When Tear Drops Roll Boxoffice Dollars Flow

We’ve all been there. The music swells, the screen goes fuzzy, and the women in the audience start unraveling their Kleenex while the men shift in their seats and roll their eyes.

The sound of feminine noses being blown overwhelms the tap-tap-tap of male fingers on the arms of their chairs.

It’s sex clash, Hollywood style.

“Men like a problem, they like a quest, and they like resolution,” says Toby Miller, an NYU film professor. “Women like movies where feelings are what matter more than the successful attainment of a goal.”

Crudely put, the good, old-fashioned melodrama still works its wonders upon particular tear ducts, a fact made abundantly plain by “Stepmom,” a weepy that opened Christmas Day and is the season’s foremost example of that oft-disparaged genre - the chick flick.

“Stepmom” features more than one essential element of chick flickdom. It offers a focus on the family, a failed romance, terminal illness, and what Miller calls “wistful disappointment.”

Another chick-flick attribute - one that’s lacking in the catty story of “Stepmom” - is a women-against-the-world attitude.

“And a Barbra Streisand song doesn’t hurt, either,” Miller adds.

To some critics - men - the term “chick flick” automatically connotes second-class status.

“Some of the comments I’ve had from some reviewers were, `It’s a chick flick, but I really liked it,”’ says “Stepmom” director Chris Columbus. “That’s just an awful thing to say.”

While Columbus claims he’s OK with the term “chick flick” the star of “Stepmom,” Susan Sarandon, has other ideas.

“I guess `Stepmom’ is a chick flick because it’s got two chicks that have bigger parts than the guys,” Sarandon says, referring to herself and Julia Roberts, who play, respectively, the mother dying of cancer and the younger stepmother struggling to live up to the biological mother’s impossibly high standard.

“If I understand it correctly,” says Sarandon, “every time there’s a movie that has women or a women’s story as a focus, it’s always a shock if it makes any money and it’s seen as a rare kind of fluke. I think that it’s the same kind of patronizing attitude that’s systemic in the movie industry. To constantly be assuming that this isn’t a valid form of entertainment, that women do buy tickets and this might happen repeatedly and not just as a fluke.”

While Sarandon discusses her feelings on the subject, cash registers are chiming. Again. She starred in “Little Women” and “Thelma & Louise,” two women-against-theworld films that did very well at both the box office and among critics.

A variety of so-called chick flicks have enjoyed massive success, too, both critically and financially. How about “The English Patient,” which swept the Oscars two years ago? And there’s “Titanic,” which was a huge hit, in large part because it appealed to teenage girls prepared to cry themselves into dehydration again and again over the wistful disappointments, failed romance, and Rose Bukater-against-the-world elements of the billion-dollar blockbuster. (It also had the high-tech special effects to bring in the teenage boys, and a blue-eyed lad named Leo.)

Other recent chick flicks to score big among both critics and audiences:

“The Piano,” “Terms of Endearment,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “An Officer and a Gentleman,” “Ghost,” “Beaches,” “First Wives Club,” “The Horse Whisperer,” “The Bridges of Madison County,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Michael,” “The Joy Luck Club,” “Waiting to Exhale,” and just about everything done by Merchant-Ivory.

As for men’ reactions, Professor Miller says the main masculine complaint is “nothing happens in a chick flick.” But Columbus claims that that attitude might be masking a deeply emotional response. In other words, those aren’t only feminine tears being jerked by “Stepmom.”

“Obviously, the studio feels the picture appeals to women primarily, but I think that when men see it, they’re moved,” says the director, who also did “Home Alone” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

“I don’t know, sometimes men can’t deal with it. I know it’s a cliche, but I’ve seen some hard-boiled studio execs come out of the picture, and at some of the other screenings, some older men, and they’re sobbing. It’s actually a great feeling, because you know those guys haven’t been there in a while.”

On second thought, about the guys: Who cares?

Elements of a chick flick Not every chick flick has all these elements. In fact, most of them have just a couple. But with that in mind, at least one of the following attributes must be present in order for a flick to be designated “chick”: Terminal illness - Usually mom or an apple-cheeked daughter is dying, and it helps if they’re progressively more beautiful as they do. Meryl Streep broke tradition somewhat by looking more and more gaunt as she succumbed to cancer in “One True Thing,” this fall’s No. 1 chick flick. Failed romance - “There’s not a lot of mileage in a love story if all goes smoothly,” says NYU film prof Toby Miller. Lots of miles are traversed in “The English Patient,” in which the affair between Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott-Thomas is transcontinentally doomed. Wistful disappointment - What could be more wistfully disappointing than “Ghost,” in which Patrick Swayze comes back from the dead to romance his wife, Demi Moore, and then goes back to wherever he came from, breaking her heart a second time? Family focus - Four Chinese women and their four American daughters tell their heart-twisting family tales in “The Joy Luck Club.” Women against the world - In “First Wives Club,” three fiftysomething women, discarded by callous dirtbag hubbies, don’t get mad; they bond, then they get even.

Top 10 Chick Flicks Of All Time 1. “Terms of Endearment” - A chick-flick jackpot. All the essential elements, sans Streisand. A two-Kleenex-boxer. 2. “Ghost” - Ditto “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” 3. “Thelma and Louise” - A groundbreaking women-against-the-world chick flick. A classic example of the quest movie where feelings count more than resolution. 4. “Little Women” - Women against the world, family focus, a failed romance (or two), a near-terminal illness, and a couple of cute boys thrown in for good measure. 5. “Steel Magnolias” - Women against the world, family focus, terminal illness, failed romance - all in cute Southern accents. 6. “Four Weddings and a Funeral” - Just dare a man’s man to sit through this. Just dare him. 7. “Beaches” - Women against the world, a terminal illness - and a Bette Midler song doesn’t hurt, either. 8. “Sleepless in Seattle” - Wistful disappointments up the wazoo, happy ending notwithstanding. 9. “Waiting to Exhale” - Lots of failed romances, plenty of women against the world - and a Whitney Houston song doesn’t hurt, either. 10. “The Way We Were” - A failed romance, wistful disappointment - and a Barbra Streisand song. Bob Ivry/The (Hackensack) Record