"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace - of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel - after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps - suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started... Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case."
I liked the imagery.
Also, I recently codified my thoughts on chick flicks and a friend suggested I put them on my blog. There are eight requirements any romantic comedy must fulfill for me to judge it a good chick flick.
1) There must be something unique about the setting, concept, or idea of the film. Somebody can say "the film with the X" or "the one about an X" and know which movie you mean. For example, "the movie about the American movie star and the English bookshop guy" is obvious, but "the one about Cinderella" is not.
2) There has to be SOMETHING unpredictable in the movie. If I can tell you every major plot development after seeing the first five minutes of the film we're in trouble.
3) Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue! Chick flicks live and die by the realism and wittiness of their dialogue. If it's cheesy and trite they're awful, but snappy banter can save even a lukewarm plot.
4) It has to have realistic characters - none of those flat, one-sided, all-we-know-about-them-is-the-love-story characters, please. I want real people with real quirks and real emotional responses to real problems. I know realism isn't a hallmark of these films, and I'm not asking for every situation to be realistic (see number 1). However, given a few stretches for us to believe, the rest should be easy to accept. For example, when we believe that a rich businessman is willing to spend loads of money to hire one hooker for a whole week, it's not that difficult to imagine her slowly using the money to transform herself into a more refined woman.
5) It must have a good soundtrack. This is the most underrated part of a chick flick, but it's vital. These are movies about emotion and if the music doesn't set the right emotional tone you're sunk.
6) It has to have at least one pantheon-level repeatable line. There should be one that brings the film to mind whenever you hear it, regardless of context. In fact this is a good rule for almost all genres of movies.
7) They have to throw the guys a bone. It doesn't need to be something big, but few small "guy" moments in the film are must! Examples are the whole "Brooks Robinson is the greatest third baseman ever" subplot in Sleepless in Seattle, or the "Dirty Dozen" scene at the dinner table in that film (which I think is the single greatest guy moment in a chick flick).
and 8)... actually, I forget number 8. I'm sure it was something good. It's not a closed list - I take suggestions. Now you can decide for yourself if a chick flick passes the test. I've used a few of my favorites as examples (though I don't know if Pretty Woman is really a favorite of mine), but the archetypal chick flick is, and always will be, Casablanca.
