So far, my search for intelligent chicks in the summer movies is proving to be a bust.
Last week, I went on opening day to see "Made of Honor" with my friend Jodie, a recovering romantic-comedy writer. It had been a rough week. We needed our Friday afternoon guilty pleasure -- as I suspect did the almost entirely female audience. "Made of Honor" is a gender-reversed retelling of the Julia Roberts 1997 hit, "My Best Friend's Wedding"; in this case, the rueful hero is a womanizing cream puff played by "Grey's Anatomy's" McDreamy Patrick Dempsey.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, May 15, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 30 words Type of Material: Correction
Movie actresses: An article in Wednesday's Calendar section about the careers of actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz misspelled the last name of race car driver Danica Patrick as Patric.
About 10 minutes into the movie, we were all but hurling our popcorn at the screen.
Here's the range of female characters: slut, nasty slut, stupid slut, mean slut and fat friend. Our heroine, played by Michelle Monaghan, was allowed to be . . . a cipher, with no discernible personality other than an ability to guess what dessert would most satiate McDreamy. I'll take the Judd Apatow world of "Knocked Up" and "40-Year-Old Virgin" any day -- the men might be schlubs, but the women are faster, smarter creatures. I'll take crumbs if I have to.
Is it me or is it a little depressing to see Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow slumming it as pretty Pepper Potts in the "Iron Man" juggernaut? At 35, the svelte Paltrow is playing what some directors call the handbag part, the accessory, the girlfriend role, a warm-body-type role usually assigned to the likes of Jessica Alba, Katie Holmes or a legion of interchangeable Bond girls.
Undeniably her agents over at CAA are doing a little jig that Gwynnie is now in the highest-grossing film of her career and has been reintroduced to a legion of moviegoers who were into "Bob the Builder" when she was doing "Shakespeare in Love." People who've become accustomed to the voiceless, blanded-out Paltrow of fashion spreads and Estee Lauder ads will be surprised to see her fey sense of irony, her capacity for sly humor that creeps out when she's actually acting.
Still, nearly 10 years after she claimed her Oscar in a fairy-tale pink dress, Paltrow's assuming a part that she would have played while she was climbing her way to the top.
Ditto for Cameron Diaz, another pretty 35-year-old who rocketed to success 10 years ago wearing sperm in her hair in "There's Something About Mary." She also played second banana to Roberts in "My Best Friend's Wedding," donning the role of the threatening fiancee, and almost stealing the movie when she responds to Roberts' challenge to sing karaoke by croaking horrifically but with the gusto of the eternally plucky. Now she's taking the Brittany Murphy role opposite Ashton Kutcher in "What Happens in Vegas," which opened (quite successfully, it should be noted) last Friday.
