The Birds and the Bees and the Movies They Go See

Androgyny may affect the way we dress, the way we wear our hair, even the names we give our children.

But it has yet to affect our movies.

A current case in point is “Notting Hill,” the Julia Roberts-Hugh Grant film now in theaters everywhere.

Although Germaine Greer may be offended by the term, it’s a chick flick. When I saw it earlier this week at the Sherman Oaks Cinemas, three out of four patrons were women. The handful of men sat awash in a sea of estrogen.

I suspect the sober, even sad looks on their faces reflected their knowledge that there wasn’t a chance in hell that this movie would include a chase scene, a drive-by shooting or the blowing up of an ammunition dump.

Let me give you a quick summary of the plot of the romantic comedy: Roberts plays a Hollywood superstar who falls in love with a bookseller played by Grant. He is a bumbling charmer and she is a spoiled-but-basically-decent woman of preternatural beauty who is looking for love. Guess whose size-11 foot ultimately fits into the glass slipper?

Everybody knows a chick flick when they see one. As two of my female colleagues explain:

“It’s something that will bring tears to your eyes.”

“It’s something without a lot of violence.”

“It’s something you have to drag your husband to.”

This last seems to be universal.

As I came out of “Notting Hill,” a couple was sitting, waiting for the next show to begin.

“He’s seeing it under duress,” Linda Tow said of her husband, Stephan. “He wants to see ‘Star Wars.’ ”

Stephan, a financial manager who lives in Sherman Oaks and is well past the age of collecting action figures, admitted he was only seeing the film to be with his wife.

Tow had recently been in London, where the movie had been hyped to death. And he said of Grant: “I don’t like him. I don’t think he’s a very good actor.”

Asked to name some classic chick flicks, my colleagues included “The Joy Luck Club,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “Hope Floats,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Beaches,” “Waiting to Exhale,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “An Affair to Remember.”

Many of these movies require investing in tissues as well as popcorn.

Asked to describe chick flicks, men use words like emotion and caring. You definitely get the feeling that emotion and caring are things they appreciate at home but don’t much want to see on the big screen. “A chick flick is a movie about relationships and commitment and nobody gets blown up,” one of my drollest colleagues explains. “I lean more toward ‘A Clockwork Orange.’ ”

When a real lover of chick flicks lives with a man who only tolerates them, tensions can arise. One of my colleagues is a true devotee and watches her favorites over and over again.

Of such films as “When Harry Met Sally,” her partner says, “I didn’t mind seeing it once but seeing it 30 times is a bit much.”

She, on the other hand, doesn’t share his enthusiasm for the violent films many men enjoy.

“I had to talk her into seeing ‘Casino,’ ” he recalls. “She wasn’t very happy when they were putting people’s heads in vices. She was a little disappointed in me.”

Some adults will take a child to see “Bambi” to hide their own enthusiasm, and some men will find a sympathetic woman so they can see “Hope Floats” without embarrassment.

As a friend (one I happened to give birth to) tells me: “I know several guys who have beards--women they go to chick flicks with--so they’re not alone in the theater. Part of it is to keep their manly image intact, but part of it is because romance and tenderness are wonderful as long as you’re not watching alone.”

His own favorite romantic film is Gerard Depardieu’s “Cyrano de Bergerac.” He calls it a “guy chick flick” because it has sword play and unrequited love. And, he says, “It makes me cry every single time.”

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Spotlight runs each Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.