Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine The All-Kat Dennings thread

I'm a few years late to the party, as usual, but better late than never.

I finally got around to watching the Thor films, and I came away j'adore-ing Kat Dennings in the role of Darcy Lewis, Dr. Jane Foster's intern.





Darcy is a beam of light that outshines even Norse gods and goddesses. She's bright, witty, down-to-Earth, she always seizes the day, and she makes slobby clothes and glasses look good.

Marvel would have to be really foolish not to capitalize to the fullest on this breakout original character from their Cinematic Universe.

She needs to be Tony Stark's new executive assistant. (perhaps as a favor to Jane...)

She could be Pym's lab assistant... (then we get a little "40 Yr Old Virgin" reunion with Paul Rudd :))

I love this idea!

"Jane! You never told me I'd have to wear high heels for this job! Oh, my poor feet..."

Of course, Kat has played other roles besides Darcy. Here she is in the role that first gained her attention:

This other YT video of Kat as Jenny Brier is even funnier:

And, of course, Kat's breakout role was as Norah Silverberg in the movie "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist":

Big fan of Ms Dennings! Not only for the already mentioned Thor Films and Nick & Nora but Charlie Bartlett is one of my all-time fave films co-starring the dearly departed Anton Yelchin. Plus Robert Downey Jr as her dad!

Thanks for chiming in, ActorLad.

I'll have to watch Charlie Bartlett; thanks for the heads-up.

I should also mention that even though I find that the humor on Kat's TV series 2 Broke Girls is often too crude for my early-middle-age sensibilities, I think Kat's performances as the tough-but-tender diner waitress Max are consistently good, and the role shows her acting range to good effect.

It's a shame, but I assume Darcy will not be appearing in Thor: Ragnarock since Jane and Dr. Selwig aren't in it. Admittedly, the basic concept I've heard of it being kind of an Asgard road trip with the Hulk doesn't seem conducive to those characters.

We'll always have "mew-mew", though, Darcy....

Yeah, Lardy, I'm disappointed, too, that it looks like there won't be any regular human characters to ground the next Thor movie. But at least we'll get to see Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk again.



That was such a classic moment!

So...I'm not proud of this, and I still have very mixed feelings about this movie overall, but 2008's "The House Bunny," with a pre-stardom Kat in a supporting role which nevertheless gives her leverage to steal every scene she's in, has its moments. Moments which are GOLDEN!!

The nominal protagonist is Shelley, played by Anna Faris, who, to her credit, makes lemonade out of a lemon role. Shelley is a happy little Playboy Bunny until right after she turns 27 and finds out, via a passive-aggressive written note, that pervy old "Hef" has made her "redundant." Unworldly and shallow, yet sweet-natured at her core, Shelley finds her salvation from homelessness in the form of Zeta Alpha Zeta, the most pitiful of all the sorority houses on a nearby campus, and desperately in need of a House Mother. The sisters are, quite frankly, a rum bunch of gross Hollywood stereotypes: the bespectacled intellectual (Emma Stone,) who is the leader by default because she's the only one with actual social skills, the smelly farm-girl (Dana Goodman,) with a...um...coltish build, the hippie-chick (Katharine McPhee, hot off "American Idol" 2 years earlier, and cute as always,) who is the only one to have lost her virginity only to have had it leave her pregnant...you get the idea. And, ever so predictably, newly installed Mama Bear Shelley gives each and every one of the girls Hollywood makeovers, BUT THEN, the screenwriters desperately force themselves to give the story some kind of actual dramatic arc. This, IMHO, actually ends up being *counter-productive* in its trite "be yourself and don't go to either extreme and don't ever treat others the same as the people who treated you like dirt before you found your truth" Important Life Lesson audience spoon-feeding.

Puke city, right? Wrong, and while all the young women in the cast go above and beyond in their paycheck duties, in the end it's only our darling Kat D who actually transcends the whole dubious enterprise (click the thumbnail below for the full Kat goodness.)



