Whether we will admit it or not, after we got dragged kicking and screaming to these movies we somehow found ourselves really enjoying them. Once the film was over of course we had to make the standard derogatory comments about how lame they were, but inside we were secretly glad our wives or girlfriends forced us to go to see it. If you went to these movies with another dude, well…uh…that’s cool too. Why four? Because most of these movies suck.

The Princess Bride

Tag Line: Scaling the Cliffs of Insanity, Battling Rodents of Unusual Size, Facing torture in the Pit of Despair. - True love has never been a snap.

What it Promised: At best we thought it might be some syrupy fairy tale appealing to 12 year old girls, taking a love story and adding a few elements to make it appealing to 8 year old boys as well. At worst we thought it was going to be a lame attempt to modernize a classic love story, a “re-imagining” of some classic romance.

The end result, we were sure, would be a horrible mess where half the cast would forget their accents partway through the movie and the female lead would turn against convention by finding her inner woman power, transforming into a strong modern woman by the end of the film and burning her bra or corset or whatever. Either way, the thought of seeing a movie with a title like “The Princess Bride” made us go into our own Pit of Despair.

Why Guys Actually Liked It: It was pretty damn funny. Yeah the old fashioned love story was “re-imagined”, but it was re-imagined with Andre the frikkin Giant!

Never taking itself seriously, the film took the best clichés from swashbuckling romances that came before it and ran with them. It was based on a book by William Goldman who apparently wrote the book while wrestling alligators, BASE jumping and other manly things because when it came time to name things that appeared in the film he gave them such awesome monikers like “The Cliffs of Insanity” and “The Pits of Despair” to show us he wasn’t messing around. Yeah this was a fairy tale, but it was going to be a bad ass parody at the same time.

Nothing about the traditional fairy tale was sacred and everything was fair game. You need an evil prince? Screw it, we’ll give you one, his name is Prince Humperdinck. There was probably a King Slapherass too but he was left out of the film because he was too boring.

Sure we had to put up with the love story between Wesley and Buttercup but it was a relatively minor price to pay to watch scenes like Carey Elwes and Andre the Giant debate the merits of different styles of fighting while trying to knock each other unconscious.

In addition, in a brilliant bit of casting Mandy Patinkin channeled his inner Tony Montana and delivered probably one of the only lines any guy can recite from a chick flick:

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Which is basically the fairy tale equivalent to “Say hello to my little friend.”

Love Actually

Tag Line: Love actually is all around.

What it Promised: If you were a guy it didn’t promise anything good. The title of the movie and the tag line for it basically repeated themselves. The message could not have been any clearer if they called the movie “DO NOT SEE THIS IF YOU ARE A GUY!”. This promised to be nothing more than a two hour suck fest that would have us envying coyotes for their ability to chew off a limb to escape traps.

Plus we heard the movie was shot by the British which meant that the actors would be mumbling about love in ridiculous accents and using slang we wouldn’t be able to understand. Yeah, Snatch was a great movie but this film didn’t look like there was going to be any guns, fighting or mobsters involved, unless it was going to be some weird gangster love story.

Why Guys Actually Liked It: Kiera Knightly, Elisha Cuthbert, Denise Richards, Shannon Elizabeth what the hell? This wasn’t a chick flick it was a Maxim magazine shoot! They even threw in some gratuitous nudity with that chick who was the movie stand in. It was like the director, Richard Curtis pulled some weird bait and switch with this movie, like a mom covering brussel sprouts in chocolate.

All this talent on display was just a small part of the movie though because the thing was also funny. Apparently the British can make with the haha even without having shootouts and bad guys with ugly teeth, who knew? Bill Nighy was hilarious as the over the hill rock star and Hugh Grant  cracked us up even though he just played the same character he’s played in the last 20  movies he’s been in. Throw in that dude who went to America to get laid and there were enough laughs to keep us going between the dull parts.

Finally we admit that for each of us at least one of the love stories actually got to us. No, we didn’t really care for watching Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman work out their old people love problems but we reluctantly admit that most of the other stories were interesting, if not downright engaging because the emotions were nicely balanced with a bit of comedy. Except for the chick with the brother in the mental hospital, she was just annoying.

Another reason we liked was because some of the stories are pretty much carbon copies of a lot of typical male fantasies. The boss and the secretary, the guy with 2 (or more) women, meeting a super model mom, getting it on with the maid. So even with the other unappealing story lines there was enough to keep us interested which is a feat for a movie centered around love and made by the Brits.

The Joy Luck Club

Tag Line: Between Every Mother and Daughter Lies A Story of Generations

What it Promised: Steel Magnolias…with Asian chicks. Quirky girls dealing with moms who didn’t love/respect/understand them while trying to find love from some abusive/uncaring/unattainable man. When I saw that I was one of  4 guys in the theater I figured I was in for a royal two hour slap to the groin.

Why Guys Actually Liked It: Yeah sure the movie had the weak, cry baby daughters, but damn the moms in this movie were hard core old school bad-asses. This weren’t your typical weepy moms we’re used to seeing. These ladies didn’t sit around wondering why life done them wrong, they took arms against a sea of trouble and kicked serious ass…scary style.

You want to cheat on one of these moms? She ain’t going cry  over a cup of tea with her friends, she’s going to drown your only son. Extreme? Hell yeah. Scary? Definitely. But at least it more interesting than your usual “He done cheated on me boo hoo” crap.

I will admit that  the other part of the movie that worked was that the moms went through some SERIOUSLY sad events. This was like the Roger Clemens of sad movies; they totally juiced that angle of the movie to the extant that even guys were like “Damn, that was all sad and what not.” Not only was one of the moms fleeing a war, while seriously ill, trying to save her twins, but she eventually has to leave them on the roadside with money and jewels hoping someone would take care of her kids.

If you are reading this and thinking you weren’t affected by the film then I say go back to kicking puppies liar. So yeah the movie was effective and interesting…still, let it be known, I did not cry. Might have been some dust in the theater.

Bull Durham

The last movie on this list was going to be Wild Things with Neve Campbell and Denise Richards before she was crazy. I thought this was a tender story about forbidden love between two young women. But apparently it was just some bad soft core B thriller with gratuitous nudity. Who knew?

So Bull Durham makes this list. You may think this isn’t a chick flick but I found it on a list of top chick flicks so it counts.

Tag Line: A Major League Story In  Minor League Town

What it Promised: Damn, we had no idea what this was going to promise. It sounded like a baseball movie but then there was that Susan Sarandon chick on the poster so we were suspicious. Plus our girlfriends seemed a little too anxious to agree to go see the movie. This confused us from the get go.

Why Guys Actually Liked It: It was a sports movie, kind of. Yeah we got suckered a bit with the Susan Sarandon, cougar-super groupie love story, but the rest of the film was pretty entertaining in showing us the life of a minor league ball player.

It was almost like the guys in the movie found out they were stuck in a quasi-chick flick and were determined to bust out and have some fun, like dudes crashing a wedding shower. There was enough humour and guy talk that we made it through the goofy love story. We could even pretend that the scenes with Sarandon were just long commercials for another movie.

Bonus, there were no cry baby moments to suffer through. Unless you count the bitter sweetness of Costner’s character breaking the minor league home run record. And that is ok because that is pretty sad when you think about it.