Iron Man, the big guy on the action screen right now, lives life encased in a suit of high-tech armor that protects the fragile ticker of a formerly heartless arms dealer. But on the battlefield of romantic comedy these days, a lot of men are letting it all hang out — emotions as well as private parts. Years ago, Matthew McConaughey discovered a viable character niche for himself playing a man-tanned hero with a mushy center. Then Steve Carell, as a middle-aged virgin, made men grin, women coo — and everybody buy movie tickets. Now look what's happened: Peter the doughy L.A. dude in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Tom the NYC dreamboat in Made of Honor have become girls.
How sexist of me. What I mean is that Jason Segel and Patrick Dempsey, the stars of this spring's high-profile rom-coms, play men proudly showing more feminine virtues. Segel's Peter, dumped by his TV-star girlfriend, wails like a chick in need of Kleenex and a fainting couch. So noisily does he keen in the Hawaiian hotel room he hoped would bring him solace, in fact, that guests phone the front desk after overhearing the piercing sounds of a woman crying. (With the linear efficiency we traditionally associate with guy behavior, his ex has moved on to her next relationship, with a rocker beau — in the same hotel.) Meanwhile, sleepless in Manhattan, Dempsey's Tom is shocked to acknowledge that he wants to make a girlfriend of a longtime girl friend. The lady is about to get married to someone else. So the newly enlightened suitor, a serial dater no more, reorders his basketball-with-the-buddies priorities to put together bridal-party gift baskets: In the guise of being an exemplary maid of honor, he's prepared to do traditional, soap-and-candles women's work.
These men behaving softly (but still manfully) are no accidents of nature or of the seasonal movie release calendar. They're diplomats of unisex appeal in the latest Hollywood campaign to keep romantic comedies viable — and profitable. And they join a men's group that includes Seth Rogen as a father-to-be in Knocked Up, Michael Cera as a father-to-be in Juno, Dempsey's earlier version of second-choice Mr. Charming in Enchanted, and even, in his misplaced way, Adam Sandler in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. Segel's and Dempsey's heroes are sexually experienced men who happen to be at ease with their inner softies — the kind of fellas with whom any male moviegoer might enjoy knocking back beers, and any female might want to cuddle. They're conveniently suitable for all quadrants, male and female, under 25 and over.
NEXT PAGE: ''The bad news is that — as with any experiment involving gender, Hollywood, and the mutable factors that go into taste — finding the perfect recipe for a successful heterosexual romantic-comedy hero is subject to operator error.''
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