Iron Man and this week’s romantic comedy

Last week saw the release of Baby Mama and Then She Found Me, two movies that, as Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times pointed out, both concern “a woman in her late 30s who is desperate to have a baby.” But one of those films opened in over 2,500 theatres across the continent, while the other one opened in only 9, so it wasn’t really a fair fight — and I’m sure you could always find some obscure flick and match it with a mainstream release if you were looking for coincidences of that sort.

More interesting, I think, is the face-off this week between Iron Man and Made of Honor. The former film, which I have seen, is a superhero movie heavy on the masculine machinery, while the latter film, which I have not yet seen, is a romantic comedy that has, as they say, been released this week as “counter-programming” designed to appeal to all the women out there whose boyfriends have abandoned them for the metal guy. But I wonder if the two films are all that different, really.

I mean, think about it. Based on the trailer for Made of Honor and my viewing of Iron Man last night — at a stupid suburban theatre that cropped the top, bottom and sides of the picture, but that’s another post for another day — I think it is safe to say this much: Each film is about a promiscuous man who enjoys a platonic relationship, and indeed is best friends of a sort, with a particular woman who is wise to his ways but isn’t bothered by them because, well, they’re not lovers or anything. And both films suggest that the relationship changes, and the man feels an itch to become more responsible, after the man and the woman spend several weeks or months apart on separate continents.

Is that a stretch? Well, yeah. But there is an element in Iron Man that is as old as the romantic comedy genre itself, and I wonder if that might help the film appeal to the so-called female quadrant, i.e. to the intended audience of films like Made of Honor. Certainly my wife liked Iron Man, and she got a kick out of the Tony Stark-Pepper Potts relationship — but then, she has always preferred superhero movies to romantic comedies anyway.