On the sort of late-night whim of wanting the TV on, but not on anything I’d actually need to pay attention to, I watched the 2009 romcom He’s Just Not That Into You around 1:00 AM. The film is loosely inspired by the best-selling female dating advice book by the same name. The movie, of course, is terrible. The cast is almost suspiciously great—Bradley Cooper, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Scarlet Johansson, and more—practically The Avengers of 2000’s A-listers. But what interested me was the premise, that society had lied to women about what to expect from men and dating, creating the need for a new perspective, and new rules.
It is, however, a romcom—it doesn’t have the strength of conviction to stick to its ideological guns. Most of the characters still get the fairytale ending, and the ones who don’t have their own misbehavior to blame. But I’m curious about what the sub thinks about this, and about films in general, which have always painted women and their experience in dating much differently than certain ideologies here recognize in the real world.

Is there a film that gets women right?