Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Backup Dancers From Hell: Katy Perry - “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)”


Well, now. Katy and the gang have put together a little mini-movie for your viewing pleasure, packed with colorful characters, little plot and surprising guest stars. (It’s just like The Love Boat. Only totally not.) Here goes…

We start out with some paper boy doing his thing, on his bike and hurling his wares in a quaint little neighborhood that most of us can’t afford. We zoom in on one house, and travel to Katy’s bedroom, where she’s just waking up to find things are a bit amiss. The room is totally trashed, and rude people have passed out hither and yon. There’s even an actual chicken who is really perturbed about something.

Katy, who has glammed up her name by adding an “H” and is now known as Kathy, is sporting one of those torture-chamber headgear devices that many of us survived in our teeth-straightening years, as well as an outfit that can only be described as “victim of home-schooling”. She proceeds to not-so-subtly freak out about the condition of her room and what might have led to live poultry and a possibly-naked stud sharing the bed with her.

The door flies open, and “Aaron” sticks his head in, played by one Darren Criss, who has apparently done quite well on a tiny little show called Glee. Anyway, Aaron overlooks Kathy’s freaking, just wanting to thank her for a party well done, then he splits. Typical party guest. They break things and then they leave.

While geeky Kathy ganders at the devastation about her, she decides to sing about her life at the moment, as we all do when confronting unusual circumstances. She warbles about some shindig gone bad, then checks her online account to see a posted video of her licking the stomach of some guy named Steve, proclaiming her a goddess for her tongue work. How nice of him.

Kathy begins to recall the hazy details, and it seems that it all started with her innocently sitting in her little-girl-geek room, minding her own business and being unattractive. Her self-loathing awkwardness is interrupted by the strains of a major blowout coming from next door, where obnoxious people are drinking and doing stupid things only because there’s an audience and party streamers. You know, like your entire college experience.

Socially-inept but defiant, Kathy stomps to the offending house, where the door is answered by “Rebecca Black”, played by, um, Rebecca Black, she of the infamous mother-financed “Friday” music video that went viral earlier this year and has apparently been seen by the entire world. Except me. I guess she and Katy/Kathy got tight somewhere along the line.

Rebecca graciously invites Kathy into her dwelling, where tons of people are having a blast, guzzling anything liquid, and doing gymnastics. While Kathy takes this all in, spazzing geekily but excitedly, she is spotted by a fellow geek cadet (“Everett”, played by Kevin McHale, also from Glee.) He and his braces swoon over Kathy, and he briefly imagines them as Knight and Fair Lady back in Medieval times, rubbing teeth metal and wearing ugly, heavy clothes while standing in front of a fake castle.

Up comes a typical high-school jock, all full of attitude and testosterone. (This would be Steve, he who eventually gets the lint removed from his belly button by Kathy. But that’s later.) He blows off our heroine Kathy and instead tries to cozy up to some slut in denim, showing off is washboard abs as a sign of introduction. Kathy is a little blue about not being immediately bedded by the jock, so her new bestie Rebecca drags her upstairs for a makeover, because that’s what good friends do, try to completely change one another as soon as they meet.

We now have a nice sequence of fashion sprucing, including the replacing of tragic clothing with racy little snippets of stretchy material, the execution of lip hair via wax-enhanced ripping, and some breast redesign accomplished with structural enhancements. Oh, and they lose the headgear, an operation which nearly decapitates Rebecca when the tension is released on the steel hardware.

Cut to Kathy tottering down the stairs in purposely mis-matched high heels, breasts that could easily be floating around Jupiter, and enough jacked-up hair to wipe out a small town. (She’s still got her braces, natch, because you can only do so much dental work in a typical teen bedroom.) Of course, this immediately gets the attention of Jock Steve, who instantly ditches Denim Tramp and races to bask in the light reflecting off Kathy’s teeth.

So now the party has really started, and we get shots of Kathy and her hair having the time of their lives, playing video party games, drinking, and imagining that grown-up life is going to be just like this. There’s an extended dance-off sequence, where people are doing the robot, and even the geeks get to join in, letting us know that these folks are really inclusive and not Republican at all. (Well, maybe those shifty people in the corner might be, lying into their cell phones about where they really are, but we’ll ignore them for now.)

We also have a bit where Kathy and her jupiters leading the crowd as they chant the “T.G.I.F” bit of the song, with her being the center of attention because you can’t wear an outfit like that and not be the center of something. We transition to the backyard for the first of two startling surprises. First, it appears that Hanson is the band performing at the festivities. (Mmmm-what?) And then they are joined by Kenny G, blasting out a solo on his instrument.

Kenny G, people. (I know. It scared me, too.)

Everybody jams for a while, probably because with all of Kathy and Kenny’s hair blocking the exits, ain’t nobody going nowhere just yet. Then Kathy picks out her bestest new friends and leads them over to her house, where they can party in her room and admire her science fair ribbons. (There’s a brief shot of Kenny being crowd-surfed to somewhere else, but no explanation is given. It’s probably best that we don’t know.)

Eventually, as always happens with any good party, things start to go awry. Poor Kathy, not accustomed to alcohol and tight clothing, throws up in one of her pretty little roller skates. Then Jock Steve decides to grab him some Kathy butt, which offends Geeky Everett, who is still pining for Kathy. So Everett, fueled by another Medieval vision wherein he slays evil Stevie while a volcano erupts in the background, punches Steve, who promptly passes out on Kathy’s bed.

Kathy, maturing socially rather quickly, realizes it’s important to catch on to the latest trends as soon as possible, and she promptly passes out beside Steve. (Smart girl.) Everett, tenderly removing the glasses of his slumbering beloved, has another King Arthur vision wherein he and Kath and their amazing teeth-hydraulics live happily ever after.

Cut back to the present, where morning-after Kathy is still reeling from the shambles of her room and the snoring of her apparently new roommates. The door opens again (anybody in this place knock?) and this time it’s Corey Feldman and Debbie Gibson playing Kathy’s parents. (They look just as surprised to be together as we are to see them.)

They want Little Missy to explain things, like why is Kenny G sleeping on the couch and who framed Roger Rabbit? Kathy has a total geek-plosion in trying to explain that she somehow magically became an alcoholic tramp overnight. This eventually leads to Corey and Debbie fessing up that they used to have their own Friday-night fun back in the day, an image that we instantly hope is not about to be shown to us.

Luckily, Kathy decides that the best thing to do is just go back to bed, and the parents decide to go downstairs where we can’t see them, Debbie’s hair has more room to get comfortable, and Corey can stop acting like he’s channeling Charlie Sheen. Kathy leans back, grinning to herself, and lays her hand on Jock Steve’s abdomen, breathing nerdily as her fingers inch their way toward the blanket adorning his waist.

Careful, girl. No telling who you might find down there. (We haven’t seen Rebecca, Everett OR the chicken in quite a while. Sayin.)


Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.

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