‘Starstruck’ Is the Perfect Companion to Bennifer Mania

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. [Manage newsletters]( [View in browser]( [Image] with Kevin Fallon Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - Bingeing through Bennifer horniness. - A super (secretly) gay Pixar movie??? - The world’s most famous owl. - Step on my neck, Kathryn Hahn. - Happy Juneteenth! Let’s All Bang Celebs This Summer It brings me no pleasure to report [how much of my headspace]( is devoted to [Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck](’s PR-heavy second go at a relationship. And who am I to call it a relationship? Maybe they’re just testing the waters again after a traumatic time, seeking comfort in the comfortable. Maybe they’re just fucking. Maybe it’s all a stunt. The fact that I could write a damn Harvard thesis on all three hypotheses makes me hate myself. But there is a vibe they are projecting, one that makes me laugh. Especially now, and especially after all this [gesticulates wildly with his arms as if he is summoning a tornado and/or landing an airplane at JFK], it’s fun escapism to relive the Bennifer of 20 years ago. It’s the future nostalgia [Dua Lipa was singing about]( back when we were all dancing on our dining chairs working from home. We talked a lot about escapism during the pandemic. Specifically in pop culture. Yes, binges of “comfort TV” like Friends or The Office spiked. Schitt’s Creek won every award available. Ted Lasso took the few that it didn’t. But culturally there seemed to be a desire for another kind of comfort, one that this Bennifer fuckery is providing: Celebrities who are famous as hell performing their aspirational sex lives for us. Would you like to go through an extremely public breakup and then bang Ben Affleck? Were you spiraling during a pandemic to the point of basically becoming a Dunkin Donuts spokesperson, and then Jennifer Lopez literally texts, “hey, u up?” I don’t know a more iconic form of escapism than to pretend this is how your life would work out. But I am a TV critic and I do know a show that gives you familiar vibes. Friends, watch Starstruck on HBO Max. This series is the perfect companion piece to what appears to be Horny Celeb Summer. (Did you see that Angelina Jolie [recently visited her ex]( Jonny Lee Miller?) That is because this is a series about a horny celeb. What makes Starstruck work so well is that it doesn’t attempt to reinvent the format, but also kind of does exactly that. It’s a romantic-comedy series (the British kind, so a blissfully bingeable six episodes running less than 30 minutes each), and it owns that. But it is also, as apparently every recently single A-list movie star is, about sex. Are you envious of Bennifer? Watch vicariously through Starstruck. I don’t remember the last time I thought a rom-com was this good. And maybe the reason why is because it is almost exactly Notting Hill. But actually relatable. Drunk on New Year’s Eve, Jessie (Rose Matafeo) sleeps with Tom (Nikesh Patel). When she wakes up she realizes he’s a mega-famous movie star. He realizes he really likes this magnetic mess of a human. You can basically fill in the plot from that introduction. But there’s still something so satisfying about the series. It doesn’t portray the relationship as fantasy. What if you were just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her? That’s the kind of shit we get whisked away for. Starstruck meets you where you are: An emotional disaster, a professional flop, an OK body, but determined to work it out anyway. Neither Tom nor Jessie understands why they click so well. But the connection is so undeniable that fate keeps causing them to meet. (Fate, feel free to send Nikesh Patel my way.) There’s a distinctly older Gen Z/younger millennial vibe to the series, owed to Matafeo being the creator and writer. Her constant anxiety about turning 28 and feeling old aged me about a decade. But hers is also a very particular and relatable balancing act, one that I haven’t seen on TV before. She knows what she deserves and wants, both in a relationship and with sex. But she’s also formed from a dialogue with rom-com ideas about what love should be, and that haunts her. There are no easy answers. That’s part of the fun. But most of the fun is just that: how fun it is. Jessie is one of those protagonists whose messiness is probably a little heightened for TV, but in the pursuit of acing the relatability test. You immediately understand why one of the most famous people in the world would be beguiled by her. By being herself, she’s beguiling. If the narrative is familiar, why it stands out—especially in this #HotVaxSummer—is that they have sex. Immediately. It’s a curious thing about rom-coms. For all the escapism and fantasy, the sex part of a relationship and an attraction is just skipped over, or assumed. Starstruck asks, what if Notting Hill was dirty? What if rom-coms actually acknowledged the sex? What if the characters talked about when one went down on the other instead of being demure in bedsheets? The fun thing about being obsessed with the J.Lo and Ben Affleck journey is that it’s so not my journey. But maybe this is? Maybe Nikesh Patel (who, after also starring in [Hulu’s Four Weddings and a Funeral reboot](, is demanding to be the next Hugh Grant) is going to see me very drunk at a bar and find me irresistible. The thing I like about this idea of #HotVaxSummer and the world opening again is not just the idea of possibility, but the validation of it. I’m a jaded, depressed, deeply