My life as an aspiring narcissist hit a new low when my wife and I got home, plopped down on the couch, and decided to indulge in the cinematic masterpiece Road House. This film, if you can call it that, stars a Jake Gyllenhaal so chiseled that he looks like Michelangelo got bored and decided to make an action hero. In this gripping tale, Gyllenhaal plays a tough-as-nails fighter scraping a living in a Key West bar, doing what any self-respecting muscle mountain would do—protecting the bar and its lovely owner, played by Jessica Williams, from corrupt mob bosses. Naturally, this leads to the inevitable showdown with their number-one heavy, played by none other than a bulked-up, foaming-at-the-mouth Conor McGregor, who looks like he’s been subsisting on a diet of raw meat and anabolic steroids.
The plot is thinner than a strand of dental floss—a Western rehash where an outsider rides into town to clean up the mess. But let’s be real: the story is just window dressing for the film’s true agenda, which is to showcase sweaty, glistening muscles and fight montages that could double as a fitness competition highlight reel. The camera lingers on every bulging bicep and rock-hard ab like a love-struck teenager, turning what should be an action movie into a high-budget commercial for protein powder, creatine, and whatever the hell UFC fighters are injecting these days.
As Gyllenhaal and McGregor flexed and fought their way through scene after scene, I found myself reaching for my phone, not to check the time—oh no—but to Google “What is Conor McGregor’s diet?” Because watching this movie is less about enjoying a plot and more about realizing you’re a gelatinous blob compared to the human marble statues parading around on screen. Road House isn’t so much a movie as it is a two-hour reminder that you’re one donut away from needing a forklift to get off the couch.
When the credits finally rolled, and I managed to peel my eyes away from the testosterone-soaked spectacle, I turned to my wife, feeling more deflated than a balloon at a porcupine convention. “I wish I could lose forty pounds and look the way I did when I entered Mr. Teenage San Francisco,” I lamented as if my sad sack of a body was just a protein shake away from making a comeback. I had the muscle once, I swear! But now it’s hidden under layers of adiposity that could cushion a fall from a ten-story building. If they ever invented an advanced generation of Ozempic that came in a pill form, had no side effects, and was covered by my insurance, I’d be the first in line, elbowing grannies out of the way to get my hands on it.
My wife, however, had zero interest in my nostalgic waxing about the “great body” of my youth. This was not her first rodeo. In fact, she could probably recite my entire “glory days” speech from memory, down to the last calorie of the diet I used to follow. Rolling her eyes with the practiced ease of a wife who’s heard it all before, she suggested we watch a rerun of Northern Exposure—her go-to escape from my never-ending lament about the “Greek god” I used to be. But the seafood restaurant ordeal had left me more drained than a used dishrag, and I waved the white flag of surrender. “Nope, I’m hitting the sack,” I muttered, retreating to the bedroom like a defeated warrior, leaving my wife to her beloved reruns while I dreamed of a time when I was ripped, instead of just ripping on myself.
Cinemorphosis 
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