Before he learns to speak English (and to utter the usual Disney platitudes about love and family), he sounds like Donald Duck doing an impression of Toshiro Mifune.
Meanwhile, Karim's previously strait-laced father takes up with an English mistress and begins teaching vague Eastern platitudes to suburbanites hungry for spiritual learning — or at least looser-fitting clothing.
The platitudes, however, are coming in clipped English accents and Irish brogues.
I think, also, there was the influence of Ambrose Bierce and his cynical "Devil's Dictionary," Samuel Johnson's mostly serious but occasionally coruscating "Dictionary of the English Language," and Gelett Burgess's now-forgotten send-up of platitudes, "Are You a Bromide?" What the entries in these books have in common, in addition to compression and wit, is an intolerance of stupidity.
He's the shabby, grinning, very English one with the forelock and the scuffed suède shoes, mumbling platitudes and doing brave things for honor.
But there is also a certain sweetness in the film's celebration of the most shameless platitudes, particularly during a scene in which Jen struggles to recite a "Hamlet" soliloquy in English.
As the bromides roll by and the platitudes chase each other round the page, those in favor of ever more and better English majors feel a bit the way we Jets fans feel, every fall, when our offense trots out on the field: I'm cheering as loud as I can, but let's be honest — this is not working well.
As the bromides roll by and the platitudes chase each other round the page, those in favor of ever more and better English majors feel a bit the way we Jets fans feel, every fall, when our offense trots out on the field: I'm cheering as loud as I can, but let's be honest this is not working well.
But at least he didn't miss an opportunity to hold Romney's platitudes against him; he accused his opponent of a logical flip-flop — if Romney supports making English the official language of the United States, it would be hypocritical, Santorum argued, not to insist that Puerto Rico adopt it.
