Tag Archive for "Reviews"

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The Feministing Rom Com Review: Going the Distance

This movie is genuinely romantic. It is genuinely comedic. It is not horrendously sexist. Writers, directors, producers, aspiring best boys and key grips, take note: Going the Distance is a rare example of rom com done right. For one thing, I laughed. I laughed really hard, which doesn’t often happen when I’m watching a romantic comedy. This movie is damn funny. It passes the Bechdel test. It also more than earns its R-rating – there’s a lot of f-bombs and Drew Barrymore, on more than one occasion, tells someone to suck her dick. And hey, maybe one of these days a black person will get more than a handful of lines and an actual name in a rom com. ...

By Chloe Angyal • 13 years ago

The Feministing Rom Com Review: Killers

Sometimes, people surprise you. In the case of Katherine Heigl’s character in Killers, people surprise you by revealing that they are are CIA-trained spies and killers. In the case of this reviewer, they surprise you by making a not-horrendous movie despite being named Katherine Heigl. Perhaps it’s because after Knocked Up, 27 Dresses and The Ugly Truth, my expectations of a movie starring Heigl were lowered so far that it would have been hard for Killers to truly disappoint. And it didn’t – not totally.

Heigl plays Jen, a software salesperson of some kind who has recently been dumped by her boyfriend and is vacationing in Nice with her parents. We learn in the first thirty seconds that she’s been dumped, ...

By Chloe Angyal • 13 years ago

The Feministing Rom Com Review: Just Wright

Leslie Wright is unlucky in love. At 35, she has a successful career, a loving family and everything else a woman could need. Except, of course, a husband. It’s not for lack of trying (this is a rom com, after all; in rom com land – and in the real world, apparently – there’s no such thing as a happily single 35-year-old Black woman). When we first meet Leslie, she’s on a blind date with a great man. They talk, they laugh, and everything seems to be going well until he tells her that he just wants to be friends – he thinks she’d make “the perfect home girl.” Leslie, who’s heard this many times before, returns home ...

Leslie Wright is unlucky in love. At 35, she has a successful career, a loving family and everything else a woman could need. Except, of course, a husband. It’s not for lack of trying (this is ...

By Lori Adelman • 13 years ago

“Queer Sex Doesn’t Count” And Nine Other Myths Uncovered- And Debunked- at the Harvard “Rethinking Virginity” Conference

Yesterday, Chloe and I had the privilege and honor of speaking at the Rethinking Virginity Conference at Harvard University. The conference was organized by Lena Chen, blogger extraordinaire and recent Feministing Five interviewee, and brought together an incredibly diverse and impressive group of feminists, who dropped some serious knowledge on all things virgin-themed. One of the most interesting parts of the panel was learning how much misinformation exists around issues of virginity, sex, and our bodies. This isn’t exactly breaking news- in fact, our very own Jessica Valenti wrote an entire book about it. But the quest to educate and rethink harmful cultural norms and standards is never finished. So I’ve compiled ten myths ...

By Chloe Angyal • 13 years ago

The Feministing Rom Com Review: The Back-up Plan

The Back-up Plan, starring Jennifer Lopez and some dude with killer blue eyes who you’ve never heard of, is about Zoe, a woman in her mid-thirties – I’m assuming, because her age is never specified – who, finding herself without a significant other and determined not to miss her chance to have a baby, decides to be artificially inseminated and raise the child alone. However, mere moments after said insemination takes place, she meets a gorgeous man who runs a goat cheese farm (seriously, cheese? Why didn’t they just make him a chocolatier? Or a purveyor of fine [insert other thing all women supposedly love]?). Stan, the cheese farmer, and Zoe, the former internet start-up employee who now owns a ...

By Chloe Angyal • 14 years ago

The Feministing Rom Com Review: Date Night

Romantic comedies are usually about people getting together. Against all the odds, despite all the obstacles, after ninety minutes, we know these two people will finally get together and make out as the credits roll, then presumably get married and have lots of babies once we leave the theater and give them some privacy. This is the promise of the rom com: Obstacles will be overcome and love will be triumphant, and two people who started off alone (or with people whom the audience knows are totally wrong for them) will find each other and live happily ever after.
Date Night, starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey, is about a married couple who already found each other ...

By Chloe Angyal • 14 years ago

The Feministing Rom Com Review: The Bounty Hunter

Remember in Bambi, when Thumper’s parents tell him that “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all”? If I were to take Mrs. Thumper’s advice, this review would be about two sentences long.
Luckily, I don’t adhere to the Mrs. Thumper school of reviewing, so I’ve got plenty to say about The Bounty Hunter.
This movie is terrible, and not in a “so terrible it’s kinda good” sort of way. The central relationship in the movie is an abusive one, played for laughs and sighs of “that’s so romantic!” The central characters are two thoroughly unpleasant people who over the course of the movie realize -wrongly – that they should never have split up, ...

By Chloe Angyal • 14 years ago

The Feministing Rom Com Review: She’s Out of My League

She’s Out of My League is testament to the power of low expectations. To put it in romantic comedy terms, imagine you’re a chronically single woman whose friends, family and telegenic dog all pity you. Then your sassy friend sets you up on a date with a man who she says isn’t that great of a guy but is worth a shot, because you’ve been single for, like, ever. And even though you begin the evening dreading the awkward silences and unfunny jokes that are no doubt in store, you find that he’s actually quite bearable and that you might even consider seeing him again. That’s She’s Out of My League, which tries to be a romantic comedy ...