Chick flicks have a set of genre rules and expectations all their own, just like big, dumb action pictures for men. That said, this romantic comedy — the first to star suspense-thriller queen Ashley Judd (DOUBLE JEOPARDY, EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, KISS THE GIRLS) — feels like a chick-flick parody. Jane Goodale (Judd) books talent for the talk show Diane Roberts Live, where Jane and her bad-boy, womanizing co-worker Eddie Alden (Hugh Jackman) trade the kind of barbs that signal they're meant for each other. In the meantime, Jane and handsome, sensitive executive producer Ray Brown (Greg Kinnear), fall in love; he's like the perfect designer boyfriend to take to quaint bed-and-breakfasts. But after making plans to move in together, the romantically spineless Ray reunites with his longtime former girlfriend. Jane, now scrambling for a place to live, finds herself rooming with Eddie. Nature takes its course, but not before Jane becomes a pseudonymous celebrity as reclusive relationship expert Dr. Marie Charles. Like the startlingly unoriginal Laura Zigman novel Animal Husbandry on which it was based, this sexist, plot-hole-riddled movie equates women with cows and men with bulls, and parades cardboard stereotypes of "wimps" vs. "real men" — which in this case means vulgar, strutting tough guys who sleep around, drink a lot and smoke in no-smoking areas. (You almost think the tobacco industry might have financed this film, since almost everybody's a chain smoker — even meat workers amid fresh carcasses.) Jane's supposed to be a smart, modern professional woman, but her self-esteem is so tied up in pleasing men that in one appalling scene, after seeing hunky Eddie shirtless, she entertains him by performing a cheerleading routine in her panties. Ashley's mom, singer Naomi Judd, cameos as a makeup person. --Frank Lovece
