Though it is not universally acknowledged, a wealthy young man – one with a British accent and from a good family – is not always in search of a level-headed Elizabeth Bennett. (However, it does appear movies are always looking for that guy with the accent to succeed Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. This time it's Hugh Dancy.)

According to “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” (2009) the handsome Brit may be looking for a young woman who’s a chronic liar, impecunious to a pathological degree and careering unpredictably from airhead to accidental genius. i.e., Rebecca Bloomwood, the character played by Isla Fisher in this film.

Poor Isla. Poor me. Not everyone loves this sort of cute, but exaggeratedly lost city girl and I certainly don’t. I much prefer Fisher’s character April in the wonderful “Definitely, Maybe.” April was a woman – clearly a woman, not a girl – who’s smart, witty, perhaps slightly dangerous, but definitely genuine. Did I say prefer? I love that character. Not Becky Bloomwood, alas.

Becky is a would-be fashion journalist in the middle of a credit meltdown. And so she becomes a finance columnist. Within 10 minutes, I knew I was watching a film beneath even my standards. It’s one filled with incidents that are wholly implausible and yet wholly predictable. And sometimes unnecessary. It goes too far to demonstrate Rebecca’s shopaholic credentials, right down to her propensity to succumb to the enticements of talking mannequins. 

It does feature one cliché I like (but only because it means I may be able to build a blog post on it): the imperious older fashion dictatrix, played by Kristin Scott Thomas here. Bottom line: The movie is not awful. It’s just less enjoyable than the average rom com. When the intended couple unites in the end it feels more relief that it's over than romantic catharsis.

Or, to put it in the movie's fashion terms, it's more J.C. Penney's than Alexander McQueen. 

You've got your Kristen Wiig, your Maya Rudolph and your Chris O'Dowd, but make no mistake: This is no "Bridesmaids." For that, I am thankful. In "Friends With Kids," director/writer/actress Jennifer Westfeldt uses many of the same key actors as the 2011 smash hit by Wiig, but leaves out most of the gross, juvenile, humiliation yucks that "Bridesmaids" depended on.

Each of those actors gets a fresh and more intelligent face in this film about how young New York professionals turn into families. It's based on a silly premise: Westfeldt as Julie and Adam Scott at Jason are such good friends, that they think they can have and raise a child together as friends and avoid the couple-uncouple strife they see in friends who are romantically tied to their co-parents. Westfeldt's writing makes it work.

I spent most of the first 45 minutes cracking up. (Though sometimes I may have been the only one in the theater doing so.) Westfeldt, as she did in "Kissing Jessica Stein," produces some sharply observed comedy, based on sympathetic views of human weaknesses, not on ridicule. Even when there is bathroom humor, the comedy is not about the poop, it's about the subtle behaviors people show in reaction to the poop. 

After the mostly funny set-up, we move into a largely serious segment of the movie where shifting boundaries between Julie and Jason are negotiated and, occasionally, crashed into. The development of characters is subtle, and the funny movie and the serious movie feel like just two parts of the same story -- just as someone we love is the same person when we laugh with them and when we yell at them. Someone I love said she cried twice.

I hope Westfeldt makes a lot more movies as a writer and director, because I love the way she sets her characters in motion and watches what happens. "Kissing Jessica Stein" -- about a woman exploring her lesbian side -- was an entertaining revelation.  Though it's more commercial, "Friends With Kids"  still feels fresh, even though we know from the beginning where Jason and Julie's friendship is headed.

The only fresh face I didn't care for in the film was, sad and sexist to say, Westfeldt's. It looks like she's had some work done since she was Jessica Stein, and the new taut skin and lips were much less appealing than the looser natural attractiveness she brought to the earlier film. Still, she made it a nice film with her presence, along with the writing and directing.

One final oddity: In the past month, Google Analytics says my review of "Kissing Jessica Stein" has been the most accessed page on my blog, other than the home page. I have to guess part of that is people looking it up in light of the publicity for "Friends With Kids." It was getting a lot of hits before that, though, and if I understand the analytics right there's a sad reason for that: people (i.e. guys, probably) googling for movies with "two girls kissing." Ick.

