Auntie Mame Is the Antidote to Our Franchise Woes

Summer is around the corner and the behemoth franchise installments have already begun with this weekend's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (it's big and stupid and hugely fun, and Paul McCartney is in it, and so is Faramir, I mean, David Wenham). While it seems that POTC has been finally defeated by the last rotting of the endlessly expiring Johnny Depp-Disney romance, I had the dubious pleasure of seeing trailers for the latest Transformers film, a franchise that lumbers with the grace of a drunken wildebeest, and the next Star Wars movie, a franchise that galumphs with perhaps more visual panache but just as much intent to sell toys. Hollywood has become so lost in franchise-land that this stuff is beginning to play like parodies of itself and something must be done.

Ladies and Gentlemen: it's time to call in the big guns. It's time to call in Auntie Mame.



Auntie Mame and the Beast
In this reboot, Auntie Mame convinces the Beast that he's much sexier as he is, since hairy is in this season, sets him up with her secretary, and redecorates the castle. She teaches the beast-human hybrid babies that life is a banquet and starts a weekly coffee klatsch with the enchantress. Songs and highballs are enjoyed by all.

Auntie Mame's Guardians of the Galaxy
Auntie Mame finds the magical orb in an antique shop and turns it into a chandelier. The Guardians arrive to try to steal it, but instead they get sloshed and Chris Pratt cries in Auntie Mame's arms about his dead mother before she gives him a make-over. After a rousing impromptu speech against intolerant attitudes towards tree-human hybrids, Auntie Mame decides to establish a rest home for them. They all live there. 

The Fate of the Furious Auntie Mame
Auntie Mame drives very fast cars, provokes fireball explosions, and squeezes Vin Diesel's biceps. She hijacks a helicopter, a submarine, a tank, and an aircraft carrier. She live, live, lives.

The LEGO Auntie Mame Movie 
Auntie Mame is transformed into a Lego figurine and has a marvelous time building several new mansions out of Legos. Lord Business gives up his evil plans when he falls in love with her and spends the rest of the movie holding her shopping bags and looking after her Lego poodle, while waiting for her to agree to marry him. Capitalism still wins because this is a movie about copyrighted toys.

Kong vs. Auntie Mame
Auntie Mame works out King Kong's inferiority complex with hot pink hair dye, glitter, and a session with her Hungarian therapist, but not before they have a screaming match, which Auntie Mame wins, and a chest-thumping contest, which Kong wins, but only because Auntie Mame forgot to wear her spanx that day. 

Fifty Shades of Auntie Mame
Leather BDSM dungeon + fabulous gold corset + rattlesnake hors d'oeuvre + Auntie Mame = an awake audience. Auntie Mame becomes a dominatrix and Jamie Dornan can relax and stop trying to be interesting.