Kat plays Mona, who starts out as arguably the worst stereotype of them all -- a butchy goth-punk spitfire with a face-full of piercings, whose aspirations to feminist thinking necessitate her playing devil's advocate...except that the script undermines Mona's otherwise sensible convictions by also making her feral and borderline savage, putting the bite on a fratboy who rudely declines her come-on and threatening the equally rude girls from the campus's most popular sorority with violence (all of this is pre-makeover, of course, though viewers are led to infer that even post-makeover Mona still retains a bit of an "edge.")

And yet, and yet...Kat somehow manages to locate the grain of human truth within Mona and make her the one, the ONLY ONE of the Zetas, whose pre-programmed Cinderella journey actually ends up feeling genuine and well-earned.

And, yeah, it's also cute in a kitschy, sugary way (at least to those viewers such as moi, with a weakness for kitschy OTT femininity which they already came to terms with years ago) that the newly girly Zetas do girly things like have a picnic and throw a costume party:





So Happy Hanukkah, Kat, you miracle worker you. I love you and admire you more than ever now for redeeming "The House Bunny" in ways it arguably never deserved. L'Chaim.

(And for those Legion Worlders who weren't already aware, I am not making light of Kat's faith and heritage. My mom is Jewish.)

Let's help pave the way for a better year ahead by keeping up the celebration of the awesomeness that is our darling Kat:

Kat is LOVE. Need proof? Here 'tis.

Just as Kat made glasses and gladrags look good, so she makes even the world's ugliest diner-server uniform look good:



I mean, seriously, had the diner's owners kept those uniforms in mothballs since 1974??

That great 80s band, the Cars, had musical chops to spare and wrote great songs, but ultimately, they proved themselves clueless with the lyrics to biggest global hit.

"Whose gonna drive you home?" DARCY is, you ignoramus!!

She's too sensible to not be the default designated driver...unless a Norse God falls out from the sky, but what are the chances of...? Oh.

And, finally, to cap off the night before New Year's Eve:



Just because.

(Okay, because Kat looks utterly sincere there. Not all celebrities can fake affection for the Muppets. When I watched an episode of the classic "Muppet Show" on DVD hosted by Marisa Berenson, I noticed there was a split second where her face clearly betrayed visible disgust at being there. But not our Kat, no, she's a trouper.

Every time I think Kat can't get any cuter, she surprises me:



Unicorns and pancakes, yes, indeed!! Priorities, sentients, priorities!!

Hey, all, guess what?

Kat loves cats!



^^See?

"Meow."



^^And Legion World's own iconic feline femme approves.

Two of the best Kat videos I've found recently on YouTube:

The first is one of the few clips from "2 Broke Girls" that I'd even consider posting at Legion World. It's not raucous, and it's not in dubious taste. It's just cute and funny and shows the comedic skills of both Kat and her co-star Beth Behrs.

The 2nd video is a wonderfully candid, short & sweet 2 minute interview with dear Kat:

Guess what? One of Kat's favorite movies is "Groundhog Day."

I like that movie a lot, but my Mom loves it so much, she watches it at least four times a year.

Kat's mom and my mom are about the same age (Kat is the youngest of 5 siblings.)

"Groundhog Day" -- it goes beyond generations!

I first noticed her in "40 Yr Old Virgin." She really captured teen bitchiness covering up for insecurity and complete parental embarrassment.

Thanks to a Time Bubble accident, I'm trapped in a time loop where I'm watching Ground Hog Day.

Kat's gonna be in her first big-screen role since "Thor: The Dark World" -- a holiday-themed ensemble comedy titled "Friendsgiving," due for release in 2019.

She's not the lead -- Malin Akerman is -- but what the hey, a little Kat is better than no Kat at all.

Also, Jane Seymour's in it. I hope she plays Kat's mother. That, I believe, would be genius casting (for those who didn't already know, Jane shares Kat's Jewish heritage.)

Some recent jokes in the Gym'll's forum, courtesy of myself and Lardy, at the expense of the initials for "All Star Squadron" got me thinking about this laugh-out-loud funny Lipton Ice Tea commercial from a few years ago, starring Kat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2oA4xrAl2w