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So, confession: as much as I may hate to admit it, I love girly movies. Normally, I would never (and I mean, NEVER) admit this, let alone to thousands of people. I’ll talk about the predictability — how the plot for every single chick flick is EXACTLY. THE. SAME. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl get in big fight and their relationship is ruined. Boy and girl realize they’re meant for each other and make up. Then, it goes one of two ways: boy and girl live happily ever after, or one of the two dies and there’s lots of crying. The end.
That is the plot of every single chick flick in existence. And I know that. And while I somewhat hate myself for it, I can’t help it — I love getting my best girlfriend and going to see the girliest movie out at the theatre. Considering she’s a military girlfriend as well, when we’ve got time with both of them gone we’ll have girly night with junk food, pizza and the cheesiest chick flicks we can find. What can I say? We have fun.
So, of course, when I saw the trailer for Bride Wars, I thought it was a must-see. Would it be completely and totally ridiculous? Oh, definitely. But it would be a great chick flick to see with my girls. Here’s the trailer if you’re not familiar:
So last weekend, I stopped by the gas station to get some Smart Water and some Mike & Ikes, and headed to the movie theatre to get my newest fix of saccharine-y goodness.
On the one hand, Bride Wars was everything I was hoping for — and was expecting. It was silly and goofy, and we were laughing through most of it. Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway were drop-dead gorgeous through most of the movie, even with blue hair and orange skin.
But by the end of the movie, it really stopped being funny, and started being very, very sad. A little bit of this kind of ridiculousness is OK, but after a while it starts to wear on you. The narcissism, the selfishness, and the jealousy the two friends exhibited was pathetic. Liv (played by Kate Hudson) is a high-powered attorney whose parents died, presumably sometime during her childhood. She is impatient, egotistical, and self-centered. Emma (played by Anne Hathaway) is a teacher who lives with her similarly low-key boyfriend. She is nurturing, maternal, and an endless people-pleaser. Both have dreamed of getting married in June at the Plaza Hotel, but disaster strikes when both of their weddings are booked on the same day. So, the two of them start fighting back and forth when neither of them are willing to move their wedding elsewhere or change the date.
What really struck me is how this movie was only about Liv and Emma. Neither of them seemed to care in the least about their fiancees, and neither of them was looking past their wedding day. See, in this movie, it was all about the superficial. It was as if Sex and the City had been canned and given to these girls, for in this movie as in the TV series, men were only an accessory, there to be waiting dutifully at the end of the aisle as a blank-faced groom. The engagements came on the girls’ terms, and the weddings were as well. Liv and Emma seemed more excited about being each other’s maids of honor than they did about getting married to the men they supposedly loved. In this movie, guys were clueless and girls reigned supreme. Superficiality and materialism came before anything of any substance. And I couldn’t help but wonder if this is what the world would be like if feminists got their way. A world ruled by women… is this what it would look like if men became completely feminized and let their women run all over them? Scary thought.
spike says: sorry, cassy, yer on yer own with the chick flicks…here’s a ten spot for a small root beer and popcorn; i’ll be hanging out in the food court
OK, Cassy, you have an addiction… we can help you with that but first you have to help yourself.
Just put down that copy of “While You Were Sleeping” and hand over the remote.
What really struck me is how this movie was only about Liv and Emma.
Uh…wait, what? You mean to say this is a rarity within chick flicks? Because if it is, the few that I’ve seen must have been a skewed sampling.
There is this movie about a ditzy girl with a dog-in-a-purse called “Legally Blonde.” There is a character in that movie called “Emmett.” Emmett, I’ve found, is a supreme model caricature, around which nearly all men-in-chick-flicks are built. The ones that came after Emmett, are crudely photocopied from Emmett; the ones that came before Emmett, were simply building up a huge tidal-wave of Emmett-ism, of which Emmett is a cresting.
He’s played by Luke Wilson, who is the only actor on the face of the planet capable of using his eyebrows as nine-foot-wide bookshelves (other than a handful of actors and actresses who appear on “Smallville”). He has no interests in life other than the well-being of whats-her-face. He has no ambition, other than her happiness, even though he’s supposed to be some kind of mega-successful mega-knowledgeable lawyer. He makes no decisions without checking with her. He has no opinions about anything that aren’t either directly dependent upon, or directly conducive to the well-being of, her. In short, as a “character,” he fails because he has none. One gathers the distinct impression that if she came at her dear Emmett with the time-honored womens’ question of “which color dress do you like best” he’d just stand there and stammer, twitching his nine-foot eyebrows, waiting to be interrupted.
