# Movies in the IMDB with the highest disparity between male and female ratings. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 28, 2007, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025 "2007-02-28T15:27:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Zoomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/bbce88/32.png) [@Zoomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoomer)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/1 "2007-02-28T15:27:07Z")
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”? ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/2 "2007-02-28T15:29:31Z")
[QUOTE=Zoomer] As an aside, what would be the male equivalent of the term “Chick Flick”? [/QUOTE] “Oh, that’s such a _guy movie_.” ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/3 "2007-02-28T15:31:47Z")
[QUOTE=Zoomer] As an aside, what would be the male equivalent of the term “Chick Flick”? [/QUOTE] 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. ---
**Author:** ![h.sapiens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e0b2c6/32.png) [@h.sapiens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/h.sapiens)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/4 "2007-02-28T15:33:27Z")
[QUOTE=Hampshire] 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. [/QUOTE] For the record, I’m a woman, and I hate all three of those, too. ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/5 "2007-02-28T15:55:15Z")
[Beaches](http://imdb.com/title/tt0094715/) would get my guess. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/6 "2007-02-28T16:08:32Z")
I picked [The Simple Life](http://imdb.com/title/tt0362153/ratings) 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. ---
**Author:** ![Zoomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/bbce88/32.png) [@Zoomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoomer)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/7 "2007-02-28T16:35:01Z")
Largest values I have found so far … [Stomp the Yard](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0775539/) Males - 1.7 Females - 3.2 Difference - 1.5 [Raging Bull](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081398/) Males - 8.4 Females - 7.4 Difference 1.0 [QUOTE=Giles] 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. [/QUOTE] 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 ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/8 "2007-02-28T17:51:34Z")
“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**](http://jabootu.net/?p=616): > [@](#): > > Like Pretty Woman, it’s a Chick Flick. Now, when I say that, I don’t just mean a romance or something similarly non-macho. I personally like all kinds of movies, including romances, if they’re done well. Now, when I say Chick Flicks, I mean something deeper. Movies designed to appeal to all that is alien to men in the female mind. That serve to reconfirm to men that women are completely insane, utterly different and, ultimately, wholly unknowable. Sort of the gender opposite of the Three Stooges. 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? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/9 "2007-02-28T18:03:56Z")
[QUOTE=Giles] I picked [The Simple Life](http://imdb.com/title/tt0362153/ratings) 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. [/QUOTE] 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. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/10 "2007-02-28T18:04:16Z")
[QUOTE=Max Torque] 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? [/QUOTE] 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. ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/11 "2007-02-28T18:15:45Z")
[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink] 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. [/QUOTE] 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. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/12 "2007-02-28T19:12:16Z")
How many votes must a movie have received for the IMDb comparison to be valid? [**August Underground’s Mordum**](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0410332/) 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. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/13 "2007-02-28T20:20:12Z")
[QUOTE=Operation Ripper] [Beaches](http://imdb.com/title/tt0094715/) would get my guess. [/QUOTE] [This one’s](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157784/ratings) a bit more dramatic (though the sample size pretty much invalidates it). ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/14 "2007-02-28T20:31:24Z")
[In the Company of Men](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119361/ratings) has an expected disparity. The absolute lack of disparity in [“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”](http://imdb.com/title/tt0472954/ratings) shocks me. ---
**Author:** ![Gordon\_Urquhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@Gordon\_Urquhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gordon_Urquhart)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/15 "2007-02-28T20:47:44Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Zoomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/bbce88/32.png) [@Zoomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoomer)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/16 "2007-02-28T21:15:25Z")
[QUOTE=Max Torque] How many votes must a movie have received for the IMDb comparison to be valid? [/QUOTE] 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). ---
**Author:** ![mrklutz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ebca7d/32.png) [@mrklutz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrklutz)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/17 "2007-02-28T22:13:19Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/47e85d/32.png) [@Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Lance_Murdoch)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/18 "2007-02-28T22:19:47Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chockfullofheadygoodness/32/511_2.png) [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/19 "2007-03-01T01:09:46Z")
Here’s a surprise. The widely condemned and reviled [I Spit On Your Grave](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077713/ratings), 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**. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025/20 "2007-03-01T02:05:47Z")
Here’s another surprise: women like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! more than men, 6.3-6.8. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-in-the-imdb-with-the-highest-disparity-between-male-and-female-ratings/394025.md?page=2)