The Five Ingredients of Shitty Chick Flicks ... And How to Fix Them

Bridesmaids: A chick flick that doesn't suck.

After my most recent breakup, my best friends insisted we drink wine and watch Sex and the City: The Movie. I was hesitant, anticipating a steaming pile of cinematic heartbreak with the obligatory wedding on top, but I was too stricken, starving, and sleepless to fight them.

Turns out my suspicions were correct: Sex and the City worked hard to stoke the dying embers of the romantic bullshit that allows anyone to even become heartbroken in the first place. That, and convince me life would be more awesome with $800 shoes.

So the fact that many people believe the classic romantic comedy is dying a slow death and that the dearth of successful chick flicks in 2011 is indicative of that trend is welcome news indeed.

Because when a movie sets out to manipulate me, my instinct is to resist. I grit my teeth and imagine a smarmy studio executive who has emotional manipulation down to a recipe: Take a serving of "terminal cancer" topped with a heaping dose of "love beating the odds" and a dash of "waxing poetic on shit being temporary and painful, but ultimately worth it" and finish it off with a scene of someone running barefoot in the rain ... and they know they've got me.