10 Chick Flicks That Are Actually Good

  Everyone who knows me knows that I hate chick flicks. But today, I'm going to do something my friends never thought possible, and that is come up with 10 chick flicks that I actually like. Considering "chick flick" is not an actual genre, and it's pretty subjective what actually qualifies, I will give you my definition...

  Chick flick: A film geared towards a female audience that you'd watch at a sleepover or after a breakup, and that guys are often too embarrassed to admit they like/cried during. 

For the record, I am excluding period pieces like Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, Belle, The Painted Veil, Titanic, etc,  musicals like Dirty Dancing, Greece, and La La Land, and also anything that came out before the 2000's. This is MY personal list of favorite chick flicks, so if you came here to get YOUR personal favorite validated, the exit is that way. ––> 

With that, and starting in no particular order, here we go!

She's The Man

  After getting rid of the girl's soccer team due to budget cuts, Viola (Amanda Bynes), pretends to be her brother so that she can still play. Now she must learn to act like a boy in order to convince her teammates. The trouble starts when she begins to fall for one of them.
  What makes this movie so great is the stereotypes Viola tries to project of how she views men, before realizing that they're not THAT different from women. This was an extremely funny film and definitely worth watching if you can get over Channing Tatum's wooden acting.

The Fault In Our Stars

  Adapted from the lovely John Green book of the same name, The Fault In Our Stars is the story of two teens who meet in a cancer support group. Not knowing exactly how long one of them has to live, they try to make the best of their current situation.
  I absolutely loved this book and the movie follows it to a T. While there are definitely a couple of sappy moments, The Fault In Our Stars never strays away from the hardships of cancer and suffering.  If you have a heart, you will cry. If you don't, you'll still appreciate this film for its philosophies, Shailene Woodley's excellent performance, and its emotional potency. 

Enchanted

  Nothing says chick flick more than a Disney Princess movie. In Enchanted, our cartoon Princess is banished to the real life, and horrible city of New York, preventing Giselle from marrying her lover of one day.
  I absolutely adore this film and the way it takes cliches of Disney Princess movies and shows the ridiculousness of them in real life. It's funny, it's entertaining, it's cute, and we get super fun performances from Amy Adams, Susan Sarandon, James Marsden, and Patrick Dempsey. 

Silver Lining Playbook

  Fresh out of a mental institution, Pat (Bradley Cooper) goes to live with his parents. Trying to get his ex-wife's friend Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) to deliver a letter to her, he agrees to be Tiffany's partner in a dance competition.
  This rom-com succeeds on multiple levels: comedically, emotionally, and authentically. It's an unpredictable and refreshing film that takes on complicated subjects like mental illness and manages to hit us in the feels while doing it. 

Mean Girls

  While I feel this film needs no introduction, I will give one anyway. Mean Girls is the story of a quirky homeschool girl from Africa that moves to America and is thrown into public school. She quickly learns which cliques are the cool ones, which ones aren't, and that popularity takes you a lot further than character.
  Mean Girls is one of the funniest movies out there, nailing how it is to be a girl and the passive-aggressive world of teenagers. For a movie geared toward teens, it's actually pretty mature, focusing on how our words and actions effect others.

Blue Valentine

    Blue Valentine follows the story of a young couple in the beginning of their relationship when the romance is just beginning, and into their middle-aged years where it begins to fall apart.
  This is definitely the movie you will want to watch after a breakup or if you want your happily-ever-after completely spoiled. Seriously though, this film wrecked me. 

  Ryan Gosling and Michelle William's performances were so raw and uncomfortable to watch at times, but that is what made it so beautiful. Blue Valentine is an absolute masterpiece that you probably won't want to see more than once. 

500 Days Of Summer

    This is a love story about a man who falls deeply in love with a woman who doesn't believe in love. It's about expectations, and how we perceive a relationship while we're in it, verses how it actually is. That is what I love most about this movie. It uses the audiences expectations against the audience, all while demonstrating things we've accurately experienced ourselves in relationships.
  500 Days of Summer is just as deep and layered as it is hilarious, which makes it one of the best (if not the best) of the chick flick genre. 

The Spectacular Now

      When Sutter Keely (Miles Teller), a troubled high school senior, falls in love with "the good girl" Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley), people begin to get hurt.
  This film is smart, nuanced, unsentimental, and deep. It puts the audience in a familiar, relatable backdrop of highschool and then gives us three-dimensional characters that aren't always what they appear to be. It's more somber and realistic than your usual chick-flick, but that's what makes it so much better. The quiet moments that this movie is made of, are never anything other than sincere.

The Proposal

  Moving onto a more light-hearted film, The Proposal is about a Canadian-buisness woman who is about to be deported back to Canada. Not wanting to lose everything she's worked so hard for, she convinces her assistant to marry her for a Visa, in exchange for a promotion. Let's just say that hilarity ensues.
   Is it a particularly deep film? No. Is it formulaic? Yes. But due to casting of the charming, charismatic talents of Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock, we are in for one extremely entertaining guilty pleasure.

Bridesmaids

  When Annie (Kristen Wigg) learns that her best friend is engaged, she takes on the role of maid-of-honor. Determined to make things perfect, she struggles to handle the colorful, and sometimes obnoxious bridesmaids chosen along side her. 
  Our cast of comedic-ladies give Bridesmaids everything they've got, pulling out all of the gags, irreverent humor, and wit that make perfect ingredients for any comedy. In a similar strain to Mean Girls, Bridesmaids dives into the competitive nature and petty attitudes of women in a way that is just as revealing and true as it is amusing. Definitely give this one a whirl next girl's night.



Thank you for reading and be sure to leave your favorite chick flicks in the comments section!

Beauty and the Beast Review (2017)

Beauty and the Beast

  Before I go into this review, I must say that the first time I saw the original Beauty and the Beast was two years ago. After that, my next experience was last Saturday, watching the live action. I remember really liking the original, and I was looking forward to the live action mainly because it had such massive talents behind it. Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ian Mckellen, and Emma Thompson to name a few. The only person I was really worried about, was Emma Watson. While she made a good Hermione, her acting otherwise hasn't impressed me much. Thankfully she did a wonderful job here.
  If you've seen the film, it goes without saying that the production and the set pieces are absolutely stunning. Everything was so elaborate and big, which gave the tone of the film this enchanting, magical quality.
  As far as the other aspects of the film, it was overwhelmingly mediocre. I know it's for kids, but I couldn't help thinking the entire time that a rated PG-13/R version of it would have been much more interesting to watch. Now that may sound really weird, but hear me out. . . 

  Imagine a film where the beast is actually terrifying, the action is gritty, and the stakes are high. Imagine a film where the characters react to talking furniture the way someone might react to it in a horror movie. A world that's a little less optimistic and little more somber. Where the romance comes off as twisted as it actually is, and where they dive into the psychological aspects of their connection/chemistry.  

   That may sound totally unappealing to you, I don't know. I just personally like to see a little more reality in my fantasy. A fresh, more layered take on what we know. I didn't want to feel like I was still watching a campy cartoon, yet that was how I felt.

  In the end, Beauty and the Beast was still enjoyable to watch, but it was also very safe and ultimately just Disney hashing out its old material for another buck. 6 out of 10 stars. (Worth Ticket Price)