I have a theory that a chic flick has more words per action than a regular movie. And I don’t mean “action” action, I mean just “something happening”. SO and I are watching a movie and I turn to her and say “too much talking and nothing has happened in a while”. example: 2 people enter a room (action) and make a plan (words) and then leave the room (action). the question is how many words did they use to make the plan and how many camera angles did it take to cover the conversation.
I think there should be a word count on movies to give a hint to us poor guys getting snookered into seeing a chick flick. maybe “total number of spoken words / minutes of running time”.
Would that work?
If not then what? black movies, teen movies, message movies, scream movies are all easy to detect from the previews but they try to sneak a chicky one in on us sometimes.
Playing with fire here, justinh, but I would go more a slightly different tack - chick flicks have more to do with the heroine’s (sometimes hero’s) emotional reaction to events than the events themselves. This would lead to your observation about more wordiness, but more words don’t necessarily translate into “chick flick”
Experiment:
Pulp Fiction - wordy? - oh, hell yes. Chick Flick? Hardly
Re-make of “the Thomas Crown Affair” - wordy? - surprisingly so, if you watch it a second time; Chick Flick? IMHO, yes (and boy did I get in trouble for saying so, even though I did not mean it negatively…). The movie, especially the second half, spends most of its time on Rene Russo’s turmoil over whether she can trust Brosnan’s Crown. So, yeah, there’s action, but the focus is on the heroine’s reactions to the action…
In my opinion, if a guy calls a woman a ‘chick’, I don’t think it much matters what flick he takes her to.
You can get a ATI video card, rent a video, run it through the computer & the ATI card can suck out all the captions then you can do a word count & do some math if you really want. Frankly, I don’t think its words, but emotions, well you can’t rate those with an ATI card.
I might be a more modern guy, but I just ask the woman what kind of film that she enjoys & let her watch that kind.
Handy,
Are you disputing the fact that there are films for women? I have heard these defined as “chick flicks”.
Wordman,
Pulp Fiction does have the feel of a chick-flick. Its just got some action thrown in. (loved it). All his films have the “Anne-Rice-use-100-words-instead-of-the-12-you-need” feel.
I got suckered into going to “The Mexican” cause I thought “Brad Pitt and the mob” . its got to be good. after 5 minutes I knew it was a chick flick. I looked around the theater and it was 90% women. How did they know? maybe I am just a boob or they are aliens. but the thing was they knew and I didn’t and I want a way to prevent any future misunderstandings/stomach-aches (ate a whole bucket of popcorn with butter cause I was so bored. sick the rest of the day-but regular for a week)
“chick flick” is a commonly used phrase, nothing more - if it leads to offense, sorry, but that isn’t the intent; the intent in merely to capture a concept that people readily understand.
That being said, the scope of what constitutes a chick flick is less well-understood, hence justinh’s question (IMO). What is it that makes “When Harry Met Sally” or “An Affair to Remember” chick flicks, over and above the romance theme? Is “High Fidelity” a chick flick for guys, as has been asserted by a number of my friends?
It seems to be a reasonable topic for dialogue, even if it does capture a concept that is rooted in societally-based generalizations more than politically correct egalitarianism…
Julia Roberts, Gerard Depardieu, Hugh Grant or (sometimes) Ashley Judd.
A spunky, cute, girl-next-door heroine having a crisis about her romantic relationship. (Should I or shouldn’t I? I think he loves someone else! I’m never gonna get a man!)
A strident, supportive friend who provides the ‘straight man’ for any jokes that occur; note that this friend may be male or female.
A series of misunderstandings and miscommunications that heighten the sexual tension between the hero/heroine and their love interest.
A very Joseph Campbell-esque Hero’s Journey; maturation, self-doubt, The Big Test, and the eventual resolution.
In general, what seems to constitute a chick flick is a movie where the plot and dialogue center more around characters’ emotions and actions toward each other in a romantic context.
And chick flicks aren’t necessarily a bad thing; some of them are definitely worth watching. F’rexample, ‘American Beauty’ could be classified a chick flick, as it centers more around relationships and emotions, rather than gunfire, aliens or Tom Green. But it was a fantastically acted and written movie, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. However, whoever invented the genre of the ‘romantic comedy’ should be dragged out and shot repeatedly with 12-gauges filled with rock salt. Romantic comedies are to good drama movies what David Spade movies are to actual comedy; a cheap imitation that leaves nobody happy. Having sat through ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ and ad-nauseam repetitions of the same theme, I really wish I could get those hours of my life back.
Chick Flicks, especially the sub-genre, ‘romantic comedies’, invariably seem to start with a panning shot of a city skyline, complete with backing music which is always some “vintage” Louis Armstrong-type jazz number. This cliche is driving me nuts - check out “Serendipity” for the latest example.
Oh, and the titles tend to contain more personal pronouns - “My Best Friend’s Wedding”, “Return to me”, “You can count on me”, “Someone like you”. Guy movies tend to have snappier titles that refer to things (especially big machines), for example, “Terminator”, “Star Wars”, “Die Hard”, “Commando”.
Nowhere have I seen the difference outlined more clearly than in this line from the movie The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human: “Men enjoy movies about lots of people dying quickly. Women enjoy movies about one person dying slowly.”