"Heartbreaker" (2010) is just one of those films that float across your Netflix suggestion list. Well, maybe not yours, but it floated across *MY* list because I like that sort of thing. Sometimes the suggestions are good, more often they're not. In this case, I really enjoyed the film and these factoids are some of the reasons why:

1. It's kind of a genre-buster, or perhaps more a genre mixer. I've written before about the films where people fall in love amid violence. This is one of those except for one key twist. Unlike films like "Ocean's Eleven" or "The Italian Job," where the caper is the point and the love is in the background, here it's reversed. The international man of mystery here, Alex (Romain Duris), isn't a crook or a spy for his country, he's a spy in the service of romance. Although he's paid to break up couples, he only sees it as breaking up couples who aren't in love. He is abetted by his sister and brother-in-law, two great supporting characters who perform the usual caper roles of fake hotel jobs and electronic snooping.
   
2. A few little details link this film to a film to which it otherwise bears no relation: "Love Actually." In both films, a guy falls for a woman who is about to get married. In "Love Actually," her name is Juliet. In "Heartbreaker," it's Juliette. The actor Andrew Lincoln figures in both, though in "Love Actually" he's the one smitten with Juliet, and she marries his best friend. In this film, he's the one engaged to Juliette, and Alex tries to break them up.
   
3. The French model and actress Vanessa Paradis plays Juliette. I didn't know anything about this woman until my good friend started talking about Johnny Depp and gap-toothed attraction. A few minutes into this film, I checked IMDB to see who this gap-toothed lady was and sure enough, it was Johnny's beloved. Even if he's nowhere to be seen, that may be reason enough for some Deppophiles to see this film. She does a great job of moving slowly, not precipitously, from hostility to love.
   
4. A Paradis' presence suggests, this is a French film. (Though much of it takes place in Morocco and Monte Carlo.) Despite that, pretty much every song in it is in English, from the opening - "Son of a Preacher Man" - to the end.
   
5. A recurring theme is Juliette's love of the film "Dirty Dancing," and how Alex learns it to get at her heart. I want to do a post on films that play on "Dirty Dancing," but so far all I have is this and "Crazy, Stupid, Love." Know any others?
   
6. There is a short scene during the credits involving Juliette's father, the man who hired Alex to break up his daughter's engagement. This is suppose to clarify some things, but it only confused me.
   
7. For a French film, this has a rather commercial American feel and, if you don't mind the subtitles, should feel comfortable to most people who find romantic comedy cozy. It even glosses over constant improbablities, like an American rom com. The main difference, I'd say, is that all the characters exhibit what seems to me as a classic French "bored with life" attitude.
   
8. IMDB reports that writer Laurent Zeitoun got the idea when he suggested that his family hire someone to break up a bad impending marriage. No connection to the film, but "Zeitoun" is the title figure of Dave Eggers great non-fiction book on the New Orleans hurricane aftermath.
   

I mean it. It isn't that far (in concept) from this Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds vehicle ("The Proposal" 2009) to the ostensibly more elevated works of Jane Austen -- the classics writer most in favor with moviegoers of today. I say this because both have a lot to do with the conflicts of family duty and convention when mixed with the travails of love under the demands of economics.

In "The Proposal," we have the unlikely situation where Andrew (Reynolds) is compelled to engage himself to his driven and self-centered (though highly attractive) boss Margaret (Bullock) so that she can beat immigration and he can climb the ladder of the publishing world from his lowly assistant status.

Even in Austen's day (judging by Darcy and Elizabeth) it was a truth universally acknowledged that two people as transparently ill-suited for one another as Andrew and Margaret would wind up in love in the end. The novelty in "The Proposal" is that it nearly flips the Austen concept on its head. Whereas people of Elizabeth Bennet's time took the marriage of financial convenience for granted, the modern American world takes the marriage for love as the given. While Elizabeth shocked her time by passing over the eligible Mr. Collins, Andrew shocks us by picking career over love. 

Any dismay at this arrangement is heightened after meeting the delightful (except in name) Gertrude, Andrew's ex-girlfriend, played by Malin Akerman. They seem obviously well suited and you almost hope they can still get together, even though you know the movie is headed elsewhere. As an aside, let me put in a plug for making Akerman more of a star. She was terrific in "Happythankyoumoreplease," where her character had more inner beauty than outer. The three films I've seen her in -- "The Proposal," "Happythankyoumoreplease," and "The Romantics" -- show her taking on very different supporting characters. I'd love to see her in a meaty lead. 

(Oops. On further research, I see she was also (forgettably) in "27 Dresses" and will have the perhaps too-meaty lead in a forthcoming movie on Linda Lovelace.)

In short, there are family fights, accidental naked embraces, the obligatory called-off wedding and, yes, a run to the airport. 

