some of the other people associated with this film.
MY MOM’S HEALTH
My mother died a few years before I saw the ‘Bridesmaids’ movie on television, and my mother’s death was the most painful and heart-breaking thing I’ve ever had to endure.
I sometimes read movie reviews, or comments left by people on entertainment related blogs and forums, such as IMDB, and wonder,
“Did this reviewer or commentator even watch the same movie I did? It sure as hell doesn’t seem like it.”
After I saw the movie ‘Bridesmaids’ on TV for the first time in 2015, I liked it so much, I wanted to learn more about it. I looked up more information about it, including information on actors Kristen Wiig, Chris O’Dowd, and other people involved with the film.
‘Bridesmaids’ image via IMDB screen cap
I also wanted to read reviews of the movie to find out what people thought of it. (I’m not sure why, but I’ve always found movie and music reviews fascinating and interesting.)
I came across all sorts of stuff, including this movie review:
The author of that review, Johanson, is a feminist who wants to see Hollywood crank out movies that accurately depict the lives of women – especially their sex lives. Especially if they are over-weight.
Johanson seems to feel that showing a woman’s sex life accurately means showing nudity – which she denies in the review, but that’s what it comes down to, which she reveals in this comment she left to someone else under her review:
[comment by Johanson]
“I’d love it if Hollywood — and America — would discard its hangups about sex and nudity. Until that happens, we could at least be offering the pretense that people in bed together for the purposes of sex are nude.”
/// end excerpt ///
Johanson wants to see nudity and raunch – which, had that been done, would have made ‘Bridesmaids’ an X-rated affair, not an R-rated project.
Based on Johanson’s criticisms and observations of this movie, I am left wondering if she and I even saw the same film.
Which is my way of nicely saying she’s one of those people who did in fact watch the same movie as I did, but was apparently too – I don’t know, out of it, ignorant, or driven by her hobby horses and pet causes – to follow the script, plot, and character motivations, or to see those things clearly.
Because she sure as hell arrived at some very wrong or weird conclusions about aspects of the movie, its plot, or its characters.
O’Dowd’s acting roles are not all placed in chronological order in this post or in Part 2
October 2016
(This post has been edited several times to add new material – last update: September 2018)
April 2017 update:
With every new review I read of O’Dowd’s past movies (I just read several reviews of his 2012 film “3, 2, 1… Frankie Go Boom” this evening), I am stunned – and horrified.
I am stunned at how awful 99% of the movies are that he has appeared in. He plays creeps, sickos, deviants, or jerks in many movies.
I’m stunned that O’Dowd is willing to appear in such filth and unfunny, tawdry movies. That he has done so either speaks to how desperate he is to earn pay checks – because maybe he’s not getting offered any other roles?, or –
Or O’Dowd has sleazy, scummy morals right down there with child molesters. I cannot understand how any adult who does have good morals would willingly appear in some of the dreck he’s been in and be okay with it.
Are these the kinds of movies O’Dowd wants any of his children to sit through when they’re older and would he be proud of his kids seeing this trash?
I’m not a prude. I’m willing to sit through and laugh at a certain amount of “mature” humor, but some of the movies he’s been in have jokes, lines, and gags that are beyond tasteless.
And it’s sad, very sad. This was an actor I was honestly expecting to like in real life, and in other movie roles, from having noticed him as the cop in ‘Bridesmaids,’ when I began researching him and his movie career online.
O’Dowd may still be getting an occasional pay check in Hollywood (he has filmed at least three or four movies in 2017, according to IMDB’s site), but for any lady who enjoyed him as the ‘Bridesmaids’ cop, his career is dead, over, and buried.
I certainly have no interest in following O’Dowd’s career any longer, not as an admirer or well-wisher.
I certainly have no interest in watching O’Dowd in any future roles where he’s a sleaze ball, and given his 2012 (or 2014?) or so magazine interview where he bashed people of faith, I don’t want to see him in any movies at all – my enthusiasm, or whatever you want to call it, is dead and gone.
And, August 2017 edit –
As I detail below, I wish casting people would stop romantically pairing up O’Dowd in other movies or shows with any of his former cast-mates from “Bridesmaids,” which they’ve done in two other movies:
They’ve paired O’Dowd off with Maya Rudolph (“Lillian”) in another movie called “This is 40,” and now, I read, they are doing so with with Rose Byrne (who played “Helen Harris III”), who will be playing a woman named “Annie,” who is married to, or dating, O’Dowd’s character, in a movie called “Juliet, Naked.”
– Just no. No no no no no, nooooooo. NOPE.
Don’t want to see “Rhodes” dating or married to Lillian, Helen, Megan, or any of the other non-Kristen Wiig actresses or characters from Bridesmaids. It just doesn’t work for someone who’s already seen him as Rhodes canoodling with Wiig as Annie.
