Why I hate Chick Flicks.
Nothing makes a guy want to bash his brains out with the nearest blunt instrument than hearing from his loving princess-of-the-universe, who previous to this day had only his best interests at heart, these words - “Darling, shall we go catch that new Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movie, it’s so rooooooooo-mantic, you know!”Implicit in those disingenuous words are the thoughts, ” You fat in-bred mongoose, when was the last time you did anything romantic for me - sprinkle rose petals on my boudoir, serenade me in an oh-so-adorable-off-key rendition of ‘I will always love you’, rush through rush-hour traffic on your motorbike to stop me leaving the country/city/continent once you realised that our love was pre-destined and that you had to do anything to reunite our love.”I have always wondered if there was a conspiracy by an elite bunch of female hollywood screen-writers to make life for us average-joes, an eternal series of leaps through loops of circus-rings. “Jump, jump…jump now…there’s a good boy! there’s a good boy! Now go pamper her in every way imaginable and no, no no no…don’t ask for anything in return. You don’t love her if you do and she’ll think you think she’s got a fat bum.”
I wonder if it’s basically a self-fulfilling prophecy on their part - women want to be treated this way so they make some movies about getting swooped off their feet by some strapping scandinavian lad with more pecs and money than sense. Soon enough, every woman is walking around thinking, “Hey, waitjustanimit, my man should be treating me like that too! Heck, that should just be the baseline, gimme jewels, gimme romance, gimme gimme gimme, more more more.”
Yup, pretty soon hollywood became realised actual reality and we simple blokes were left running around in circles, vaguely buying her this or that to meet up to some imaginary movie standard of romance. I’m not saying that women should not be pampered, but that these chick-flicks have permanently damaged us blokes - leaving us impossible standards to maintain throughout our lives.
In these movies, you see a particular snapshot of their lives. Jeez, how much of their lives can be covered in 120 mins. What’s delightfully absent is well, uhmm….. the rest of life. So what’s the usual cliche` driven plot for these movies : guy meets girl, guy pisses girl off cos he’s rich/spoilt/arrogant/a cyborg from the future or girl pisses guy off cos she’s rich/spoilt/bitchy/slept with all of his best friends. 20 mins of why they both can’t stand each other neatly segues into some romantic interlude where they’re forced to work/sleep/live/save some historical landmark together and they discover that they’re falling for each other.
That normally takes about 30 mins or so. Now we move onto the bit where due to some carelessly thought out plot device where they realise that their attraction is wrong cos - they both made a bet at work to make someone fall in love with them/his ex-gf wants him back/she feels that he’s not commited enough/he wants to name the dog Krull and she FiFi.
That’s about 30 mins of crying, reflection, male lead’s buds helping him make a difficult decision which really isn’t a decision cos if he chose to go bonk his next-door neighbour , we wouldn’t have a full movie so we’re back to where we started - in what is only a surprise to a nihilistic pessimist from mars - the two leads live happily after.
And now leaving the theatre, I can feel the eyes of my girl boring into the back of my skull as I nonchalantly suggest that we grab a bite to eat somewhere. I can hear her thinking, “It better be a posh place, there better be violins and hell, there better be a menu with unpronounceable names.”
So in the spirit of satire, let me suggest some good sequels to these movies which have done more irreversible damage to males than when the Chinese Emperor decided he wanted a court of eunuchs.
- You’ve got Mail 2 : Email from Debra. Debra, Ryan’s and Hank’s daughter in college emails them asking for more money and that she’s pregnant. Don’t worry about anything folks, cos the father Rico, an illiterate dung-trader from Guatemala, has promised to marry her and raise the child up back in his shanty-town.
- Sleepless in Seattle 2 : Tom Hanks is sleepless in seattle cos Meg Ryan is bonking russell crowe in miami. Need I say more.
- Titanic 2: Back from the Deep. DiCaprio ain’t really dead, he was just hibernating in the cold waters. Perfectly preserved, he’s found when they raise the Titanic from the sea-bed and convert it into a massive space-going vessel. Prettyboy Leo suffers from permanent brain damage due to ice crystallisation in his blood and wanders the decks stark raving mad. Meets and falls in love with circus midget on board. One-palm-on-car-window scene later, finds out she’s already betrothed to the bearded lady. Gets shot in the face and dies horribly. Never did like that Dicaprio fella. Hey , but everybody else lives happily ever after.
Allright, now of course, we guys have our own genre of idealised romance. Where the women are gorgeous, men are strapping behemoths and there’s an occassional german shephard somewhere. Thank god for porn.