(Honest Title) Why Men Dont Like Chick Flicks
(For those politically minded) Why Men Do not Like
Female Centric Films
(For those with a penchant for subtlety) Why Men Dont
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 dazzling 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 do not ask when she asks him whats going
on outside. He lets her walk outside and be confronted by the identical
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 sizeably effective opportunity to apologize (in spite of 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 shed ponder getting back together.
Unfortunately, shes 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 do not know what hes 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 didnt she just answer the fellow actor with Hes 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 sizeably workable 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 understandible reason, and in fact, fairly 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 program: 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 may proudly wield their light sabers and offer no apology in
so doing.