This is decidedly the most "chick" of the chick flicks I have seen - all female affirmation and fantasy. I can't imagine the "date" sitting through this with much pleasure, except of course for the comely Cameron Diaz and to my eyes comelier Kate Winslet, who was inexplicably playing the "plain" one, and who even more inexplicably ended up with a sweet but completely unattractive Jack Black. But the eye candy stakes on the other side were more than compensated for by the godlike Jude Law (my word, if I were 20 years younger, I would get on a plane and hunt that man DOWN!!!). Jude was playing completely against type (this is the female fantasy part) by being a totally NICE guy who weeps when Cameron is going to leave him and has two beautiful daughters whom he adores and is not even divorced, he's widowed, which is of course oh, so romantic... And of course all this sounds like a sick-making anti-feminist nightmare, except that the message seemed to be that women needed to divest themselves of attractive men who were bad for them (and find themselves an even more attractive one like Jude who would be good for them, yes, I know) and stick up for themselves and get a life, and the whole premise was that both these women were having holidays BY THEMSELVES (which of course I'm going to be doing in less than two months time) and changed their lives and it was really their decision and not because they were rescued by some man. And I'm sounding pretty incoherent, but that's probably because I'm thinking about Jude Law with his tousled blond locks and his faded blue jeans and I haven't had my first coffee yet today...
I love romantic comedies; in fact, some of my all time favourite movies fall into that genre - The Sure Thing, Say Anything, High Fidelity (oh, did I mention they also have to star John Cusack?), or Working Girl (well, a young and still attractive Harrison Ford will do nicely, too), or, of course, pretty much anything with Audrey Hepburn in it, especially if it's also starring either Gregory Peck or Cary Grant. Nowadays they do make me feel a bit "ubi sunt" and wishing I were 20 or even 10 years younger. I fear even Miss Brodie in her "Prime" was younger than I am now... sigh. This is not to say that I am not totally content with my postmodern bohemian spinster state, but... a woman can still dream.