Movie Guys: The New Girls?

Still, these guys have got their work cut out for them. While a few famous sweet-spot rom-coms have grossed over $100 million in recent decades — including Sweet Home Alabama, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, There's Something About Mary, and that mutant monster hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding — many more have stalled below the $50 million mark. Personally, I'd argue that for-the-girls contraptions like No Reservations and Because I Said So tanked because they were vapid (and in the case of Rumor Has It, insultingly awful). But somehow that failure to launch has been ascribed to the audience — it's been pegged as too limited, too female, too hard to rouse from its TiVo'd marathon viewings of Dempsey on Grey's Anatomy. Market researchers have a point, up to a point. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Transformers also stank, yet boys loved them well past the $100 million mark. (This confirms my unresearched theory that boys will watch anything.)

Obviously, the new crop of more emotionally accessible heroes reflects studio calculations about how to reel males in for rom-coms. But they may also reflect the way more and more real young men live their lives in an Obama age. Can these new guy-centric, girl-friendly protagonists become box office heroes? Early data are encouraging. While Made of Honor opened to a respectable $15 million, Forgetting Sarah Marshall has grossed a healthy $45 million so far — and almost half the audience is male. The same was true for Knocked Up. Getting in touch with one's feminine side, not as a Tootsie joke or a slice of What Women Want cynicism but as part of a funny, sincere worldview, isn't just attractive to men on the screen. Men in the seats seem to like it too. There's a reason discerning males are digging Sarah Marshall's big, sad lummox Peter, and have designated Carell, Rogen, and Cera as crushworthy. What less-than-chiseled average guy wouldn't see a role model in these less-than-chiseled, babe-magnet stars?

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. And, pssst, those operators are mostly male. This may be why, in Made of Honor, absolutely every female character with the exception of Michelle Monaghan's bride-to-be is the butt of a joke. The movie showcases all Dempsey's assets and replicates the contours of his Enchanted persona. But his success comes at the expense of the fat bridesmaid, the dullard bridesmaid, and the bitchy bridesmaid. I'd like to think, with all my womanly heart, that mocking those unfortunate ladies simply to make Dempsey look more desirable was just one movie's misstep. Accidents are bound to happen. The studios, after all, are trying to answer a tricky question: What do women — and men — want out of a man?