We watched Hitch with Will Smith Friday night. It was a romantic comedy about a man who sold his services as a “love doctor” to the geeky men of Manhattan who were in love with women that were clearly out of their league in the appearance arena.  Hitch (Will Smith) merely taught these nice, but lacking in confidence, gentlemen relationship skills that helped them gain confidence and allowed the women of their desires to see them as the really wonderful people they were.  It’s wasn’t magic.  In fact much of what the Will Smith character says to his clients is basic: Listen to what she says and respond in kind, be yourself, don’t treat a women like an object.  But while he is helping these men be genuine, he is using what he knows to scam himself into short-term sexual relationships because he is afraid of falling in love after being hurt by a girlfriend who cheated on him.  Of course he runs across and is attracted to a woman who has the same problem and they implode all over the budding relationship of one of Hitch’s clients who is in love with a celebrity heiress.

I didn’t like the movie aside from the side story of the accountant in love with the heiress.  I thought the story lacked subtlety and it was too easy to guess what would happen next.  And there were a few clichés about women I found vaguely insulting puzzling.

Eight out of ten women think they will learn all they need to know about a man and where their relationship is going from the first kiss? If that is true then I am deeply ashamed of my gender. My late husband was not the best kisser at first.  He learned quickly but if I were to have judged him solely on that first kiss I would be someplace completely different now.  And the first time Rob and I kissed was after we’d told each other “I love you” and Rob didn’t even know what I looked like prior to making the declaration.  So much for needing to kiss to determine future action. The whole idea is such a high school girl ideal and who wasn’t naive and Disneyfied at that age?

Women relate dancing to sex. We’d never have sex if that were true.  When I was in college all the really great dancers turned out to be still in the closet gay men.  I have only rarely run across men who can really dance.  Now Rob can dance.  He taught me to two-step, though my Catholic school education makes it hard for me to follow and not lead, but this was after we got married.  I have no complaints and think the whole dance/sex thing is some man neurosis.

A women’s best friend has to sign off on her love interests. Not in any reality that I have observed. Women love who and where they will and no one, not even a best friend, can keep a woman from jumping off a cliff with or for a guy if that is what she wants to do.  I myself don’t live my life by committee, and I am hardly atypical in that respect.

There is a happily ever after that is also telegraphed well in advance, but as Rob observed, “Nobody died.” For us that is a good night at the movies.