Films we love/hate:  Waiting for Hollywood to catch up to the 21st century
posted 8-12-2008 - 7:18 am

 
Last Friday, USA Today reporter Susan Wloszczyna went looking for influential women in the film business to get their take on what the future holds for women in Hollywood. Too bad some of them still have no idea about what real women want to see at the movies. Perhaps they've spent too much time with male colleagues who make juvenile films for other overgrown teenagers to realize that a female equivalent of The Pineapple Express isn't what we're looking for. And like Freud, maybe they should just ask us instead of making silly assumptions and even sillier films.

Movie producer Nancy Juvonen has made 10 films to date with partner Drew Barrymore. Juvonen is right when she says women are picky about which films they see and "want a guarantee for their time," i.e., to walk out satisfied and smiling afterwards. Women don't automatically rush out to see every new 'chick' flick – they want to know a film is worth the effort to see it at the theater. It doesn't necessarily hurt for a film to be more realistic, either. But Juvonen is dead wrong when she asserts that "Knocked Up and The Break-Up are more appealing than 'One day my prince will come.'" Bad choices there: they make a fairy tale, even a grim one, sound good.

Knocked Up and The Break-Up were not that appealing to anyone with a brain, male or female. I'm a woman, and I hated both films. They STANK. And I haven't thought much of most of the films Juvonen's turned out with partner Drew Barrymore, either.

Bluntly, Knocked Up was incredibly stupid and unrealistic: we've had reliable birth control for 35 years now, this babe has a decent-paying TV job at a time when hundreds of mid-career journalists are being let go, there's a public health epidemic of sexually-transmitted diseases that she can be exposed to (including AIDS/HIV), and she's idiot enough not to use a condom and gets pregnant – thereby not only possibly jeopardizing her early career in a shrinking market but also permanently changing the course of her life??? Oh, give me a break! Nobody I know in journalism, not even in small-town TV, is that stupid. Suddenly, there's a rash of 'accidental' film pregnancies when there's no good reason for the overwhelming majority of American women to have those accidents anymore. Teenagers, maybe; but adult women? Sorry: so last century.

The Break-Up was unremarkable and irritating; I didn't care for either Vince Vaughn's or Jennifer Anniston's characters – both were annoying and whiny. I can think of better ways to spend my time. I couldn't even stomach it for free on cable.

On the other hand, 300 was a rush in part because there was real heroism and principle informing the plot, and the relationship between the Spartan king and queen was part of that. Those ancient Greeks knew their drama, and much of it survives even when Hollywood needlessly reworks it.

This year isn't shaping up so well for women's roles, but there are a few promising films to come. I always loved Murphy Brown on TV and appreciated Clare Boothe Luce as a playwright, so it'll be interesting to see what Diane English accomplishes with The Women. The drama Frozen River looks like it'll grab you, as does the Civil Rights-era tale The Secret Life of Bees. Still, it appears that those films will be exceptions to the rule this fall. Where's this year's Shakespeare in Love or Mona Lisa Smile? Where's the female answer to The Matrix or Ronin?

Cable has The Closer and Saving Grace, but similar strong female leads are nowhere to be seen in current cinema. Hard science fiction has often given us fascinating heroines; if we can have strong, provocative women on a blockbuster cable show like Battlestar Galactica, why can't we find them at the theater? I don't need another useless remake of a witless TV program (read: Charlie's Angels), so don't bother to remake Dallas.

In current release, The House Bunny is just another bimbo flick with a fish-out-of-water premise; I have no doubt men will be willing to see it because the female lead is yet another dumb, nonthreatening blonde wearing inappropriately tight clothes who's falling out of them most of the time and to whom a makeover represents the highest achievement possible. Aw, c'mon, they couldn't make her as smart as Lauren Bacall or Joanne Woodward and as appealing as Tim Gunn? In other words, the friendly, accessible style maven with brains and taste? Besides, as a highly intelligent blonde, I'm really sick of the nitwit stereotype. At least Legally Blonde went against type, which is what helped make the film fun; in contrast, The House Bunny recycles not just the blonde myth but also that old canard about smart women being if not actually plain, then at least somehow inept at dealing with their looks, which makes Bunny pointlessly insulting to the vast majority of women (at least they missed that other blonde myth, the one that says if she's somehow pretty and smart after all, then she's got to be a bitch a la Sharon Stone, or at least Hitchcockian icy and untouchable if not actually frigid; think Kim Novak in Vertigo or, more recently, Nicole Kidman in The Golden Compass). Oh, please.

And as I absolutely hate ABBA songs, I won't be seeing Mamma Mia (also in current release), either, despite the fact that it has Meryl Streep in it (I hope she got paid tons of money and laughed all the way to the bank, because it won't do much for her resume). Give me a Jane Austen remake any day. Better still, think of something original.

As for writer Pam Brady, also quoted in the article, she's even more clueless than Juvonen and has been hanging out with those aging slackers on South Park way too long if she thinks we need more films "where women can be stupid and funny." I despise most of Will Ferrell's infantile roles (that goes for most of Adam Sandler's roles, too, nearly everything Rob Schneider has ever done, and Mike Myers's Austin Powers franchise: only a testosterone-poisoned, hallucinating male would think that little twerp would ever be sexy to real women, in this decade or any other). Why would anyone think I'd be happier with female versions of the same?

Hey, Brady: isn't the bimbo image one modern women have been trying to get rid of for at least half a century, maybe longer? What happened to making movies about women who are funny and smart?? Ones who can deliver a line and a thought behind it, like Lauren Bacall in just about anything? Where's the heroine who's as clever, tart and appealing as Emma Thompson's Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing? Beatrice has every bit as much man trouble as those gals on Sex and The City, but she gets much better lines and skips the inane, self-absorbed behavior (then again, she had a better writer). And let's face it: on her worst days, Emma Thompson is much funnier than any bimbo I ever met. Anything less than that kind of film is something I'm not going to spend time or money to watch.

You can take your anti-intellectual South Park and your House Bunny and anything else like them and stuff them where the sun doesn't shine. Give me a film with a female lead who's confident, witty, sexy, not neurotic, and can deliver snappy dialogue with panache, one who's brainy, merry and can stand up to a guy yet still charm him, a worthy successor to Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, Katharine Hepburn in Holiday, Myrna Loy in The Thin Man series, or Ingrid Bergman in Indiscreet. Point me toward that film, and I'll be there like a shot on opening night and buy the DVD.