While I am humbly suggesting you go to the movie Salon's Rebecca Traister demands you see it as a part of your social responsibility in this article http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/05/12/bridesmaids_social_campaign. Apparently Traister believes the Kristen Wiig written comedy is a new paragon of feminism and if the movie does well it means women will have more chances to write and star in quality movies. I assume she bases this on the phenomenon following Wedding Crashers in which more R-rated comedies were green-lit based on its success. More recently The Hangover proved adult-oriented comedies were more than just a passing fad and studios started taking chances on movies like Bridesmaids. What Traister doesn't take into account is that more often than not successful movies do not spawn more great movies in their genre, but rather dozens of pale imitators rushed into production by greedy and talentless studio execs. I have no doubt cinemas will be inundated with chick-flicks over the next couple of years as studios try to recreate the success of Bridesmaids. This will not, however, be to the benefit of female stars, writers, and directors because they will be forced to work for studio execs who have a misguided understanding of what Bridesmaids is. Bridesmaids proves that women can a) be funny and b) can offer more to the cinematic world than simply pandering to their own gender. All of this gets ignored when people like Traister label Bridesmaids as a chick flick or The Hangover for women.
Chick flicks fall under a larger genre I call demographic movies or demo films. These movies are designed to sell to a specific audience, for instance black films are designed to sell to black audiences, kids films are designed for kids, etc. Most genres are defined by the audience's reasonable expectations of the film's elements. So westerns are expected to have horses, guns, etc or romantic comedies are expected to have a meet-cute and some sort of struggle to keep the main couple apart. These genres evolved naturally over time rather than a calculated attempt to form them. So when a filmmaker sets out to make a western they are informed by the films of the past that created the genre. The demo film is unique in that it is the audience that informs the genre not the other way around. So when a filmmaker sets out to make a chick flick they are trying to market the film and make the film at the same time. This is problematic in the same way that George Lucas's post Star Wars merchandising orgasm ruined his subsequent films.
The chick flick sets out to be a film from a particular point of view, a woman. Many chick flicks go about this by portraying women as spectacularly awesome, which is fine because they are. The problem, however, is that the easiest way to portray someone as awesome is to compare them against that which is not awesome. Since the chick flick portends that all women are awesome then the obvious and easy choice is to show this by painting all men as evil penis wielding oppressing douches. Look at the stable of chick flicks over the last twenty years: Fried Green Tomatoes - one inattentive and one abusive husband,
Thelma and Louise - ignorant mustachioed and oppressive Chistopher Macdonald, a rapist, Brad Pitt's hustler, and a host of other terrible terrible men,
It's important to note that both of these films were directed by men so it may just be that these films may be how men think women think of men. I also want to note that these two films are excellent and should be enjoyed by both sexes, but you can understand, based on the trailers, why a guy wouldn't want to sit through two hours of hearing about how much of an asshole he is. And this isn't limited to the chick flick. Most demo films go the route of pumping up the intended demographic by crapping on another one. such as in guy films where women are portrayed as fun-hating shrews. Sometimes the film will be good in spite of this calculated pandering such as in the above films. Sometimes the film will have nothing else to offer and will therefore suck e.g. the guy film Tomcats, which is disgusting. Nine times out of ten, however, the demo empowerment angle serves to alienate the other demographics. Which is why guys don't like chick flicks.
Around turn of the century (I love using that phrase to describe ten years ago) the chick flick moved away from female empowerment and into female wish fulfillment. The best example of this is Sex and the City in which strong female leads have debilitating shoe fetishes. These movies do more to stereotype women than anything The Man Show ever offered. I offer 2009's Bride Wars as an example.
Not exactly a positive portrayal of women, huh? But these types of movies continue to be made along with terrible romantic comedies that offer the same thing; a studio execs idea of a woman's point of view.
So while the chick flick used to be unappealing to men because it featured negative male stereotypes it is now unappealing because it reinforces negative female stereotypes (Not to say that men avoid chick flicks because of a political stand, but rather these stereotypes are uninteresting to men). The demo movie is so inherently alienating that filmmakers can make different versions of the same movie, but for different demos and no one bats an eye. Some times they don't even change the title or wait five years.
Death at a Funeral 2007
Death at a Funeral 2010
So why is Bridesmaids different. The simple answer is that it isn't chick flick. Kriten Wiig has said repeatedly that she just wrote a comedy and never had any intent for it to have any sort of political message. She wrote a movie and it naturally had a woman's perspective because she is, you know, a woman. Because she approached the movie with the story in mind rather than the audience she ended up writing a movie that was appealing across genders. Most male writers don't set out to write a guy film (those that do end up with movies like Tomcats, which is disgusting) they just write a movie. The protagonist is a chick flick must be woman in order for it to be a chick flick. In non-demo films you can swap in any one for the title character and it ends up being basically the same film. Let's play the pronoun game. Here is the plot description of Bridesmaids sans gender specific pronouns:
The main character's shitty life threatens to get even shittier when their best friend gets engaged to someone in a higher social class. The main character might lose the friend to a new friend who seems to be everything the main character is not.
Doesn't necessarily have to be a woman does it?
Here's another one:
The main character gets engaged and realizes they don't have many friends in their own gender to fill out the bridal party so they have to search for a best friend to be the best man/maid of honor on relatively short notice.
This was I Love You, Man and the lead could have gone either way with out much change (except maybe for the title)
So Kristen Wiig wrote a good movie by any standard and it was a hit. When people like Traiste try to turn it into a feminist issue they hurt their own cause. Men don't feel the burden to write for their gender which means their first concern is whether the film is good. When people like Traiste try to force the political burden on female writers they handcuff them into writing a demo film. This is, of course, unfair.
Traise should be less concerned in saving the chick flick and more concerned with promoting good female writers, actors, and directors regardless of the genre they write in. Kristen Wiig is about to blow-up big time and it would be a shame if she gets pigeon-holed into the chick flick thing. She doesn't need to be a cause. She just need to be Kriten Wiig.