I do not cite this mind-numbing snoozefest as a movie to start some kind of list. Believe me, if I did so, I would never have time to fill it out properly. I cite Emmett, because I choose to cite the archetype. Emmett is it. A close second after Emmett is that roly-poly guy in “Fried Green Tomatoes” who had not a single peep of protest to utter when his wife started knocking down walls in the house. After those two, come all the rest.
In the world of chick flicks, men do not have opinions, unless they’re there to be cuckolded like Billy Zane’s character in Titanic. Or, I suppose, there’s always that long-haired guy ripped straight off the cover of a Harlequin Romance Novel, who can ride horses, deliver babies, beat up bad guys, and save a kitty-cat from a tree all at the same time. Sometimes even the no-flaws can-do-anything Adonis isn’t very opinionated; sometimes even he just stands around waiting for her to tell him what to do. Sure, he’ll lunge across the room to throw his body between her and the gun that was just fired at her, to catch the bullet. Or mail her a letter every single day for a year, or build a house for her. Something about her, her, her. Other than that, he takes no initiative about anything whatsoever.
Chick flicks are called chick flicks not so much because the audience is anticipated to possess a certain gender, but a certain mindset. The level of empathy that exists between those who produce the film, and the audience, is so sky-high that there is a thick volume of unspoken but agreed-upon protocol that is in full effect, before a single page of the script is started. And within this unspoken protocol, the male character is already fully developed to the degree desired by the intended audience. That is to say, almost not at all. They DON’T CARE. The Dudley Doo-Right who marries her at the end, and the Snidely Whiplash who tries to marry her right before the end, are both purely “stock” characters. Like the strange-looking guy with the red shirt “beaming down with the landing party” on the old Star Trek…the one that makes you go “Uh Oh!” out loud the first time you see him. Therefore — yes. Of course. Chick flicks ar all about the one-at-the-least, four-at-the-most central female characters around whom the chick flick revolves.
I have to assume you are far more seasoned in watching this genre than I am. So are you saying your experience has been different? Really? How many exceptions to this can you name? I’d really be surprised if you couldn’t count ’em on one hand.
I swear to god, if I ever get engaged and my bride-to-be even HINTS at behavior like this, the wedding is soooooo off.
Unless she’s MASSIVELY hot. Then I’ll just cope…
What? WHAT?? Don’t you judge me…
Scott’s right. If she’s hot.. well, we’ll be over here. Call us when your ready for us. (We automatically think she’s hot. We are, after all, marrying her…)
There is a very good reason for the tradition of the bride and groom not seeing each other on the day of the wedding. It’s so the groom won’t freak out at seeing the bride freak out at all the stuff brides typically freak out about on there wedding day. Cat fights between brides and bridesmaids included. Hairdresser that are late, makeup bags left at home… zits. Like I said, we’ll be over hear. Somebody will get us when the music starts. We aren’t going anywhere, we remember there are eat’s afterwards… Besides, that why it “your” big day.
(By the way, my daughter and her boyfriend have now bought furniture together. No ring…, but they now have themselves a couch and dinningroom set. Mom pleased? Uh, Not too much.)
Tomare Utsu Zo says: From the sound of it, the best ending to your Bride Wars is for the two grooms to get a clue and say, ‘Thanx but no thanx psyco!”
Stephen J. says: “A world ruled by women… is this what it would look like if men became completely feminized and let their women run all over them?”
Maybe if most women in real life were as ditzy and shallow as these characters, but the vast majority of women I know really are too sensible and kind to act this way.
Female Hollywood protagonists don’t reflect the majority of real women any more than male Hollywood protagonists reflect the majority of real men; they’re meant to reflect our fantasies. For men, the fantasy is what it would be like to actually be that cool and heroic in real life, or to rise to that degree of coolness, since most of us are doing our best to muddle and fake our way through life and almost never kick ass (both lit and fig) the way we would like to. For women, the fantasy is what it would be like to be as influential, confident, charismatic and important to everyone else as women are told they have to be to be truly “feminine”. Emma and Liv are able to put themselves front and centre the way women are frequently told they mustn’t; they are the most important people in that movie to themselves, so they’re meant to be the most important people to the audience as well.
And after all, if one or the other of these characters was wise enough not to make a fuss, there would be no movie. And chick flicks are hardly the only comedies whose plots turn on a central character being absurdly, unrealistically stubborn about some goal or drive or other in a way that disrupts everything else around them.
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