As a female about to graduate and begin fighting my way into the "boy's club" of comedy, I'm holding my breath and crossing my fingers for the success of "Baby Mama," opening this Friday and starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. While there are plenty of female-driven "comedies," they always seem to be powered by the humor of a beautiful star who still can't seem to catch a man, despite her good looks and winning personality... And even though I liked "27 Dresses" as much as the next girl, the movies I love are "Animal House," "Old School," "Wedding Crashers," "Superbad"... I've been ready to see women take on that type of comedy for a long time, and "Baby Mama" appears to be our first foray into the world of the male-driven "buddy comedy."
What is interesting to me, however, is just how difficult it is for people to accept that women are funny, too. If it were male leads, people would approach it by asking, I wonder if that movie will be funny? But here, with two women headlining, people ask, I wonder if women can be funny? There is so much pressure, so much riding on the success of the film -- if it doesn't do well, the studio won't just cut their losses and try to make a funnier female "buddy comedy" next time, they'll continue to relegate the funny women to their traditional roles: the quirky best friend of the beautiful romantic-comedy lead.
Check out this article in this past Sunday's LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-feypoehler20apr20,0,863720.story
It was surprising to me how offensive some of the interviewer's comments were! Two examples: "I think it makes the movie fresh, that you two are the stars. But I'm just thinking from the marketing point of view. You don't make for a great poster," and "Do you think it's a harder sell for Universal because there's no movie star or large-breasted woman on the poster?" I'm sorry, but has anyone ever asked if a movie would be a better sell if there's a well-endowed man on the poster? And as far as the "star" element goes, I'll have to agree with Poehler's answer that there were no stars on the "Superbad" poster until the movie came out, and then there were. It's hard enough to develop and execute a film that makes a wide audience laugh -- why not let these comedians defend their humor, not their gender?
1 comment:
It's funny because I saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall this weekend (which I loved, BTW) and throughout the entire film, I kept wondering what, if any, were the female equivalents to it. That is, Judd Apatow has re-popularized the genre of what I think of as the schlubby or frumpy male comedy. Films like Knocked Up, 40 Year Old Virgin and now Sarah Marshall all feature likable, hilarious lead men who are, let's face it, not very attractive. Yet physical attributes clearly come second to what really matters: their personalities so in the end, it is believable that Jason Segal not only dated Kristen Bell but also winds up with Mila Kunis or that Seth Rogen knocks up Katherine Heigl. On the one hand, these films seem to be liberating in their removal of the glamour of film but they do so only for the men--in all of the Judd Apatow productions, women are still required to be beautiful and glamorous and ultimately, secondary to the fabulous humor and personalities of the male protagonists.
Sadly, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there is no female equivalent on film because while male characters can have the luxury of relying just on their personalities and senses of humor, women must continue to rely on being physically attractive to make them appealing to other characters and the audience as well. It's something that you see even in the make-up of today's Hollywood stars where the likelihood of seeing a physically unattractive but well-accepted male star (Paul Giametti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H Macy) is much greater than finding any unattractive female stars.
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