To guys, it's more terrifying than any horror movie. It's more sickening than any Farrelly Brothers production. It's more dreadful than a week of Iranian cinema in your English 201 class.
It's the Chick Flick.
When a girlfriend suggests a night of "50 First Dates" followed up by a round of "Crossroads," the man can only groan in compliance as his manhood shrivels with shameful contempt for its owner.
Sandler will play the same asinine character and Barrymore's incomprehensibly bad acting sure doesn't sweeten the deal. All this in a plot as ludicrous as Bunny Lebowski's "Log Jammin'."
There's no avoiding the Chick Flick. To decline a night of romantic movies is relationship suicide.
Next to the nuclear bomb and air pollution, the chick flick is among the worst things mankind has brought into this world. No other film genre can produce dreadful movies as consistently as the Chick Flick.
It is synonymous with the romantic comedy, and has recently brought us classics like "Gigli," "The Wedding Planner," and "Maid in Manhattan," along with a heap of other Meg Ryan and Julie Roberts movies with ridiculously sappy plots that will make any sane man shake his head in disgust.
Other chick flicks that take themselves more seriously include "Captain Corelli's Mandolin," "A Walk to Remember," and "Message in a Bottle," which have all crashed and burned because of their overly melodramatic plots, and phony glamorization of love.
Yet, every other week, another movie starring Hugh Grant or Sandra Bullock comes to theatres with the same rehashed rubbish, only with new character names and a slightly different plot.
It's uncanny how some moviegoers can tolerate the stench of cheese emanating from the screenwriting and storytelling. For instance, Nicolas Cage, playing an angel in "City of Angels," wonders why humans cry.
"Maybe... maybe emotion becomes so intense your body just can't contain it. Your mind and your feelings become too powerful... and your body weeps," he says.
How can they even stomach it?
On a personal level, I'd rather spend an evening with a bottle of hand lotion and box of tissues than with Miss America on the couch and "The Notebook" in the VCR.
Don't get me wrong, I think men have equally bad taste in movies. Regrettably, it is us men who are responsible for "Lethal Weapon 4" and Sylvester Stallone's entire career.
God forgive us.
As a matter of fact, I have nothing against romances or romantic comedies. When it's done right, the romance can be a beautiful thing.
"Punch-Drunk Love" and "Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind" are romantic comedies that hurdle over conventionality, with unusual and poignant stories that have the ability to touch even the most impervious heart.
"Garden State" and "Rushmore" avoid being merely another teen romance flick by infusing interesting characters and irregular plots. They stand alone in a cesspool of rotten teen movies that depend more on whether or not Freddie Prinze Jr. and Mandy Moore are the stars.
"Lost in Translation" and "Before Sunset," are romances that have reality-based dialogue, which differ from mainstream romances that sound like they've been written by a failed novelist who sold out to Hollywood to make a quick buck.
Other classics like "The English Patient," "Casablanca," and the granddaddy of all romantic comedies, "Annie Hall," have won over both male and female audiences because they are doused with originality, filled to the brim with substance, and marvelously reflect the human condition and the effect that love has on us.
But these films are all rare exceptions in a genre that will continually produce sub-quality films. In targeting one gender or by making a "date movie," moviemakers degrade what could be beautiful pieces of artwork in favor of more marketable films and bigger paychecks.
Film, as an artistic medium, has the capacity to move people in ways that other mediums cannot. The raw emotion from actors and actresses with stories that reflect our own lives and experiences have the ability to open up a world of thought, and can produce an explosion of emotion for moviegoers. Instead, we get the chick flick, an assembly-line-crafted, money-making mechanism that has as much creativity and variance as a Model T.
As Dirk Diggler, in "Boogie Nights" says, "These films we make can be better. They can help. They really can, I mean it. We can always do better."
He may have been talking about the porno, but in regards to the Chick Flick, I couldn't agree more.
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
