My wife and I had a discussion last night about the term “Chick Flicks” and what exactly that means. The conversation made me wonder … which movie in the IMDB has the highest disparity between male and female voting?
I would imagine it may be either a musical which the females love and the males hate or a western/adventure which is the other way around but, I could be completely wrong about that.
As an aside, what would be the male equivalent of the term “Chick Flick”?
“Oh, that’s such a guy movie.”
Movies for guys that like movies.
I don’t know a whole lot of dudes who are as enthralled with Pretty Woman, Grease, or Dirty Dancing as the ladies seem to be. I hate all three of those movies.
For the record, I’m a woman, and I hate all three of those, too.
Beaches would get my guess.
I picked The Simple Life as a show obviously aimed at men rather than women – but in the IMDB the women rate it 3 points higher than men do. This is exactly the opposite of what I expected, and it looks like most men don’t, in fact, go for Ms Hilton.
Largest values I have found so far …
Stomp the Yard
Males - 1.7
Females - 3.2
Difference - 1.5
Raging Bull
Males - 8.4
Females - 7.4
Difference 1.0
I am finding the same thing. Movies that I think are “Guy Movies”, really aren’t. Maybe that’s why there is only a term for “Chick Flicks”. Because there are a lot of movies that women like but men … not so much, but there are seemingly few movies that men like but women don’t.
Just a thought … I could be wrong
“Chick Flicks” are more than just romance movies. They’re…well, Ken Begg, the writer for Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension, puts it this way in his review of a chick flick called The Promise:
Now, me, I love horror movies. My wife hates them, because of all the death. She’s rather dismissive when I point out that all her favorite movies are about people dying, too, but they just take longer to do it.
So, which is more sick: liking movies about a lot of people dying quickly, or liking movies about one person dying very slowly?
No, we don’t. I think Ms. Hilton and her ilk appeal to the gossip gene that is more prevalent in women than in men.
If I stumble across nekkid pictures of her on the internet, I’ll look at them, but I won’t read the tabloids to find out about her latest shenanigans. And my impression of The Simple Life (which I’ve never seen) is that it’s much closer to the latter than the former in its appeal.
Her movies are more likely about the feelings and emotions of people dying, people watching loved ones die, and people coping after loved ones have died. Death is the ultimate MacGuffin in Chick Flicks.
That’s how I feel. Once a boy gets past the “gawk at anything in a skirt” stage, a show like the Simple Life would drive him crazy. It’s all the stuff we hate about women, and none of the stuff we like.
It’s not a porn movie with Paris Hilton.
(ftr, I don’t mean that to sound sexist. I would hope that women would agree with me that that show portrays the most negative stereotypes of women. . .trampy, bubble-headed, lazy, concerned with appearance, etc.)
“Once Upon a Time in the West” has males at 8.8 and Females at 7.2. A 1.6 difference.
How many votes must a movie have received for the IMDb comparison to be valid?
August Underground’s Mordum has received 252 votes. Males rated it 3.8, women 1.6, for a difference of 2.2. Being that it’s a plotless “simulated snuff” movie that follows serial killers around while practicing their craft in extremely prolonged and graphic detail, I can’t say I’m surprised.
This one’s a bit more dramatic (though the sample size pretty much invalidates it).
In the Company of Men has an expected disparity. The absolute lack of disparity in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” shocks me.
I picked the Rambo franchise (which sounds like it’s not quite over, BTW) as an examples of guy movies; interestingly, First Blood (the touchy-feeliest entry in the franchise) has a difference of .9, Rambo: First Blood Part II has a difference of .7, and *Rambo III * has a difference of .6 – as the films became more cartoonish, the M/F approval rating differences become less marked.
Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day have differences of .3 and .4, respectively (interesting that the difference is bigger for the second movie, in which Sara Connor is a much stronger character. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which has no gun-toting Sarah Connor but does have a Terminatrix, has a difference of .2.
Good Question. I wish I had a really good answer. It seems to me that the movie should have a decent number of overall votes in order to be statistically valid (or even to be statistically interesting). I would suggest 100 votes but I am open to suggestions as to what that threshold should be.
The same logic should apply to the number of female and/or male voters as well. A minimum number of 10 seems about right to me (Again, I am open to suggestions).
I think the biggest problem of this sort of comparison is we’re looking at differences in ratings between groups of people who have actually seen the movies in question. A lot of people are going to see the preview or read a summary and think, “That’s not my kind of movie.” Thus, no rating. To get an accurate picture, you’d need to randomly sample an equal number of men and women and make them sit down and watch the movies you want to examine, then rate them.
Not only that, but they cared enough about the film to go onto IMDB and rate it. Making the results even less of a reflection of society-at-large.
I see that girls under 18 gave The Decalogue an average score of 10. Based on two ratings.
Here’s a surprise. The widely condemned and reviled I Spit On Your Grave, infamous for its lengthy rape scene, is more popular with women than men. Men give it a 5.0, women a 6.9 for a disparity of 1.9.
Here’s another surprise: women like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! more than men, 6.3-6.8.