I enjoy the parts of "The Proposal" that are played relatively naturally. Unfortunately, that see-sawed with segments of broad and slapstick comedy. The other annoying flaw in this film is one of the most boring happily ever afters ever. The movie wants us to be shocked by the business proposal -- the wedding for career -- so the story can bring us around to a standard love story ending. Except it's hard to believe it. There isn't much passion after all that clashin' between Bullock and Reynolds. It's a fun movie, if your suspension of disbelief is in good shape.

Lots of good actors here, though. Betty White is enjoying her golden years with roles like this, and I'm happy to see Mary Steenburgen almost any time.

"The Art of Getting By" (2011) is a watered-down version of the "The Wackness." (2008) They are both about a kind of geeky kid with a case of anomie, falling in love for the first time. Both films have New York settings, looming college worries, family financial ruin, parents with murky moral boundaries, substance abuse and first sex. But it all seems much milder, less edgy in "The Art." Hence a PG-13 rating instead of R.

That doesn't make it bad. This is the kind of film I enjoy. Teen love, struggle, loss, angst, redemption. It doesn't matter so much that  it doesn't feel risky this time. The lack of risk isn't just about what happens in the story. It's also the way it's told. If not wholly formulaic, the storytelling of "The Art" felt familiar, comfy. When you see the girl at the airport, ready to leave for Europe with the wrong guy, she's still staring wistfully out the window after everyone else has boarded. It seems like you've seen it before, and even if you can't pick out another film where you've seen it, you know what's going to happen in this one. 

I'm happy when George (Freddie Highmore) gets the girl (Emma Roberts) after first losing the girl, but I long for something more original. More original, like "The Wackness." That, too, was the old story of the guy trying for the girl who's beyond his league, but it didn't give you the predictable ending.

I watched this with Son of Chick Flick Guy, and he expressed frustration at seeing the supposedly smart George lose the girl in the first place, simply because he couldn't tell her how he felt. Son of CFG is a lot better at saying the things that are hard to say than the CFG is. I really identified with the uncertainty and lack of emotional risk-taking by George. I understood his hesitation at the make-it-or-break-it moment.

The movies are where we go to see our innermost desires. I didn't make that up. I read it in the New York Times Book Review last week, so it must be true. Sometimes, those inner desires aren't that elevated. That's "The Art of Getting By."

With a title like "Unconditional Love," I was expecting a fun but unexceptional rom com. You know, something where she's a journalist who starts out hating him, there are aborted weddings, maybe a run to the airport and in the end they get together and, we must assume, live happily ever after. (By the way, the links lead to movies that fit those themes.)

This 2002 film is emphatically not one of those movies. It is instead one of the strangest films I've enjoyed (more or less) in a while. Kathy Bates plays a bored and boring woman whose husband leaves her just as her singing idol (think Barry Manilow/Elvis/Liberace) is killed on the day she was to see him in person.

It becomes a strange quest for the killer, accompanied by the dead guy's lover (Rupert Everett) and a dwarf in a red raincoat. Don't ask. It is, of course, also a search for self on the part of all these characters, with a moral of being accepted for who you are. That's broader than the obvious lesson here that homosexuality is not a reason to ostracize someone, as the singer and his lover have been.

Kathy Bates is not particularly good in this role. I like her better when she's loud and assured. Her timidity here seems off. Julie Andrews makes an occasional appearance, singing in bizarre situations. But it's the strangeness that makes the film compelling. You keep watching to see what they'll come up with next.

What they come up with is not always good and sometimes is awful. At one point Everett is attempting to yank a gun out of his sequined pants through the fly and his pulling is made to look like he's jerking off in a deserted parking garage. It just isn't necessary. The constantly fluctuating tone of the film makes me think it was written by committee and adds uncertainty to the bizarre events.

The only thing that isn't surprising is that this film was released straight to DVD, instead of making it to theaters.

My family has a catch phrase that relates to this film, a movie that I enjoyed more than I care to admit. (Except that liking this kind of film is what this blog is all about.) The phrase: "I read it in a magazine."

The line comes from one of my daughter's then tween-aged soccer teammates who used it a time too often when challenged on some dubious statement she made. Ever since, if we assert something that we know may not hold water, members of my family back it up with, "I read it in a magazine."

"What's Your Number?" (2011) is based, implausibly, on something supposedly read in a magazine. Ally Darling (Anna Faris) sees an women's magazine article saying a woman who has had sex with 20 or more men is unlikely ever to get married. Something to do with poor self-esteem. After totting up her conquests (not that a woman refers to them that way), Ally realizes she's already hit 19.  So begins a quest to recheck her past bedmates to see whether any of them is marriageable. Her marital clock is ticking, especially since her younger sister is readying happily to tie the knot.