broken cynic who would never abide by that kind of optimism. But the glimmer of hope is there. May we all be Starstruck. How Much Is Luca Basically Call Me By Your Name? No one emotionally prepared me for the final act of Luca. I can already scan my inbox of emails asking why I’m putting an agenda on a nice kids’ movie, but we’re still in goddamn 2021, at a point where we have to assign agendas to kids’ movies in order to be seen. Luca may be the gayest thing [Disney has ever done](. [Alternate text] Luca is a coming out story. When I saw [the trailer](, I pitched my editor, “Isn’t this Call Me by Your Name?” to be cheeky. I’ll never forget what it felt like to be in the theater [at the Sundance Film Festival](, a standing room-only audience watching such a devastating, honest, and HORNY [gay love story](. We were all so lucky that it was snowing that night. We needed a cold shower. That film was about a young queer person who was so gifted and so loved, but didn’t quite understand who he was. It took a perfect man—someone with such swagger, such intelligence, and, in spite of [cannibalism entering the story]( recently, so conventionally hot—to make him feel like it would be OK to be who he is. That’s the thing about coming out that is often ignored: It’s not just announcing who you are, but it is feeling like it’s going to be alright once you do it. In any case, Luca is a delightfully idiosyncratic film from the Disney/Pixar conveyor belt of emotional devastation. For the workshop known for pulling a psychologist’s chair up to the idea of what cinema is capable of teaching children about their emotions and existence, Luca is remarkably simple. What if you realized the version of yourself that makes you most happy, even if it makes other people scared? And what if those people came around, too? It’s easy to recount the plot of Luca because it’s basically the plot of Call Me by Your Name, sans peach. Well, there are also sea monsters who become humans once on land and just want to fit in, but the gist is there. So entranced by the general vibe of a seaside Italian village, a fish-thing (you try describing the tail, but also legs, creature) is drawn to the shore. There he meets Alberto, who is also a fish-thing but found out they could live as humans on land, as long as they don’t get wet. Like an elder gay taking a twink to The Eagle for the first time, he opens Luca to a world of possibility. I started this assignment jotting down lines I thought would be funny to recount in a “LOL Luca Is Pixar’s Call Me by Your Name” piece. And they are there. “First time?” Alberto tells Luca. “Relax. Breathe.” The gay joke writes itself. But I was so dramatically whisked away by the life lessons about accepting yourself and a life of otherness that I don’t want to be glib. This is the line that resonated with me, and it’s from his parents: “Some people will never accept him. But some will. And he seems to know how to find the good ones.” We talk a lot about what these Disney and Pixar movies tell children about the hardships of life, about death and depression and anger and fear. But Luca is a movie that tells us it’s all going to be OK. It’s so simple that it shattered me. I Only Live For Salma Hayek’s Owl I’m not sure how to talk about anything this week without bringing up the owl. Salma Hayek’s owl. It’s all I think about. It’s not clear to me how we’ve gone this long without hearing about Kering, the actress’ pet owl who sleeps on her head when her husband is not home. If I was a publicist, this would be the only thing I would publicize. I would devote my life to it. Salma Hayek’s house-trained pet owl would be my life’s devotion, and it would feel good. The reason we all know about this now is that Hayek appeared on the talk show of She Who Must Not Be Named (her name is Ellen) and [talked about it](. Apparently Kering once threw up on Harry Styles’ hair. People are making a big deal about that, as if it’s not exactly what they would do if they saw Harry Styles and his hair in person. Kathryn Hahn Invented Walking [Alternate text] There is a video that[has been shared]( repeatedly on social media this week of Kathryn Hahn walking down a hallway. I’m typically skeptical of such viral hyperbole, but in this case, wow. Has humanity ever walked before? Has hair existed before Kathryn Hahn tousled it? Never witnessed such hotness. Please Do Your Research [Alternate text] I learned about Juneteenth because a publicist emailed me four years ago saying that black-ish was producing an episode about it. That’s horrible. (The episode itself is very good, and if you read this newsletter for watch recommendations, you should watch that.) I can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t monologue about the politics and importance of all this. But maybe, in the list of all the things we find important, make this one of them? [Alternate text] - Luca: It’s a Disney/Pixar movie. Obviously I cried. (Fri. in theaters and on Disney+) - Evil: Binges this good should be a sin. Get it??? (Sun. on Paramount+) - The Good Fight: It’s honestly the best drama on TV. (Thu. on Paramount+) [Alternate text] - Physical: Not at all what you would expect, and in a bad way. (Fri. on Apple TV+) - Too Hot to Handle: If we don’t engage in these dumbass shows, will they go away? (Wed. on Netflix) Advertisement [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011 [Privacy Policy]( If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, [click here]( to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can [safely unsubscribe](.