I H8 Chick Flix

Chick flicks, like French fries, are the devil.

Okay, well, not all chick flicks are evil, but I get indigestion just thinking about some of them.

Why? For one thing, they promote, ahem, rather unrealistic expectations about love for those who watch them. Take, for example, Serendipity, in which one of the main characters writes her name and contact info. inside a copy of Gabriel García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Then, if she and her male love interest are "supposed" to be together, fate willing, he will someday find this book with this information, they will meet once again, and then they'll live happily ever after. Or at least until the end of the closing credits.

In real life, it just doesn't happen that way. (Does it?) Besides, I read more than one Gabriel García Márquez book in the original Spanish while in college, and his stuff tain't nothin' to write home about.

For another thing, many chick flicks tend to feature "actresses" such as Jennifer Lopez, Drew Barrymore, and Renee Zellweger, to name a few.

Speaking of whom, the latest offender in this category is the 1999 flick The Bachelor, which I finally watched the other day. The Bachelor stars Chris O'Donnell and the aforementioned Miss Zellweger, who seems pleasant enough but whose face, for one reason or another, looks like it has just been attacked and stung by a hive full of bees.

In this movie, Renee's character is deeply offended when her longtime boyfriend, played by O'Donnell, totally botches his marriage proposal due to nervousness and to not really knowing how to put his feelings for her into words. She reacts with contempt because it's not "romantic" enough or the way a proposal is "supposed" to be; you know, the kind of proposal that might be done "right" in say, a chick flick.

From there, the film just goes straight downhill.

At any rate, that's just one point-of-view. If The Bachelor happens to be a favorite film of yours - or, heaven forbid, the TV show of the same name, to mention another offender - and you can cite examples for me of why it doesn't stink to high heaven, then I'm all ears. Prove me wrong, children; prove me wrong.