The plea from the @NetflixFilm Twitter account, that we all stop referring to romantic-comedies as “chick flicks,” might have some merit if the absolute ruin of the genre hadn’t already been completed by Amy Schumer.
“For starters, ‘chick flicks’ are traditionally synonymous with romantic comedies,” @NetflixFilm wrote on Monday. “This suggests that women are the only people interested in 1. Romance 2. Comedy. Which I can promise from the men I’ve come across in my life – simply isn’t true.” It added that the phrase “cheapens the work that goes into making these types of films” and that there’s nothing trivial about a movie “that makes you feel 1,000 emotions in ~90 minutes[.]”
Recommended Stories
This would have been true more than two decades ago. But neither Twitter nor Netflix were around then to give us the tea.
I loved romantic-comedies when they were good. Unfortunately, that run ended in 1997, with the best two of them all, “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” starring Julia Roberts and then-little-known Cameron Diaz; and “As Good as it Gets,” with Jack Nicholson, Hellen Hunt, and Cuba Gooding Jr., who had just come off of his stellar performance in “Jerry Maguire” (another fantastic rom-com from the year before).
The category’s cratering started immediately thereafter. If you saw boring Jennifer Lopez in 2002’s “Maid in Manhattan,” you know exactly what I’m talking about. Hollywood decided that writing, originality and even acting were no longer necessary to make a profit on a rom-com. Simply microwave an old plot with an offensively cheesy script and call it a day.
The rom-com has never recovered it. There was some potential with Katherine Heigl in “27 Dresses” (2008) but then she starred in “The Ugly Truth” (2009), a movie I walked out on in the theater after 25 minutes, because it was that bad.
The fall of the rom-com reached its conclusion with Amy Schumer, who almost single-handedly has made the category earn the “chick flick” reputation. Schumer’s movies are for no one but women — usually plus-sized women needing a confidence boost.
And nicknaming films “chick flicks” drives home that there’s something trivial about watching them. But what’s trivial about watching a film that makes you feel 1,000 emotions in ~90 minutes?
— Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) April 15, 2019
“Trainwreck” of 2015 tells the story of promiscuous big-girl lush Schumer deciding to settle down, every bit of the riot that it sounds. Her 2018 movie “I Feel Pretty” features Schumer as a self-conscious professional who, after an accident, sees herself as a knock-out blonde. Spoiler: By the end, she sees her true beauty is within, a plot twist you certainly didn’t see coming.
What about either of these would make anyone, let alone a man, “feel 1,000 emotions”? I feel precisely one and it hurts.
It’s offensive even to think of handing my money over for a genre that has long sucked, capped by Schumer’s, to cite the New York Times’ oxymoron, “feminist humor.”
These aren’t movies. They’re messages about body positivity and female empowerment. Gag. It’s not romantic comedy. It’s social justice.
Julia Roberts in “My Best Friend’s Wedding” is a fabulous and successful restaurant critic, resentful toward only herself that the man she let get away has found someone else. Jack Nicholson in “As Good as it Gets” is a multi-bestselling romance author wracked by obsessive-compulsive disorder, who falls in love with a no-nonsense waitress. In sharp contrast, Schumer is either a serial alcohol abuser whose mess you’re supposed to enjoy, or an anxious neurotic whom you’re supposed to pity.
Which one of these doesn’t sound like a positive story for women?
Netflix would have been right about the strength and appeal of rom-coms if this were 1997. But it’s 2019 and we’re stuck with Amy Schumer.
