Afew months back, when my predecessor and the Current’s prime purveyor of parentheses, Brian Villalobos, wrote an approving review of Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up, I struggled to categorize the film as far as genre is concerned. Like Apatow’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin, it’s basically a romantic comedy for guys. I settled on “dick flick” … but did that sound too much like porn? After a casual office survey (read: I asked the only other person in the newsroom at the time), I felt slightly more confident about the new subgenre — but I wasn’t going to put it into print or anything.
Then, not too many weeks ago, whilst writing about Apatow-produced Superbad, I considered employing the dubious designation yet again. I didn’t, as Super’s decidedly a buddy comedy, not a romantic one, but the reoccurrence of the term prompted me to check my definition against the ultimate source: Urban Dictionary.
As it turns out, there are seven definitions for “dick flick” at UD. The most popular is “The testosterone-driven opposite of a ‘chick flick.’ Generally contains lots of car chases, explosions, and boobs.” (No dicks? Hmm.) Sounds like an action movie to me.
Last on the UD’s list is “A
movie about love and relation-ships, yet has a lot of boobs …” Uh, that’s more like it? XO.
