MOVIE NEWS … TIME MAGAZINE’S TOP 10 WORST CHICK FLICKS

MOVIE NEWS …

TIME MAGAZINE’S TOP 10

WORST CHICK FLICKS

Sex and the City 2 hits theatres from May 27, 2010, and already the news isn't good. TIME takes a look at some other not-so-great films that have been cruelly pitched at female audiences.

 10. Crossroads
In case you forgot, Britney Spears once had an acting career. The 2002 film Crossroads stars Spears and some other actresses as they reunite post-graduation by driving across the country to "find themselves" — the cliché of all clichés. They bring a boy along, sing in the car and chase their dreams to — where else? — Los Angeles, where Spears picks up a mike for a rendition of "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman." Crossroads!

9. A Cinderella Story
If it were ever possible to cram all the glittering boy-meets-girl, high-school-love-story stereotypes into one movie, A Cinderella Story does it in spades. The 2004 movie stars Hilary Duff, whose father dies in an earthquake, forcing her to work in a diner for her evil stepmother who keeps her from chasing her college dreams. She meets a boy (Chad Michael Murray) online, but he's in the cool crowd and she doesn't fit in (even though she's beautiful and smart). They agree to meet on the school dance floor, where she wears a mask barely covering her eyes so he magically can't tell who she really is (even though you can see her entire face). Duff's performance in the movie snagged her a Razzie nomination in 2005 for Worst Actress. Did anyone expect anything more?

8. Kate and Leopold
Being a career-driven woman in New York City is never easy. You have to balance your job, your personal life, your fading youth (which Meg Ryan seems to have done with a heavy dose of lip collagen) and the ever nagging feeling that you will never find true love. Add to that a romantic fling with a time-travelling British duke from 1876 and you've got yourself a deliciously trashy comedy. This is the story of Kate (the career woman) and Leopold (the time-travelling duke, who, by the way, also happens to be the future inventor of the elevator), who fall in and out of love in both the 19th and 21st centuries. Yes, they break up over an ad for diet margarine. But don't worry, they get back together again when Kate abandons her career and travels to 1876 to become a duchess. Of course she does.

7. Bride Wars
Best friends Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) spend their entire lives pining for wedded bliss. When they both get engaged to their respective beaus and pursue their shared childhood dream of tying the knot at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, the women end up booked on the same day due to a clerical error. The successful women (Liv's a lawyer and Emma's a teacher) stoop to the lowest of techniques when they learn that no other dates are available and that neither is willing to give up the Plaza for her BFF. Blue hair dye at the salon, dress tampering and mean shots at each other's insecurities provide some relief from the demeaning undertones — and give viewers a chance to see the narrow-minded brides make complete fools of themselves before finally making up. At film's end, however, both women reveal that they are expecting. Baby Wars? Let's hope not.

6. Valentine's Day
The opening credits feature the names of so many likable stars — Julia Roberts, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx, McDreamy, McSteamy and the Taylors Swift and Lautner, to name a few — that it's hard not to wonder if this movie is going to be compensating for something. As it turns out, it is: namely, the fact that for a romantic comedy, it's deeply unromantic and resolutely unfunny. The marquee actors appear for just long enough to recite shopworn lines. The best jokes are meta-gags, as when Roberts quotes one of her most famous Pretty Woman lines during the closing bloopers reel. Rom-com fans might have forgiven this movie's predictability, but its greatest cinematic sin is a deal breaker: it's just plain boring.

5. Maid in Manhattan
In Maid in Manhattan, hotel maid Jennifer Lopez falls in love with senatorial candidate Ralph Fiennes, who mistakes her for a rich lady because she's wearing a nice coat. Luckily, Jennifer Lopez is the most beautiful hotel maid ever, so it's easy for her to look and act like a wealthy woman. When Fiennes finds out that he's been dating the same woman who leaves mints on other people's pillows, they break up and are sad for a while. Then they fall in love again and live happily ever after. We don't know about you, but this happens to us all the time when we stay at hotels. Which is why we've stopped staying at hotels. It's exhausting.

4. A Walk to Remember
You know that movie about the guy who falls in love with the sickly woman despite his better judgment and she either dies or leaves in the end to protect her beloved? Yeah, we all do. In 2002, Mandy Moore starred in A Walk to Remember, in which she plays terminally ill Jamie, who catches the eye of bad boy Landon. She's dying, her father protests the relationship, but love conquers all — except for her cancer diagnosis. Just like in 2000's Autumn in New York, starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder, the female love interest dies but leaves the man forever changed. At least the 2001 film Sweet November, starring Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron, tried to switch the formula up a bit, having Theron's character skip town before she bites the big one. (Then again, that was a remake of a 1968 film. Not exactly original.)

3. Nights in Rodanthe
Nights in Rodanthe is a heartwarming story about a man (Richard Gere) and a woman (Diane Lane) who fall in love in an otherwise empty bed-and-breakfast located in the picturesque seaside town of Rodanthe, N.C. You can tell that they fall in love when they start speaking in Hallmark lines, like this gem: "Thank you for helping me survive this year, but more than that, thank you in advance for the years to come." Then the man leaves to take care of poor people in South America. Then he is killed in a mudslide. The woman is inconsolable; she will never love again. And then one day she sees a pack of wild horses running along the beach. They represent true love, passion, freedom ... whatever. Of course, in the real world, there are no wild horses that run along the beach in Rodanthe. Because the real world isn't a dumb movie.

2. All About Steve
The night before Sandra Bullock brought home an Academy Award for her work in The Blind Side, she accepted a Razzie — which salutes Hollywood's worst work of the year — for her role in All About Steve. The movie follows Mary Horowitz (Bullock) as she falls head over I-don't-know-what in love with blind date Steve (Bradley Cooper). After she gets canned at work for her Steve obsession, Mary takes off on the road and follows Steve from town to town as he travels for work. As the Boston Globe put it, "That's right: It's a chick flick for stalkers."

1. The Ugly Truth
The problem with many chick flicks is that the roles women play are more than stereotypical — they're often downright offensive. Of course, if a woman (in this case, Katherine Heigl) is a successful television producer, she has to be a bitchy, perpetually single control freak. And, of course, the reason she "can't find a man" is because she is too picky (there couldn't be anything wrong with the guys, right?). It gets worse. When Heigl's character, Abby, sets her sights on the hot doctor next door, she can't possibly go about snagging him by — gasp — being herself. With the guidance of Mike (Gerard Butler), her crass, alpha male co-worker, she goes about landing her man by laughing at whatever he says and pumping up her sex appeal ("You have to be both the librarian and the stripper"). In the end, it turns out the hot doc doesn't like the real Abby, only the woman she was pretending to be (go figure!), so she and her alpha male mate fall in love and live happily ever after. Because Mike only loves desperate women he can manipulate, clearly.