INTRODUCTION
This is a long post, and for that I am sorry. But here we go.
I liked the movie “Bridesmaids.” It was in theaters in 2011, but I did not see it until 2015, when it came on television.
Chris O’Dowd as Nathan Rhodes in ‘Bridesmaids’ – screen cap of image via IMDB
I have other reasons for why I feel let down by the actor, Chris O’Dowd, who played the police officer character “Nathan Rhodes” in Bridemaids, but I’ll likely get to that in another, future post (though I did discuss one reason why in another post hereand still intend on writing at least one more post later on. April 2017: you can now read that post here: Chris O’Dowd is a Great Big Jerk).
I figured since O’Dowd seemed so nice as the cop character in ‘Bridesmaids,’ that he would be just as wonderful in other movie parts (i.e., playing a likable, nice guy), so I watched the actor in some of the other movies he’s been in.
That turned out to be a big mistake.
After having watched O’Dowd in other roles, some that were pretty profane or had him play a sexist swine, I can’t really appreciate his scenes as the nice guy in ‘Bridesmaids’ any more (among another reason or two).
About the only movies of O’Dowd’s I’ve seen that didn’t tarnish the memory of the Rhodes character for me was his very brief part in the “Thor” sequel, and the voice work he did for a 2013 kid’s animated movie called “Epic.” (He did the voice of a goofy snail in that one.)
By the way, if you’d like to see what movies or TV shows O’Dowd has been in, or which one he’s scheduled to appear in, you can check out his page on IMDB here:
I think this February 2018 Tweet of mine nicely summarizes O’Dowd’s acting career to this point (the Tweet references an article about what a failure the movie “The Cloverfield Paradox” was, in which O’Dowd had a role; more on this failure of a movie farther below on this page):
As of 2018, the ONLY decent movie O’Dowd has been in has really been the 2011 movie “Bridesmaids.”
The “Bridesmaids” film seemed to do well at the box office, and, a lot of people found it entertaining, as did movie critics. That film role may also be the only likable one O’Dowd has played to date.
CRUDE OR OBSCENE HUMOR
I am not, nor have I ever been, a fan of humor that is obscene, sex-related, or anything vulgar or involving bodily functions.
I don’t find jokes about genitalia amusing – but some actors and movies have this habit of expecting the audience to laugh just from hearing words such as “dick” or “vagina.” They’re body parts, guys – get over it.
I find hearing the words “dick,” “balls,” or “vagina” about as funny as I do hearing the words “elbow,” “hand,” or “throat.” -Which is to say, not funny at all.
For some reason I do not comprehend, many movies that come out of Hollywood regularly use coarse humor. And I hate it. I wish the people who write scripts would stop with the trashy language and trashy jokes.
I usually find sex-based or bodily-function type humor crass, obscene, and pretty juvenile. I rarely laugh at such humor.
Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen of him in interviews, both in print that is reproduced online, and in video format on You Tube, and in some of the material he Tweets from his Twitter account…
…that O’Dowd’s real-life sense of humor leans to juvenile and of the mild bathroom or bodily function variety, as though he has the emotional maturity of a 12 year old who is stuck in the body of an adult (I believe he is currently 38 or 39 years old.)
RHODES IN BRIDESMAIDS (2011)
In ‘Bridesmaids,’ the Rhodes character was amusing, entertaining, and endearing without resorting to smut, bathroom humor, immaturity, or vulgarity (not much, anyway, aside from the scene where he cusses at the Annie character because he’s so frustrated or hurt), which is one reason I was so fond of that character.
In most interviews I’ve seen of her, Melissa McCarthy comes across as being a nice person.
McCarthy played the character “Megan” in the 2011 film ‘Bridesmaids,’ which I didn’t see until 2015, when I saw it on TV.
Melissa McCarthy as Megan – screen cap of image via IMDB
Before I explain why I am a little upset with McCarthy, I wanted to say several things up front so you can see where I am coming from.
One of my favorite scenes from this film is when Megan gives a pep talk of sorts to the character Annie (who is played by Kristen Wiig).
At the time of filming this movie, I believe Wiig was 38 years old – which may be a somewhat pertinent fact for some of the things I say below.
A summary of things from the movie: The character of Annie has fallen on hard times, has no self esteem, and is very down on herself.
(I have a lot in common with the Annie character, which I’ll explain more below.)
Annie is broke, lost her job, her last boyfriend dumped her when her business, (a bakery), was a financial failure, and she feels as though she’s losing her best friend, Lillian, as Lillian is engaged and about to be married.
In this movie, actor Chris O’Dowd played a nice guy named “Nathan Rhodes” who worked as a cop (a state trooper, specifically), and Kristen Wiig, who ended up being his love interest, played down-on-her-luck “Annie Walker.”
Buttered Popcorn 
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