Oh. My apologies. I didn’t realize I’d left that hanging.
Here you go:
Reese Witherspoon’s character has, for at least seven years, been (secretly) married to a man she hates. She seriously dates a man for eight months, and is completely unprepared when he pops the question. So she has to get divorced toot sweet. She travels to Alabama (which she hasn’t done in seven years) and has numerous fights with her husband, her parents, her ex-friends. Then, she wakes up one morning to find the signed divorce papers on her pillow – her husband has finally agreed to the divorce. Any right-thinking person would, at that point, blow out of town at roughly the speed of light and catch the next flight to New York. Not Reese. She hangs around to apologize to her husband and to attend the annual town festival. At which, of course, she begins to develop feelings again for her (ex) husband. Not in character, if you ask me. If she’d been presented all along as still in love with her husband, and was trying to keep her new suitor at arm’s length, I could understand. But we’re led to believe she truly hates her husband. I just don’t see the rationale for such a radical 180 on her feelings for him. Plus she was a huge spoiled bitch throughout the movie, and certainly didn’t deserve the fiance, who was the only classy person in the film.
I’ve heard this more than once from female friends …
You’ve got the Man Show … there ought to be a Woman Show.
Well, you do have more than just “The Woman Show.” You’ve got Oxygen, WE, E!, Hallmark, HGTV, The Food Network, Fashion TV, and the holy trinity of women in peril … Lifetime, Lifetime Movies and Lifetime Real Women.
Torturing someone with curiosity is very unfair! Hint, please? In spoiler tags?
About the topic at hand, I like the stupid romantic comedy from time to time. Sometimes I want something light, fluffy, happy, and meaningless to watch, a niche which romantic comedies fill nicely.
I can’t stand Julia Roberts, though - there’s just something about her that irritates me a great deal.
I like to pull back on my cheeks and stretch my mouth out the whole width of my face and do impressions of her.
I think I saw part of Ms. Congeniality once. And I know I’ve seen my mom & sister watching Runaway Bride at least a dozen times. How can you watch that crap once, much less multiple times in the span of two or three weeks??? The mind boggles…
I can’t read a thread about chick flicks without chiming in.
I had to point out to my mother last night during Runaway Bride about how every character Julia Roberts plays is the same woman in different circumstances- a bit self-righteous, a little spastic, a lot of giggling, and every man in town is in love with her.
Is it that they cast her for the same role time after time, or does she just transform every character into the same sorry girl?
Sometimes I’ll watch a chick flick with the friends who love them, just to be able to make fun of it later… hey, it’s why I saw Left Behind!
I think if you distill it down, there are a few basic storylines that define the genre. Off the top of my head, the three I immediately recognize are:
The romantic comedy - as noted above, it typically involves girl with good, but boring SO, who meets “dangerous” guy; opposites attract; girl picks guy with whom she feels “passion,” dumps stiff. (eg. Sweet Home Alabama)
The tragedy - girl spends two hours of screen time dying, reconciling differences with friends and family (eg. Beaches)
The romantic drama - girl breaks free of oppressive circumstances, fights for right to be with “misunderstood” guy (eg. Titanic)
There are probably a couple others (did I miss any biggies?), but those are, for me, the defining plotlines. All predictable, all yecchy. Luckily for me, featherlou prefers a good sci-fi movie to a weep-fest, so we avoid most of these things.
Instead of the quiet, obedient girl that the guy thinks he has found, she turns out to have a horrible past which includes abuse and murder. In the end she attempts to torture her lover by shoving needles under his eyes and cutting off one of his feet. This is shown in graphic detail and will have almost everyone running from the room.
Great question! You may have meant it rhetorically, but here’s my take anyway. It seems like a chick movie, especially because they get together in the very end after they are apart and miserable and you really want them to get together (a mainstay of the chick flick), and because he picks a plainer woman presumably because of her character. And it has Bonnie Hunt and Cuba Gooding and his sweet family. But, it’s not quite believable that Jerry really loves Dorothy, even at the end. She falls for him but you feel a little sorry for her, because he just needs her to have someone around. I still don’t believe he has changed. It is too realistic and full of human imperfection, which keeps it from being a completely romantic comedy a la Pretty Woman.
A more interesting movie, of course, but not truly chick, IMHO.
No, actually I did not mean it rhetorically. It’s got all the elements of a chick flick (most of which you listed), but it’s also got great football footage and a bunch of other stuff that prevents it form being an all-out chick flick.
However, I also don’t think it’s a real guy’s movie. It probably needs more gratuitous nudity to fit in THAT category.
I don’t classify Jerry Maguire as a chick flick because it rises above the narrow scope of that genre and tries to be something more. It has stuff in it for everyone. And I’m man enough to admit I get all misty near the end when Rod regains consciousness.