Lately, Hollywood seems to have wised up. Chick flicks nowadays often have hot female stars to keep the guys interested too. For example - The Wedding Planner, Charlie’s Angels.
The movie starts with a sepia-tinged image of a small town and the words, “It was the summer that everything changed.”
The main characters are roughly three times better looking than the secondary characters, and five time better dressed.
One of the characters under the age of 50 has a terminal disease. (You’re definitely watching a chick flick if the person with the terminal disease is a rashingly beautiful twenty-something.)
War, natural disasters, financial crises, etc. all take a back seat the really important question: Will The Two Attractive Leads Get Together?
The movie’s not a comedy, but there’s a scene involving Thanksgiving.
A couple breaks up saying “Let’s just be friends.” And it works.
All the women are feisty and adorable, all the men are untrustworthy good-for-nothings, and all the children are wise beyond their years.
(Incidentally, there’s nothing wrong with romantic comedies…try Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday. It’s just that Hollywood hasn’t been able to reliably make good romantic comedies since, oh, 1945 or so.)
No, whoever watered down and corrupted the genre should be shot. Try It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, Adam’s Rib, I’d even throw in Some Like It Hot. Maybe even The Sure Thing, which was a romantic comedy disguised as a teen sex comedy. You’d be amazed to discover that at one time good romantic comedies roamed the earth. However, they have gone the way of the coelacanth, not quite extinct, but pretty damn close.
To address the OP, if the preview gives away the entire plot of the film (i.e. Double Jeopardy, What Lies Beneath) it’s probably a chick flick. I was going to start my own thread on this, but this seems as good a place as any to inquire about this phenomenon. Robert Zemekis claims women like to know in advance what’s going to happen, so that’s why he allows major plot twists to be exposed in his trailers - Ladies? Any truth to this?
Plot. Chick flicks have plot and occasional character development. Characters have histories. People have conversations consisting of slightly more than one-liners tossed back and forth. Costumes, more than one female character and sensitive males are a bonus. The woman having a good time in the obligatory sex scene also increases the odds it’s a chick flick.
Dude, I have no idea what you missed or how you could have missed it.
>Let’s just think about the fact that Julia Roberts is in it. That alone should give you the hint that the movie has a 90% chance of being a ‘chick flick’ (refer to her profile in imdb.com)
>Now let’s look at that poster. Brad. Julia. Okay… not bad. Let’s see what they’re doing. She’s sitting down comfortably without any shoes on (sign of female strength and independance). You’ll note that even though it’s a dusty street, her feet are clean. An action movie would show signs of action or drama in the poster. So if her feet were dirty from running, her clothes were drenched in sweat or slightly torn, or there were some other faintly realistic presence of dirt, then you could assume activity, hence action or drama. None of that here.
Instead of drama, we see her sitting, and him kneeling. It’s a ‘cute’ pose. Not sexy. Just cute. Not like “True Romance” with our blonde fete fatal with a slightly lowered head and sultry stare. Nope. Julia’s head is slightly tuned up to meet the appreciative smile and eyes of Brad, who has come down to her level. The sign of romanticism. He’s bending for her. Note how close to each other they are. Signs of a couple about to kiss. Pretty obvious.
The body language suggested in the poster ALONE told me immmediately that this was a ‘chick flick’.
Maybe I read to much into it? Who knows, but I call them as I see them. And considering the transparency of the hollywood marketing machine, it’s kinda hard to be wrong.
The ultimate test, the persuasive ear tag, the positive ID for a Chick Flick is to scan across the audience about 15 minutes into the movie. If you see illuminated wrist watches flashing like fireflies on a warm summer night, it is a Chick Flick. The problem with this is by the time you realize what has happened you have already paid for two tickets and the lady is completely enthralled by the whole thing. It’s a little like walking into a “U” shaped ambush.
If a heated argument between a man and a woman is accompanied by said man and woman inching closer and closer together and finally (oh, how ironic) kissing, you are watching a chick flick. This is usually called “sexual tension,” but this is a misnomer. There’s no tension; if you can’t see the inevitable coupling happening, you’re basically an idiot.
Also required is that the man and woman, while in the throes of passion, will knock over lots of lamps and such while rolicking around.
None whatsoever. Nothing pisses me off more than having the plot spoiled in the trailer. I like romantic comedies a lot. The ones most of the people here don’t like. To each his/her own, of course. But I would never want the plot spoiled for me, even if I already know something obvious like the happy ending of a Julia Roberts movie.
How do you tell a chick flick? Beats me. I can spot one a mile away and so can my husband. When I asked him how he spots one, he said it’s usually the music (soft contemporary rock). He also admitted that another sign is that they talk more than they do things.
Darqangelle
I didn’t see the ads or posters. I try to avoid the advertisement and preview/reviews. I like to be surprised at movies. but not kicked in the weebles!
The idea of this thread is how to tell a chicflick before you pay to see it. what about the word count per minute of film? thats not a good idea? set up a site and charge $1 a look. then somebodys got to go see the films and count the words.
so you look at the site before she talks you into some chicflick and out of a real seqal movie.
