In the number three spot, we've got a comedy that rides the traditional guy flick/chick flick line with extraordinary closeness. There's Something About Mary predates the aughts wave of guy-oriented rom coms revolving around Seth Rogen by close to a decade, and it struck the balance beautifully out of the gate.
If you haven't seen it, here's how it goes:
Ted's not in her league, or at least, no one thinks he is, including him.
They never quite make it to prom, not because of a horrific prank, not because of another guy, but because Ted lands himself in the hospital with... a zipper accident.
I'm not including a picture of that.
Ted and the PI both get sucked into the orbiting vortex of men of varying levels of creepiness obsessing over Mary, who remains lonely and oblivious to all of this, mainly due to her tendency to believe the best of people.
In case you can't tell from Ted and Mary's prom-zipper origin, it's an unabashedly romantic movie with an equally unabashedly R-rated laugh-out-loud sense of humor.
You get heartfelt monologues about the nature of love. You also get wacky sequences of yappy dogs on speed and adlibbing hitchhikers with suspicious red bags.
You might have noticed that in spite of this list being about date movies, the choice clips so far have both been guys only. This hasn’t escaped me, and I had hopes of breaking the trend today. It’s partly because even the best examples of guy flick/chick flick fusion tend to keep women and humor distressingly separate, and partly because even when the ladies do get in on the laughs, those clips aren’t nearly as widely shared and available.
There’s Something About Mary doesn’t do a bad job in this regard in and of itself, one of the reasons it’s on this list, but I’ll admit clip availability surprised me when constructing this article. Seriously, I was going to throw in another guy/guy comedy scene when I couldn’t find the end scene between Ted and Mary, but I couldn’t even find any of those favorites of decent quality.
Guess you’ll just have to check out the full movie.
Please, check out the full movie!
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