There was another time in recent film history when the screens were littered with bromances - the 70s. Second-wave feminism was visible and on the rise. I think it is a good sign that these bromances are starting to appear more frequently. Feminists must be doing something right to get men this scared.

I wish he'd done more in the way of Freaks and Geeks.

Observe and Report doesn't really rely on 'bromance' themes. The movie, far more than a hilarious thumbs up to date rape, is about the dangers of untreated mental illness. It does wrap its arms around the mythologies of manhood, the good provider, the underdog and superman. However bromance can't exist for Ronnie Barnhart because he can't form healthy relationships (not that all bromances are healthy.) In face, Ronnie's one clear 'friend' screws him pretty hard in the movie.

I guess what I'm saying is it's easy to lump these films together, but without actually seeing it we unknowingly encourage false discourse.

Seth Rogen makes me want to vomit. I'm offended by the notion that a beautiful woman like Elizabeth Banks would date an ugly dude like Rogen (Zack and Miri Make a Porno). Please. Hollywood will dare to put NEVER put an "ugly" woman onscreen with a good-looking guy.

and yes, for the record, if people are offended by my "Seth Rogen makes me want to vomit" comment, I don't give a shit.

Seth Rogen makes me want to vomit. I'm offended by the notion that a beautiful woman like Elizabeth Banks would date an ugly dude like Rogen (Zack and Miri Make a Porno). Please. Hollywood will dare to put NEVER put an "ugly" woman onscreen with a good-looking guy.

and yes, for the record, if people are offended by my "Seth Rogen makes me want to vomit" comment, I don't give a shit.

Although I really enjoyed this OP and I thought it made some interesting points, I'm seriously tired of listening to people discuss a movie they haven't seen. I realize that you don't want to give the Apatow crew your money, but I'm sure that in this day and age someone could find a bootleg of "observe and Report" for you so you can truly analyze it.

Thanks for this post. I too have very conflicted feelings about the recent spate of "bromance" movies. On the one hand, I love dirty jokes and humor about sex, as well as movies that challenge conventional ideas about masculinity. But yes, women absolutely get screwed in these films, and it's frustrating, especially because in Apatow's Freaks & Geeks he presented such a wonderfully complex female character in the form of Lindsay. I wish that there could be more movies about men AND women who challenge gender stereotypes and relationships, while being deliciously dirty at the same time :)

I love this post, Courtney. Misogyny is certainly all too often used for cheap laughs in cheap comedy of this sort. I think your example of men "having vaginas" equalling "being weak" is a particularly good example. I have heard that joke so many times! It's offensive! It's lazy writing, too. The new crop of dirty/sweet comedies should try and raise the bar.

Men get the short end too, we are often portrayed as perpetually horny and stoned idiots, who'll hump anything that moves, or in the case of the Observe and Report trailer, lies there in a booze coma. Not cool, bro.

I think a certain amount of 1-dimensionality in these movies can be forgiven, since they are comedies after all, no one expects realism. People and groups get caricatured, often unfairly, and we let it go 'cause it's meant to make us laugh, not to be taken seriously. There's certainly a line, though. I won't know if Observe and Report crossed it until I actually see the movie, but the issue is definitely worth talking about.

Thanks again for the post!

Judd Apatow is too often pegged as the ringleader of this "bromance" phenomenon, and consequently, he takes a lot of the blame, if blame is indeed being cast. And while, yes, he has produced several of these films -- Superbad, Pineapple Express -- we must realize that ultimate authorship lies with the director. And the two films Apatow has actually directed -- Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin -- are by far the most interesting and thoughtful of these films.

I think the only female character in any of those Apatow-ish movies who can be respected (basically not just being the bitchy wife or something to be fucked by the man-child protagonist) is Rosie Perez as the crooked cop in "Pineapple Express," and she wasn't even a major character.

I'm looking forward to more articles from Rachel!

This was really well put and I feel the same way. I love the movies but wish the female characters were more three dimensional.

Also, I think that the women in "I Love you man" were portrayed in a much better light than most bromance movies. Major props to that movie, it's a lot smarter than it comes off.

The dilemma I have with the new Brat Pack movies is that they come soclose and yet never quite take the social critique all the way.

There's some serious humor and beauty in the way Apatow and crew have opened up audiences' eyes to the plight of the downtrodden. The common feature a lot of his movies seem to have is a focus on guys who, for whatever reason, aren't super well-liked, aren't crazy popular, and generally feel somewhat down on themselves. They're decent guys, but have been made to feel like they don't measure up. It's this horrible thing society does, frankly, to most people, and it's nice to have some thoughtful movies sort of illuminate the perspective of these people and elevate it from a poor-me-I-don't-fit-in pity party to a really insightful depiction of them as, in fact, quite normal and likable. I'm thinking 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, and even Knocked Up (though to a lesser extent). Even movies like Anchorman and Kicking and Screaming somehow manage to make their characters sympathetic -- and have them grow up -- as we're laughing at their insane antics. There's a kind of sweetness to some of his movies that I think is really underutilized by most Hollywood movies.