The concept that a supposedly intelligent woman like Ally would find it necessary to go on this quest is silly enough. To add to the silliness, she seeks help from the despised serial womanizer Colin across the hall in her apartment building. Surely you see where this is going. I did, but I was charmed all the same. I won't say that either Faris or Chris Evans (as Colin Shea) is a terrific actor, but when they are together, they make the unreal feel more natural. You can feel the characters grow to like each other and, oddly, we like them better too, despite the oddities they go through.  I must admit,  however, even I found my credulity taxed by watching them  play HORSE in Boston Garden in their underwear.

In fact, both leads are in minimal clothing on maximum occasions, which is kind of a plus. If the visuals aren't  enough, there are some enjoyable, rather clever writing bits ... though perhaps they are maybe not quite as clever as they seemed at the time. These include Ally's thumbnail description of the perfect girl (as she thinks Colin sees her) and the wedding near the end where small children run around shouting the four-letter word they learned when Ally fell off a fence.

Does this film really deserve four stars? Perhaps not, but I was engaged enough to consider watching it over right away. (It's better than the trailer. Honest.) And not because of the acres of epidermis on display. I was charmed, but I finally decided to send it back to Netflix so I could get another silly film. And though these romantic comedies may not generally win Academy Awards, they are important for helping understand and improve the social and romantic interactions of men and women. I know that, because I read it in a magazine.

Poor Reese Witherspoon. She's always having to choose between two hunky guys: It happened in "Sweet Home Alabama." It happened in "How Do You Know." Even (sorta kinda) in "Legally Blonde." 

Now she's forced to choose between Chris Pine as FDR and Tom Hardy as Tuck in "This Means War." (For what it's worth, I think she makes the wrong choice at the end, but everyone else is happy.) "This Means War" is the latest in the ongoing effort to entice those who love action comedy and those who love romantic comedy to the same movie. According to the post-Valentine's Day weekend returns, not much of either demographic showed up.

But I did, and I liked it. Sure it's silly and implausible and Witherspoon can be annoying, but I like the no-nonsense competence her character, Lauren, shows in most of this movie and the interplay between the two guys is clever, even when it's largely testosterone-driven.

FDR and Tuck are not just any rivals for the girl's affection. They are best buddies and covert operatives for the CIA. In Los Angeles. If that sounds like the TV show, "Chuck," it might not be accidental. Don't mess with success.

As CIA agents, the boys use their espionage abilities and equipment on the object of their affections. One almost balletic scene has them executing a brown bag operation on Lauren's apartment as she bops around obliviously, making popcorn and dancing to the music in the way you only do when you think no one is looking. (Me? No I don't do that. No.) FDR and Tuck's spying is pretty chaste, though you would have imagined at least one of these guys would be tempted to do some shower peeping on their target.

While trying to outdo each other in their wooing, they are also coping as a team with some sort of international bad guy whose brother they killed. What's it about and why? Doesn't matter. This part of the plot fades for long stretches while romance comes to the fore. That is, "This Means War" refers to the war between friends more than the war between countries. However, international evil surfaces occasionally, and the battling is so frenetic you can't quite tell what's going on. That's so you don't notice how artificial it all is.

Articial also probably applies to the dichotomy between Tuck -- earnest, in touch with feelings and ready for love -- and FDR -- shallow, in touch with his black book and ready for a score. Lauren must make her choice under threat of death, as a huge SUV careers toward her, ready to knock her into oblivion. She opts for ... I'm not telling.

But Witherspoon will probably just have to decide all over again in her next film. Kind of like "Groundhog Day" without the snow.

It might not be universally acknowledged, but it is nevertheless the truth that not all remakes are created equal. 

When it became known that Keira Knightley was going to star in a new version of Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," (back around 2005) I think more than a few Jane-ists were horrified. Although the actress shares a surname with one of Austen's most-clear-headed characters, her critics could only paraphrase Emma's Mr. Knightley: "Badly done, Keira." The girl just wasn't right for the part, so they said.

I watched Knightley's "Pride and Prejudice" (2005) again recently, and I enjoyed it. That is, I enjoyed it as much as I could with my wife cringing and shaking her head next to me. For her, it's the book or it's Jennifer Ehle's "P&P," (1995) and nothing else measures up. To be sure, the multi-part BBC version is remarkably faithful to Austen's book and the Knightley version is not. How could a two-hour version be equally faithful?

