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(Honest Title) Why Men Don’t Like Chick Flicks

(Honest Title) Why Men Don’t Like Chick Flicks (For those
politically minded) Why Men Don’t Like Female Centric Films (For
those with a penchant for subtlety) Why Men Don’t like Baby Bird
Films A Case Study : ‘Notting Hill’ — Martin C. Winer –

1) Plot inconsistencies. The plot in all female centric movies
seems to center around prolonging a certain romantic
uncertainty. This is usually done at the expense of logic. There
are two good examples of this in Notting Hill: i) William (Hugh
Grant) goes out in the morning to find a frenzy of Paparazzi
outside his door. He knows this will upset his actress
girlfriend Anna (Julia Roberts) but only mentions “don’t ask”
when she asks him what’s going on outside. He lets her walk
outside and be confronted by the same Paparazzi. This, of
course, upsets Anna who wrongly accuses him of summoning the
Paparazzi and causes a ‘break up’. This, in turn, provides Hugh
Grant a grand opportunity to apologize (despite his innocence),
setting the female audience swooning and the male audience
hurling. ii) William goes on a movie set where Anna is being
filmed where she greets him warmly and intimates that she’d
consider getting back together. Unfortunately, she’s just in the
middle of a shoot so she walks off to film a scene and William
is provided with a headset to hear what is going on unbeknownst
to Anna. While casually preparing for the scene, a fellow actor
asks Anna: “Who was that rather difficult chap (referring to
Grant) you were talking to on the way up?” Anna replies: “Oh…
no one… no one. Just some… guy from the past. I don’t know
what he’s doing here. Bit of an awkward situation.” Grant reacts
negatively and leaves. When Grant asks her later as to why she
would say such a thing, she dismisses it as: “You expect me to
tell the truth about my life to the most indiscreet man in
England?” This is an example of terrible writing where the
writers dig themselves out of a whole by floating to the top in
syrup. Why didn’t she just answer the fellow actor with “He’s a
friend” and leave it at that? Why does Grant have to put up with
such behaviour and accept such lame excuses? Of course, in
tradition with all Grant films, he accepts the explanation and
leads up to: 2) The grand apology. It seems a new trend in the
effeminized America to have the leading male prancing around
apologizing. In every Grant movie there is a huge apology where
he apologizes to some horribly behaved woman to get her love.
Watching Grant wince his eyes and beg forgiveness having
committed no wrong, aside from his selection in screenplays, is
like fingernails on the chalkboard for the male audience. Ross
(from Friends) and Grant (in every movie) always apologize for
no apparent reason, and in fact, often apologize for not
apologizing. Perhaps the only real apology in such films should
be an on screen cameo by the screenplay writers apologizing for
overly syrupy content. Looking at the movie script:
http://www.juliaroberts.de/script2.htm, Men apologize some 23
times compared to 8 times for their female counterparts. The
male lead Grant apologizes some 12 times, compared to Julia
Roberts apologizing a mere 3 times. Somewhere around the 10th
apology, women in the audience are becoming enraptured while
their male counterparts are wondering when the next episode in
the Star Wars saga will premier so they can watch a movie where
men can proudly wield their light sabers and offer no apology in
so doing.