Summer movie madness: where have all the women gone?
I’m a big believer in following The Rule: I usually don’t see a movie unless it meets three basic requirements:
- It has to have at least 2 women in it…
- who talk to each other…
- about something other than a man.
Which, considering the crap that Hollywood has been churning out these past few years, has been a difficult task indeed. I like movies with real 3D characters that face difficult life challenges and do it on their own - regardless of whether they succeed or not. I don’t like movies that skirt around important issues to improve their comedic value. While it is difficult to find movies to watch that have two women in it talking to each other about something other than men, it is a good starting point to begin any movie search.
I’m not the only one who has noticed movies have taken a pathetic downturn, especially in the female leads department. Almost none of the major movies slated for release this summer meet all of requirements of The Rule, let alone one or two:
The girls of summer are few in number, and real women are close to extinct. The teenage Emma Roberts plays a Malibu brat shipped off to boarding school in “Wild Child,” and little Abigail Breslin has gone blond for “Kit Kittredge,” the first big-screen spinoff from American Girl dolls. Meryl Streep stars in the adaptation of the jukebox musical “Mamma Mia!,” and the cast from “Sex and the City” hits the big screen, though as that HBO show’s fans know, its four bosomy buddies are really gay men in drag. Angelina Jolie flaunts big guns in “Wanted” amid a so-called fraternity of assassins. Cameron Diaz stars opposite Ashton Kutcher in the comedy “What Happens in Vegas,” in a role that shrieks Brittany Murphy five years ago.
And in August, Anna Faris stars in a comedy called “The House Bunny,” in which she plays a Playboy Bunny who is ejected from the Mansion because she’s too old. In a trailer for the movie Ms. Faris’s pretty-in-pink character responds to her firing with surprise. “I’m 27!” she yelps. “But that’s like 59 in Bunny years,” a male friend explains. In Hollywood years too, he might as well have added.
But the most gut wrenchingly true part of Dargis’s article is the following:
Last year only 3 of the 20 highest-grossing releases in America were female-driven, and involve a princess (“Enchanted”) or pregnancy (“Knocked Up” and “Juno”). Actresses had starring roles in about a quarter of the next 80 highest-grossing titles, mostly in dopey romantic comedies and dopier thrillers. A number of these were among the worst-reviewed movies of the year, including “Premonition” (Sandra Bullock) and “The Reaping” (Hilary Swank), the last of which was released by — ta-da! — Warner Brothers. The days of “Million Dollar Baby,” for which Ms. Swank won an Oscar, and “Speed,” which rocketed Ms. Bullock to stardom in the summer of 1994, feel long gone.
The last movie I saw in theaters was “Juno,” and before that, “Horton Hears A Who!” Prior to those two films, it had been over a year since I shelled out the $9.75 for a movie ticket, and I haven’t once been upset about my decision to abstain from theater going. If there were a movie worth seeing (that was available to me), I would have gone to see it. Granted, there were several films I wanted to see, but didn’t get a chance to, particularly 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days and Miss Pettigrew Lives for A Day (which doesn’t appear to hold up to The Rule, but it just might upon closer examination).
Regardless, it looks like it is going to be a slow movie summer for me.
