Deconstructing Chick Flicks (Is a Bad Idea)

So tonight I watched The Decoy Bride. Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of it. In fact, feel good. I only watched it for David Tennant and that didn't even make it okay. Anyway.

Tonight I have confirmed with myself that watching any kind of chick flick while simultaneously having a bachelor's degree in English is a bad idea. I have been accused, on more than one occasion, of being unable to suspend my disbelief and just enjoy rom-coms for what they are -- light, easily digestible, and with a minimum of gastrointestinal distress afterwards.

"Oh God, Maid in Manhattan is coming back up!"

But you know what? I'm not even going to try to suspend my disbelief anymore. I have a problem with chick flicks and I am not ashamed of it. Not just because a misunderstanding always breaks the couple up and he has to go running after her to Italy or Neptune or whatever. Not because everyone is a cardboard cutout of what some coked-up Hollywood exec thinks is a character. Not even because of the simplistic "And everyone lived happily ever after" bullshit.

No. It's because love in chick flicks is the worst thing ever.

And not just because of Matthew McConaughey.

For some reason, chick flicks have this tendency to create the same situation over and over again. A guy is going to get married. His fiancee is beautiful but crazy and pushy and shrill. He meets a woman who is plainer (which in Hollywood means she's still gorgeous, just brunette) but with that indefinable something, and within a day he is deeply in love with her. Now he must choose between his word as a gentleman and twoo wuv. 90% of the time he decides to Do The Right Thing and go through with the wedding but his fiancee lets him off the hook. The other 10% of the time his fiance simultaneously falls in love with someone else, again relieving him of his duties.

"Well fine. I didn't want to marry you anyway."

I don't know why this is such a popular trope. In romance novels it's the straight-up "I banged lots of women but never loved any of them" trope. In TV sitcoms it's the "We're so in love until something breaks us up, but now we're back together" trope. So why is borderline infidelity so popular with the movies?

I don't know, but I don't like it. So now I am going to systematically break down why chick flicks should never, ever use this "choose between your fiancee and the exciting new romance" story line ever again.

5. He's Either Shallow or Has Bad Taste in Women

I'm just going to pick some chick-flicks that have the whole "he's with the wrong woman" theme. Men in serious relationships, either about to move in with their lady or straight up marry them. Let's check these ladies out:

Never Been Kissed, looking like a blonde business woman who does business for business reasons.

Wedding Planner, more unflattering and aggressive clothes, stuck-up bitch blonde hair and surly man face.

The Decoy Bride, Blonde. Insane Blonde.

See a pattern? All of these women represent what audience members of chick flicks hate: beautiful, successful, blonde women who clearly don't deserve the men they have. These are the bitches that picked on us in middle school and forgot our existence by high school. But the problem with casting them as the fiancee is that you're making a statement about the groom, whether you want to or not.

First of all, why is he with her? If it's because she's beautiful then he's shallow. And if he's only with her for her looks or her fame, why on earth is he now paying attention to the mousy little shop girl with a heart of gold? The chance that it's due to a lasting connection seems slim.

"I vow to love you at least until another person walks by."

Okay, so you don't want him to be shallow. So you make the fiancee a shrill, needy, demanding bitch who always orders him around and keeps him from living his dream as a singer/songwriter/hobo. Problem averted!

Except that now what kind of man is this? He's either with her because he's weak and can't find a way out, in which case he'll probably end up crawling back to her five minutes after the movie ends, or he has phenomenally bad taste. He picked a woman like her and has plans to marry her even though she's vindictive and belittling. Maybe he's really into being put down and insulted?

"I am so hard right now."

Which actually makes sense, considering...

4. The "Romantic" Banter is Always Mean-Spirited

So I'm twenty minutes into The Decoy Bride. We've awkwardly shoe-horned the two leads into a situation where they can finally let the sparks fly. They can show us how great they are together. Instead she tells him his book was shit, no one liked it, and he's a loser. He responds with, "Working in a shop? Living with your mum? You're a loser." Thirty minutes later, they're deeply in love.

Don't listen to my words. Just look at my beautiful face.

I have never understood the need to have couples start out a romance with vitriolic jabs. It's often not even witty. It's supposed to show that she's spunky and he's not easily cowed. But instead I'm starting to see a pattern. Of course he doesn't want to marry his bitch of a fiancee. She's mean-spirited. But so is the next woman he falls in love with. It's a cycle of sadness and he'll keep it up forever.

On a side note, when is the last time you fell for someone who dismissed your whole life in two sentences and ended it by calling you a loser? Did you really want to show them you could be more than that or did you call them a clitcruncher and flip them the bird while walking away?

3. Love is a Quantifiable, Easily-Explained Phenomena

One of the hard parts of writing a love story is understanding what makes two people fall in love, what makes them compatible and what makes them want to be together for more than ten minutes.

"I sense a lasting connection with you."

Chick flicks make this problem twice as hard because they have to explain why a man's fiancee is suddenly not the right woman for him. Having the man say anything like "She's getting older," "She's not as hot as you," or "I'm bored" tends to make the guy look bad, and definitely not rom-com material.

So they have to make his new relationship "better" because of something really stupid and boring. The new girl makes him laugh in a way he hasn't for years. Or the new girl is a little bit wild and shows him that he wasn't taking risks in his life. Or his fiancee gives him writer's block and the new girl doesn't (seriously, that's a real thing.)

None of this explains why people fall in love, though. And it never will. People fall in love for all sorts of reasons, but if the reason is "We were trapped in a room together for 24 hours under wacky circumstances," there are some serious underlying psychological problems that aren't being addressed.

And again, he's just one of them.

2. It Glorifies Cheating

Take any "he's marrying the wrong woman" scenario in a chick flick and just tweak it a little bit. A man has been with a woman for years. She's beautiful and famous and successful. She's kind of a blonde ice bitch, but he thinks he's happy. Then one day he meets the girl who is so much more right for him. She's sweet and down to earth and definitely not blonde. They talk and laugh and fall deeply, perfectly in love.

The day after his wedding.

Oops.

"This is somehow not okay anymore."

1. It's a Horrifying Cycle

Relationships are hard work. And it's scary to imagine marrying someone and spending your whole life with them forever and ever amen. It can make you think that they're not the one for you. It can make you think that no one has the horrible flaws your significant other has. It can make you think that literally the next person you see on the street is a better match for you.

"Sure, you'll do."

The problem isn't that movies make the lead male character have these second thoughts. It's that they have him acting on them. Throwing away years of effort and a planned life on a woman he knows nothing about. You think he's going to do this just the one time? What happens when this new girl realizes that she too disapproves of his ambition to be a singer/songwriter/bohemian because she has to support him and his filthy habits? Is he going to work on improving himself or pick out a new partner?

These movies are basically saying, "Love isn't hard work. And when it is, you should just get rid of it. Because real love is flirting and that first kiss and has nothing to do with mortgages or childbirth or being in debt. Once you hit the boring stuff, just move on."

"Honey, I'm out of change. Can you feed the meter?"
"I want a divorce."

The only thing that makes these chick flicks interesting is to imagine them as sequels to other chick flicks that originally starred the spurned fiancee as the "other girl."

Now that's actually something I would watch.