That said, for someone with such great insight into the complexities facing the otherwise mocked and ridiculed, Apatow often shows an astonishing lack of insight into this very same phenomenon applied to women. Women are far more likely to be stock characters in his movies, which is the source of my dilemma. On the one hand, they're great movies and by any account ought to be the sort of thing most people can relate to and see themselves in. And yet, at the same time... it's almost like he throws in a stumbling block there for women. Not intentionally -- but it's like, I'm sitting there, watching the movie, thinking, "oh my gosh, I have TOTALLY felt what that character is feeling"... and then the character goes and says something horrifically sexist that I would never think or feel.

I guess Apatow must either think (subconsciously) that women don't deal with the *exact same feelings* of rejection and hurt that men do, and accordingly he doesn't need to make his characters universally relatable, or be completely oblivious to the blatant sexism he inserts into his films. Or I suppose a third option is pure laziness -- he doesn't think it's possible for a man to feel hurt and rejected without hating women, and so doesn't see the need to create a hurt and rejected character who doesn't hate women. Frankly, any of those possibilities makes me respect him less as a filmmaker.

I really enjoyed this post. It's very thoughtful and the author clearly makes an effort to consider the topic from different angles.

That said, I really wish people would reserve their blame and resentment for the actual person who is to blame instead of lumping all of these people together. It's an easy thing to do since many of them have worked together on several occasions.

But I LOVE the show Freaks and Geeks, (which I believe is Apatow's first work) and I recommend it to everyone here who likes real characters and great comedy. It saddens me that he is getting painted by many people (not necessarily the author of this piece) as the person responsible for one-dimensional female characters in these bromance movies.

I also don't understand why Seth Rogen is getting so much flak for Observe and Report. Why not the director or the writer (who are the same person)?

I know he willingly took part in a date rape scene but so did Anna Faris. Why is she not equally culpable?

It just upsets me when people cast blame so wide without fully examining who's actually to blame in various circumstances.

But it's still a great post and thanks to Rachel Simmons for writing it.

Is it at all possible that the scene was supposed to make the viewer deeply uncomfortable? Seth Rogen's character isn't exactly supposed to be a role model, is he? He does many deeply disturbing things in the movie. Is it possible that the date rape scene is meant to reveal the implied misogyny in the classic movie stereotype that Anna Farris's character represents?

Date rape happens. Apologists need to think about how disgusting it is. By not cleaning the scene up - the icky environment, the visible vomit - this depiction makes it hard to be anything but revolted. Might there be some critique in here?

I'm not sure; but it seems like we need a more complex approach to the critique, that takes genre critique and intentions of the director into account, rather than assuming a scene was played for simple laughs because that's what Seth Rogen does.

". . . young women are focusing more on their audience than their authentic experience of desire . . . ."

Sorry, I'm lost, and I think this view goes to the crux of a fundamental disconnect between modern feminism and the vast majority of young women. Modern feminism refuses to accept the fact that for many young women, using their bodies to focus on their (male) audience is clearly and most decidedly "an authentic experience of [their] desire." And, most respectfully, who are you to tell them that it's not? Or that their focus of trying to attract a mate in this manner is wholly inconsistent with being an empowered, free moral agent, if that's what they want to do? And a hell of a lot of them do.

Granted, the choices some young women make in going about attracting male attention are often degrading and manipulate of their male audiences because they tap into young men's basest instincts. But that's a different question than asking if the young women's oversexed conduct is an authentic experience of their desire.

Anna Faris said she thought it would hit the cutting room floor, and made statements criticizing it.

Seth Rogen made statements to the effect that the dialog made the rape "okay." He's wrong.

And yes, while criticizing him or Jody Hill would both be right, because they were both involved in the making of it and unlike Anna Faris, they have both said rephrensible things in public, criticizing him is not somehow verboten just beause Jody Hill wrote it. Seth Rogen has the kind of pull to get a line or scene like that cut, Anna Faris does not.

Hi All
I think these last comments (pierce and the Law Fairy) really highlight the debate that continues about what's real and what's posed in terms of female sexuality. Do girls flash their breasts for GGW because they get a free hat, swag which defines them as sexy according to male culture (you were hot enough to be watched by all those guys and live inside countless sticky DVD cases around the world), or are they doing it because, hey, it's so FUN to flash my tits when I'm a little buzzed and out with my friends; it's liberating and hilarious and who cares? (For the record, I've been in both camps myself -- not for GGW but sexual activity in general) Are girls sexting because they love the feeling of breaking out of real life Good Girl constraints, or are they doing it because it's become part of the unwritten rules for how guys express sexual interest in girls, and how they are now expected to respond? And if sexting IS a response to Good Girl constraints, can it really be authentic?

Sorry for my late reply; I live abroad and was zzzzzzzz for a lot of the final comments. Thanks for talking back. It's been a great first blog post for me and I am hooked for sure.

I LOVED Freaks and Geeks, which was done by Judd Apatow and Paul Feig. But it seems that Apatow has gone downhill(I haven't seen Superbad, it might be an exception). His movies always have the men getting women who they don't deserve and who are WAY better looking then them. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, he had Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis fighting over a guy who was a loser. Guess what Paul Feig is doing now? He is involved in The Office. Obviously the good part of Freaks and Geeks.