monday morning movie club

What Were the Best Parts of Gone Girl?

Photo: Merrick Morton/Twentieth Century Fox and Regency Enterprise

There’s plenty to say about David Fincher’s twisty hit Gone Girl, and we’ve said a whole lot of it already: From reviews to interviews to essays to dick-spotting guides, Vulture has got this movie covered. Still, a film this dense with ideas, images, and performances deserves at least one more deep-dive, this one dedicated to the more minor elements of the movie that nevertheless stood out to us. In fact, some of our following nominations might have even been your favorite part of Gone Girl. Which moment made you giggle, cringe, or gasp more than any other?

• There are a lot of darkly comic moments in the second half of the film, and several of the best ones involve Desi, Neil Patrick Harris’s character. Our audience howled when he took the creme brûlée away from Amy — a condescending bit of smarmy concern that might as well have been the moment Desi signed his own death warrant. And how about his never-ending description of the technological amenities at Amy’s safe house? By the time he’s extolling the virtues of Roku, the scene has become like Fincher’s update of the IKEA-diagrammed apartment from Fight Club.

• Missi Pyle is perfect as the film’s Nancy Grace stand-in, never more so than in the film’s final act, where she comes face to face with the man she’s tormented for ages and tries to wriggle out of any guilt for her part. “I just go where the story goes,” she simpers, and we’d go anywhere Pyle went with this character. (Can you imagine if Fincher made, like, a tie-in web series starring her? If only he were that craven.)

• Just as important as Amy’s diary of marital fan fiction are the various pens she uses to write it. One is a pink stork pen, the perfect inspiration for her pregnancy plot, but another, fluffier pen reminded us of Cher’s pen from Clueless, and even a writing instrument brandished in Legally Blonde by Reese Witherspoon (who happened to produce Gone Girl). As you can see, a girly pen is nothing to joke about, since there are seriously dangerous things being plotted by all three women:

• We had our doubts that model Emily Ratajkowski (of “Blurred Lines” music video fame) could pull off the role of Affleck’s side-piece, Andie, but with a little movie magic, some impressive desperation, and one choice, defeated line reading of “Godspell,” she made it work. And we’re not just saying that because of how real it felt when Affleck buried his face in her (really nice!) boobs. Promise.

• In a movie this sly about its sense of humor, no one is funnier than Tyler Perry, an amiable, counterintuitive casting choice who delivers the line that gets (and deserves!) the movie’s biggest laugh: “You two are the most fucked-up people I have ever met, and I specialize in fucked-up people.” Bravo.

• Even if they didn’t specifically cast Ben Affleck for his butt chin, they might as well have: In the book, Nick is also described as having a cleft chin just like the one Affleck will have jutting out of his Batman mask in 2016. In fact, one of Nick and Amy’s more adorable inside jokes is dedicated to the Chin: He repeatedly covers the cleft with two fingers so as not to seem so villainous (though it’s really Amy who’s in disguise). If you paired that gesture with the three-finger salute from The Hunger Games, you’d get the most incredible box office handshake.

While we’re boring down deep into Gone Girl, though, we did have just a few more miscellaneous quibbles:

• Yes, world. Yes, we know that you also see Neil Patrick Harris’s junk in Gone Girl — and if we’re counting seconds, you see it much longer than you see the D everyone’s been talking about. But if you were paying attention to the madness happening when you see NPHD, was that really a good time to lust? We’re past spoilers here, but do you really want to see a dead man’s D? Is that exciting for you? We’ll take the shower glimpse, thanks.

• Amy is supposed to be a mystery to us when the film begins … and we had to wonder, is that why nearly all of Rosamund Pike’s dialogue was redubbed in the first hour? Because girl was ADR’d to death, and it’s rare that you’d find something so conspicuously out of step in a David Fincher movie, where every detail is exactingly crafted.

What did you think? Get geeky with us!

What Were the Best Parts of Gone Girl?