Present Imperfect

It’s called “Rodeo,” actually. | July 31, 2007

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (maybe a Victrola one that only plays scratchy songs about wide-eyed girls from Appalachia who hold various bluegrass instruments on their dirty knees), I was reading an article in The New Yorker t’other day...

I won’t bore you with the yuppie details, but in it, David Denby compares today’s hit romantic comedies to the screwball comedies of Preston Sturges and Frank Capra. And he wonders where all the funny women went. And so do I.

Don’t get me wrong: I laughed so hard during “Knocked Up” that I think I may have broken a rib. I’ve seen “Wedding Crashers” and “40 Year-Old-Virgin” about twenty times. Each. And while women like Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, and Kristen Wiig are hilarious in these films, they’re far outnumbered — and outjoked — by the men in these movies. Plus, their appeal as funny women is that they’re crazy: overbearing momzillas, drunk driving party girls, and “stage-five clingers” — not leading ladies. The closest we’ve gotten to a funny-as-her-loser-leading-man actress is Katherine Keener in “Virgin,” and she’s still overshadowed by the male ensemble cast.

Which, you know, is okay. Really. I’m not railing against the formula these films are built on (lonely, funny loser meets gorgeous woman who learns to loosen up and love him). I just want to know who’s gonna write these actresses into a film where they can be funny without, I dunno, shoe shopping or trying to pull of the perfect wedding with a pack of crrrrrraaaaazzzzy in-laws in tow! Somebody give me the movie about a chick who drinks too much beer and spends her days watching YouTube videos and making up a jig she calls “the meat hoedown” to that Aaron Copeland song they used to play on the “Beef: It’s what’s for dinner” commercials.

Not that I’d know...