Knightley's version, I admit, has one or two scenes of overwrought emotion, worsened by heavy-handed music. And I do find Knightley's giggles and the way she brings her hand over her laughing mouth somehow annoying. (Would "vexatious" be appropriate?) But I don't agree that there's something "wrong" about the portrayal. It's just different. I thought the film carried the sense, humor and emotions of the book's story well, and I like some of the secondary characters better in the newer version than in the BBC. Better means I still dislike Mr. Collins, but found the less-oily new version more palatable.

I also enjoyed some beautiful (though admittedly unnecessary) landscape shots in the new version and appreciated a Bennett home that better reflected the family's frayed gentility. The divergences from the original plot, well, they mattered little to me. In the end, I take joy in the inevitable pairing, though I've seen and read it many times before.

But I won't watch this version again soon. I have compassion for Mrs. CFG's poor nerves.

What do you think? Have you seen the two (or more) P&P versions? Feel free to take the little poll or write a comment.

Aside from the fact that Helena Bonham Carter appeared in two of these films, they really don't have any connection -- except that I saw them in the past couple of weeks and didn't want to do a whole post on any one of them. They're all decent films, though, and some are a little off the beaten track, so I thought it might be worth calling them to your attention.

"The King's Speech" (2010) ✰✰✰✰ -- The best of the five, but not the one I'd rate my favorite. Geoffrey Rush does a wonderful job portraying Lionel Logue's unbroken cool in the face of a monarch who is wrathful and pitiful at the same time. Actually, that cool is broken once, when his wife comes home unexpectedly and finds the Queen having tea alone at her table. Perhaps not my favorite because it's not about love (the Chick Flick Guy's favorite topic) although Helena Bonham Carter's manifest adoration for and complete support of her husband, the King, is great.

"That Thing You Do" (1996) ✰✰✰✰ -- About as far from "The King's Speech" as you can get (and still have a movie I'd watch.) Tom Hanks' clever film takes us back to the early 1960s, albeit a version of that decade that's as freshly scrubbed as a Mouseketeer. He recreates the sound of the times in a clever soundtrack and even handles the prickly race issue with some unthreatening characters. Liv Tyler is as sweet as she's ever been -- almost diabetes-inducing. Tom Everett Scott does a great job, sadly making him as much a one-hit wonder as his band in the film. Hanks does a lovely, smirking supporting role and Obba Babatunde and Steve Zahn are scene stealers. I'd watch this again right now.

"Converstions with Other Women" (2005) ✰✰✰✰ -- A fascinating film on a couple of levels. It uses a split-screen double shot for almost the entire film. Sometimes the action is shared with flashback, sometimes it's the same moment from two angles, sometimes it's different takes. It feels much like an adapted stage play, as everything of significance takes place between just two characters. What I'm most intrigued by, however, is how it looks at the old topic of infidelity between two characters who, we're meant to believe, belong together. The relationship was doomed long ago, for reasons we don't quite know, but like one of the characters, we keep looking for a way for it to work. And then are satisfied when it doesn't. It's the kind of film that makes a Chick Flick Guy feel more mature. By the way, for CFG regulars, it has a bouquet toss not mentioned in my earlier post on bridal flowers.

"Something Borrowed" (2011) ✰✰✰ -- In some ways, this is the opposite of "Conversations." It's the same theme, but handled in a rather drawn out, and occasionally tedious fashion. The good movies don't have you saying, "We know what's going to happen. Stop putting it off." But this move has you saying that. It does throw in a few minor curves, but it still tries to have you buy into a rather shaky (to my mind) happily ever after. Kate Hudson's the big name in this film, but not the focus, which is kind of nice. By the way, the film is based on a novel that is part of a series. Which explains the "To be continued" notice during the credits.

"Anything Else" (2003) ✰✰✰ -- Perhaps the most depressing romantic comedy ever. Christina Ricci may as well be wearing horns for all the discomfiting devilment she, as Jerry Falk's girlfriend Amanda, inflicts on Falk, played by Jason Biggs. But she's not the only one who torments his character by manipulating him. There's a psychiatrist, an agent, Amanda's mother and Falk's pal/mentor, played by the moviemaker himself, Woody Allen. This is classic Allen angst unrelieved by optimism. Yeah, there are jokes, but there is no levity. Well-made, well-acted, not too enjoyable. But if I told Allen that, he's say, "Yes, but it's like anything else."