Gordaen’s Blog

Most adult males find “chick flicks” to be painful to watch. The stories are basically the same thing: attraction, some obstacle, get together. The attraction tends to be physical (and of course both characters are generally very good looking). The obstacle can be anything from a long distance relationship to one of the characters sleeping with another person, or even the “I’m in love with two (or more) men!”

Before I go to far into this, I should mention a couple of things. First, there are probably movie spoilers in here. Second, I am aware of “guy movies” being about the same basic thing: bad guy tries to destroy world, good guy stops him, good guy gets the girl. So, for all you women out there, sorry that we men like movies about saving the world, killing bad guys, and winning the girl’s heart for risking one’s life to accomplish those things.

A lot of these romantic movies end up with the guy sacrificing his life (physically or metaphorically) for the women. The Titanic is a great example. The movie is almost close to being near tolerable until the main guy who spent the entire movie winning this girl’s heart dies to save her. Of course, it’s not romantic if the same thing happens in a guy movie because it would have involved bullets and explosions instead of Leonardo DiCaprio slowly looking more like a Smurf.

Titanic brings up a side point: you have to ignore time in movies. In guy movies, it’s the 1 minute timed bomb that lasts 5 minutes. In girl movies, it’s how you can somehow become totally in love in a couple of hours/days.

I think sacrifice is probably the most prevailent theme in these movies. In The Notebook, the main guy (Noah) basically goes completely out of his way to get this rich girl to notice him (essentially the Titanic on solid ground). After the girl ditches him because her family is rich and he isn’t, he writes a letter to her every single day for a year (total she wrote to him: 0). Eventually he builds the house they dreamed about, despite not hearing from her at all. In the meantime, she is completely in love with this other guy who treats her perfectly. So she sees the house in the newspaper, ditches the guy who has treated her so well so that she can go be with the guy whom she pretty much dropped. Then we find out she has Alzheimer’s and he is spending time every day to tell her about their story. Awwww… wait, what good things did she do again? (Maybe it was playing the piano and claiming the song was “Chopsticks” when it obviously wasn’t. Lying always helps relationships!)

In Sweet Home Alabama, we see a very similar thing happen. The main girl, Melanie, is about to marry Andrew, but she has to go home and finish the paperwork to divorce Jake, whom she hasn’t even told Andrew about (in fact, she’s lied about her entire background). She slowly starts to fall more in love with Jake and treats the people of the town like crap. Then Andrew comes and, despite that she has been a liar and done some other questionable things, he says he still wants to marry her. In this movie, he has the rich mom that he defies to marry Melanie in the South, but then she ditches him at the altar (and he is still totally respectful of her) so she can go get back together with her husband Jake. So, again, the female ditches the guy who has treated her so well.

The lessons for the ladies:
Titanic: If you go on a cruise, let some poor guy fall in love with you, because he will sacrifice his life to save yours.
The Notebook: You don’t have to do anything to have the guy of your dreams go out of his way to do everything he possibly could for you, even if you treat him like crap.
Sweet Home Alabama: You can totally lie about your life to “score” a really nice guy, kiss your previous lover behind the new guy’s back, ditch the new guy at the altar (and he’ll still treat you very respectfully), get back with the other guy whom you ditched years ago, and everyone will call it a happy ending. Oh, and don’t forget to treat all your old friends like crap.
General: The perfect guy will go out of his way to be great for you (and there may be multiple guys like this). You never have to even acknowledge him until he has found you and spent a great deal of time getting you to notice him. If you want, forget about him for a while and then come back later because he will always take you back.

The lessons for the men:
Titanic: You’re going to die to save a girl who is “higher class” than you. Avoid cruises.
The Notebook (Noah): You’re going to spend your entire life doing everything you can for this women. In the end, she’ll forget you… multiple times.
Sweet Home Alabama (Jake): You can treat a woman like crap and you’ll get married. Eventually, she’ll ditch you for a few years, but once you’ve become successful, she’ll come back and ditch her other guy for you even though you treated her like crap and the nice guy treated her like a queen.
Secondary Guy: No matter how nice you are, she will leave you for another guy whom she hasn’t seen in many, many years.
General: If you come first and don’t go on a ship, you’ll probably do well (as long as she can see some material accomplishment like you built a house or create expensive glass) after being ditched. If you come second, no matter how perfect you are, she will leave you.