At the End of the Film, ‘I Boop Your Nose!’

Whether the movie is comedy or horror is apparent from the final twenty seconds. And that’s it: If it’s comedy, your character is in the good place, and if it’s horror, the bad place. A film character has no afterlife. If the arbiter of the final scene is Helen Hunt you’re flying high, and if it’s Donald Sutherland you’re screwed.

In the good place, Helen Hunt is playing the role of a high school student in the 1985 film Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Her friend has just won a dance contest and will appear regularly as a dancer on television. The friend’s father, previously unsupportive of her dream, shouts unexpectedly from the audience: “Way to go!” Her boyfriend dancer lifts her up and spins her around. The music takes a turn for the bubbly, and Helen Hunt shows up giggling with a punk hairdo in a sparkly tiara, crossing the stage in a mini-chariot pulled by an actual horse. This is the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae; the big news is that she will also appear regularly on the very same television show. Helen Hunt gives her dancer friend a special salute, raising her right arm to point at her friend, then touching her own nose with her left hand, suggesting a long-distance “I boop your nose!”

Helen Hunt playing the character Lynne in the film “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

In the bad place, Donald Sutherland is playing the role of a regular guy in a regular city that has been swallowed by nightmare and taken over by…