act 6 scene 1

Low budget, simple story, okay acting: once.  Lovefilm delivered to me today a gem of a film.  It’s an atypical boy meets girl kinda flick, a musical in fact and it goes something like this: boy is a part time vacuum repairing busker, girl is a single czech mother just about making ends meet.  His girlfriend moved to London and her husband is in the republic.  He is a guitar playing singer songwriter and she is a talented pianist and lyricist.  The guy thinks there is a physical thing and the gal understands it as friendship.  They end up recording some songs together to make a demo for him to take to London.  As he leaves he buys her a piano.  Fin.

I simplify, but that is the basic story around which this modern day musical is woven.  It would work well if my brain wasn’t wired to screw around with it.  I’m just too much of a pessimist!  Thinking that any moment now there will be a fawlty towers disaster domino of bad luck for the main character.  He doesn’t deserve it in the real world, but somehow in my mind it would happen anyway.  As an example - there is this scene where the guy borrows his fathers bike with neither his fathers knowledge nor permission.  Throughout the entire scene I’m fearing that the bike is going to get destroyed…  even though the film is far from being about the morals of stealing or lying.

This is not the first time I’ve found myself doing it - even watching Studio 60 recently has revealed similar fears.  And I simply can not watch Fawlty Towers without constantly cringing in the knowledge that Basil is going to make a fool out of himself repeatedly.  There is clearly something wrong with my perception of reality that I think such things have any bearing on real life or stories portraying life outside of comedy (in the literal sense).

Please help.