Bosom Buddies

The due date of Baby Mama proved fortuitous, as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler recently squeezed out some box office success. In the process, writer/director Michael McCullers, with more than a little help from his leading ladies, may have given birth to not only a hit comedy, but that rarest of cinematic offerings–an amusing chick buddy flick in which its protagonists are simply allowed to have a good time and crack wise.

Fey and Poehler, along with Sarah Silverman, recently posed on the front of Vanity Fair, as an accompanying article asked readers, “Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?” (It turns out the magazine was spectacularly well-qualified to answer this one, since it ran a story entitled “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” by Christopher Hitchens, a few months earlier.) The conciliatory cover story went on to explore how, historically, bouncers have been tossing funny women out on the sidewalk in droves in front of Hollywood’s exclusive boys-only comedy clubhouse (perhaps a blessing in disguise on some minor level, given the male proclivity toward fart jokes–it had to be a bit smelly in there). But now, apparently, all this has changed.

What a load off. Since women are now allowed to be funny, this opens all kinds of doors for us–and not just the swinging kind that reliably boomerang back to thwack us in the face for that crucial pratfall sequence. Perhaps chicks can now also co-pilot a buddy movie without anyone getting hurt.

The boy buddy movie is, of course, a staple in American cinema. Hope & Crosby, Lemmon & Curtis, and Newman & Redford are amongst the illustrious pairings that raised the bar for man-friend mayhem and merry-making. Modern male duos have continued the tradition as weddings are crashed, wineries are toured, women are seduced, dope gets smoked, crime rings get busted, and hilarity of some sort generally ensues.

Yet strangely, there have been very few female buddy flicks in which a good time is had by all, and the death toll remains at nil by fable’s end.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was one of those rare, light-hearted capers. Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe played best friends who found themselves respectively chin-deep in handsome private detectives and not-exactly-stolen diamonds. The story concluded with a double wedding which, as all but your most stalwart of divorce attorneys will concede, was considered a happy ending for a couple of dames from the 1950s.

Fast forward to present day. Baby Mama joins the surprisingly thin ranks of cheerful buddy chick flicks in which the capering outpaces criminal cunning by a wide margin. If you don’t believe me, can you name another memorable female duo in modern filmdom that reached the end of their story and lived to frolic another day…besides Romy and Michelle?

It’s no joke–prior to the happy arrival of the Fey-Poehler opus, it was looking pretty grim out there for female friends on the big screen.

Thelma and Louise, arguably the most famous female buddy film of all time, starts off with a bang (aimed successfully in the general direction of a would-be rapist), and wraps with a double suicide. Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynsky get up to hellacious hijinks of a teenage sort in Heavenly Creatures by bludgeoning one chum’s mother who decides to separate them for having grown too chummy. Countless variations of this deadly theme are rife in cinematic archives.

A body count and comedic premise aren’t mutually exclusive concepts, of course. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones iced a large number of errant aliens in their adventures together whilst clad in those eternally chic and slimming black suits, but things somehow never seem as dire or politically-charged when it’s a giant man-eating cockroach that bites it.

Not all best girlfriends in film have been preoccupied with pulling off a convincing Dirty Harry impersonation–some are too busy dying of a tragic fatal disease. Beaches, of course, offers up the perennial favorite: cancer. Fried Green Tomatoes? If memory serves, the Ruth character succumbs to a fatal but vague case of taking to bed, growing weaker, and then floating nobly into the light. In light of this trend, Rachel Griffiths as Rhonda in Muriel’s Wedding got off lightly in comparison. After she and her best bud Muriel wrap up a particularly boisterous girls’ night out, which culminates in Rhonda’s rowdy threesome with two sailors, the poor girl finds herself rendered paraplegic (cancer strikes again, although at least she’s allowed to live).

It would be nice if cinematic girlfriends didn’t constantly have to ask each other, “Does this hearse make my butt look big?” Sadly, Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion has been one of the few modern chick buddy movies in which the leads hit the road with hilarity, instead of casualties, ensuing.

There have been plenty of other instances in which two strong female characters shared the screen, but you wouldn’t exactly call them friends. In Her Shoes, Black Widow, Single White Female, Death Becomes Her and other such fare, both funny and dramatic, tend to reduce women friends to back-stabbing hellcats who are too busy fighting over men to quip comically. Yet duos like Mel Gibson & Danny Glover, David Spade & Chris Farley, and Mike Meyers & Dana Carvey have all managed to brawl and/or banter side-by-side in an endless parade of silly scenarios, without once succumbing to the temptation to screw the other guy’s gal. Apparently, women haven’t been considered comedically adept, at least in part, because they took that whole, “Take my husband…please!” joke too literally.

While not exactly a buddy movie in the strictest sense, for some reason, fun-seeking female threesomes have often managed to enjoy slightly more success with audiences. In 1980, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lilly Tomlin formed a non-lethal league of lady friends in 9 to 5. This little gem offered a relatively boisterous example of three working girls (the office kind) that join forces to outwit a crude and overbearing male boss. Bonus: no one actually dies or sleeps with anyone else’s beau.

The more recent big-screen adaptation of Charlie’s Angels also fared well at the box office, due in no small part to liberal use of butt wiggles, hot pants, skin-tight catsuits, thigh-high boots, and even a sequel featuring a famously ripped Demi Moore in a bikini for that oh-so-essential demographic “cross” appeal. Fair enough–tongue-in-cheek delivery allowed for chuckles here and there, and again, at least there was no man stealing or cancer-stricken comrades. (Arguably the funniest aspect of this franchise was the suggestion that your average 40-year-old woman could go toe-to-toe with Cameron Diaz in a bikini showdown.) Along those lines, The Witches of Eastwick was an often amusing tale of three girlfriends, though they also, sadly, if temporarily, succumb to the tired plot trend of fighting over a boyfriend–the boyfriend from hell, in this case. Indeed, the actresses had to keep a straight face as they pretended to vie for the dubious prize of devilish Jack Nicholson’s affection and viable sperm.

You’ve come a long way, Baby Mama.

If the comedy clubhouse doors have indeed only recently and truly been pried open by filmmakers with a more female-friendly view, hopefully this bodes well for the future of gal-pal buddy flicks and the next generation of Thelmas and Louises…god willing they can finally take a load off, tread a bit more lightly, and carry a bigger schtick.

Images courtesy of Universal Pictures, Buena Vista Pictures, and MGM