“Women are much more social,” Fine says. “Guys are expected to do for themselves. Women are cooperative. All women are girlfriends. Not all guys are buddies.”
You may not agree with Fine that all of us ladies are girlfriends – the various versions of Claire Boothe Luce’s play “The Women” contain a number of backstabbers. But certainly the greater socialization attributed to women could explain why there are few female equivalents of the buddy picture. Every chick flick is a potential buddy movie. Yet two stand out as female buddy pictures – the provocative “Thelma and Louise,” which sets our heroines on the buddy road of trial and relationship development; and the recent “Bridesmaids,” which proved that when it comes to being smart and sexy, the gals have it all over the guys.
A fine bromance
The buddy genre has come a long way from the days of Newman and Redford and even Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as the sartorially splendid cops on “Miami Vice.” Which is not necessarily a good thing.
On the one hand, the advent of equal rights for women and gays has enabled the buddy genre to branch out into the bromance, where the latent homosexuality – or at least, latent homoeroticism – of the buddy story is acknowledged or played for laughs, as it is in the new “Sherlock” movies and the big-screen adaptation of TV’s “Starsky and Hutch.”
“As homosexuality has become more acceptable, people are starting to read into two guys as close friends,” Fine observes.
On the other hand, the buddy pix has descended to the low-bro depths of films like “Pineapple Express” and “The Hangover”and the “Harold & Kumar” series, indeed almost anything starring Seth Rogen and Zach Galifianakis, who are not likely to make any woman forget Newman and Redford.
Still, on still another hand – yes, we’re a dancing Shiva of other hands – this past summer gave us “Crazy Stupid Love,” in which swoon-worthy lone wolf Ryan Gosling went all Pygmalion on hapless everyman Steve Carell and learned something about being a domesticated mensch in the process.
It is a buddy comedy that lets the ladies in. Rather than serve as the jealous wedge, they are the emotional glue that weaves the guys into what Bogie’s world-weary Rick – out for a stroll in the desert with Claude Rains’ slippery Louie – would call “a beautiful friendship.”
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