CHICK FLICK

chick flick: translation

n.

A movie with themes, characters, or events that appeal more to women than to men.

With the release of films like The Sweetest Thing and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, there's been a lot of loose talk lately about so-called chick flicks.

So what is a chick flick exactly? A movie where everyone talks a lot, preferably at the hairdresser? A movie that makes women and certain sensitive men cry faster than frying onions?

It's hard to put chick flicks in a single category: how do you square the outlaw vulnerability of Thelma and Louise with the soapy wisdom of the Ya-Ya sisters turned gaga gran'mas?

Is Chocolat a chick flick because Juliette Binoche's character concentrates on empowering her gal pals and values her Nipples of Venus truffles above the restless charms of Johnny Depp's travelling man? And if Chocolat is a chick flick, then where does that leave The Sweetest Thing, a grotesquely unfunny comedy about a jock-like troika of female sex fiends who, if they really were men, would be locked up for gender abuse?

And if The Sweetest Thing is a chick flick — and most reviewers have labelled it one — then why isn't Miss Congeniality, a movie starring Sandra Bullock as a klutzy cop who enters Miss Universe to catch her man (or in this case, woman)? For that matter, I've not heard anyone call Bridget Jones's Diary a chick flick either...

The more I think about it, the more complicated it gets.There are whole web sites devoted to arguments among movie fans and rival lists of top chick flicks.

— Charlotte Bauer, "Chick schtick," Sunday Times, October 20, 2002

In the great spirit of chick flicks, those movies to which women travel in droves armed with only a fresh box of Kleenex and a burning desire to cry their eyes red, this year features "Fried Green Tomatoes." But "Tomatoes" is not at all like '89's silly "Steel Magnolias" or last year's "women: good, men: bad" romp "Thelma & Louise."

— Brian Shipkin, "A tearjerker, but 'Tomatoes' offers food for thought," Chicago Tribune, February 7, 1992

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Film

Men and Women