Two things I enjoyed about Definitely, Maybe, which came out on DVD today: the cheesy jokes about New York City in the early '90s and the fact that it is a chick flick for guys. What I mean by the latter is that the movie seems targeted to females yet it caters more to the male viewer. It's basically a male fantasy: Ryan Reynolds tells the story of how he dated three beautiful women (played by Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz and Elizabeth Banks), one of whom he married and later divorced -- meaning he's now single again. And he also got a cute, precocious daughter (Abigail Breslin) out of the deal who becomes beneficial to him in his return to bachelorhood.

But then is it really a chick flick? I guess it is if you count romantic comedies in that grouping, though the genre has never necessarily been aligned with the term, nor vice versa. And in the age of Judd Apatow, it's more likely that any new romantic comedy is actually a guy movie. Do many men realize it's a movie for them, though? Probably not. Though chick flicks are typically movies primarily populated by women characters and/or a female protagonist (think Steel Magnolias), romance films not made by either Apatow or the Farrelly brothers may be thought of as being for the ladies, even if they feature a male lead, like Reynolds in Definitely, Maybe.

I'll admit I've always been confused about chick flicks as a term. I apparently enjoy many so-called chick flicks, including even (especially) Beaches. So, I may not be using the term correctly in this list. However, I am a guy and I know what guys want. So, I'm going to do this my way, and answer the following question: What other films may have been initially perceived by males as being made for chicks but which turned out to be more for them (us)?

It might have taken ten years for this to come together (go here for the run-down), but The Women has finally been shot, and now we have the above trailer (you can also catch it on Yahoo). Based on the 1939 film by George Cukor, the film focuses on some gossipy high-society women who find out that the husband of one of them is cheating with a sexy shopgirl (Eva Mendes).

With more modern snark than the original, this one has all the requirements that have been super-glued to women-centric movies: marriage, gossiping, babies, shopping ... shall we keep going? What makes it really disappointing is that this incarnation was written by the woman who penned 37 episodes of Murphy Brown -- Diane English. I can only hope that there's more to it than the commercial shares. (Although it does offer gimlet goodness, which is always a plus.) But there's one thing we definitely won't see -- any emotive and subtle facial expressions from Meg Ryan. I miss the pre-face-freeze Meg days.

Starring Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Carrie Fisher, Debra Messing, Candice Bergen and Bette Midler, The Women arrives in theaters on September 12.

Between Forgetting Sarah Marshall last week, and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay this week, the comedy world is all aflutter with dangerous vacations, whether that danger is watching your newly ex-girlfriend snuggle up to her raunchy new pop-star boyfriend, or heading to Amsterdam to get some Maria lovin'.

So this time around, I figured I would dip into vacations that go bad. We could break into the smaller-scale travel films, where protagonists only go a town or state over, but Harold and Kumar already did the close traveling. Now they're going a heck of a lot farther. Interesting adventures, strange people, and romantic dysfunction are the players in this game, and for this week's double feature, I give you: Blame it on Rio and Joe Versus the Volcano.

And, just to be clear, me choosing two infamously bad movies says nothing about my thoughts on H&K. I swear!

Did you know this? I'm not exactly sure why, but news about Serious Moonlight isn't really getting released. I posted about the project back in October -- the film was written by the late Adrienne Shelly, is being produced by her widower, and had Cheryl Hines (who co-starred in Waitress) attached to direct. Sure, it's not the biggest selection of names, but after the shock that was Shelly's murder, and the positive reaction to Waitress, one would think that news about the feature would continue to roll in, especially when bigger names signed on.

While reading Lou Lumenick's current post about Meg Ryan, he mentioned the film and its stars -- Kristen Bell and Justin Long. So, I headed over to IMDb, and yes, the cast stars Veronica Mars and the ol' Apple guy, plus Ryan and Timothy Hutton. Did some press release get lost? The film was cast, and is already in post-production!

Jack Putter to the rescue!

There's lots of names that get thrown around when you talk about cinematic heroes in the '80s. Some people will cite the beefcake fighters like Jean Claude Van Damme. Others will cite Harrison Ford's adventure-thriving Indiana Jones. There's also Superman, Maverick, John McClane, Axel Foley, Rocky... You name it. But they all pale in comparison to one man. He wasn't so wimpy that he needed sweat-covered muscles, fighting moves, or big guns. All he needed was a little, itty bitty man inside him, and a good, healthy dose of the crazy. The man was Jack Putter.

Yes, Martin Short. Some might say that SCTV is his best work, but there's something about his portrayal of Jack Putter in Innerspace that is just beyond irresistible. While many comedic actors can pull off slapstick, it usually has that air of forced goofiness. But not for Short. He can shriek, flail, and fall over and make it seem perfectly natural to his character. There is no one else that could have pulled Putter off -- making both the over-the-top hypochondria and physical ordeal seem natural. It also helps that he's not falling to the slapstick weight of poor decisions that make many comedies today uncomfortable. Putter is a purely enjoyable and laugh-inducing character.

Before her sexy stint in In the Cut, before You've Got Mail, French Kiss, The Doors, and my personal, all-time favorite, Innerspace, Meg Ryan was really, really serious about her teeth. The year she started her career with Rich and Famous in 1981, where she played the older version of Nicole Eggert, she also starred in a commercial for AIM toothpaste.

Ah, those were the days. You didn't have to hunt through hordes of special perks and whitening toothpastes to find your brand -- things were simple. Ryan was pimping "a serious toothpaste" because...wait for it... it fights cavities with flouride! Fancy stuff. So, Meg's got on a good-girl, pale pink sweater, and is fluffing her puffy bangs while wannabe cheerleaders actually "Ra-Ra" behind her, and then tease her for her funky toothpate. I wonder what they did when Rembrandt hit the shelves.. Anyhow, as an added bonus, you actually get to see Ryan, and not the unfortunate, nose-jobbed, botoxed version of her that's around these days.

The women have been really hard to come by -- at least when The Women in question is a remake of the 1939 classic. (What is it with the year 1939 lately?) MGM was first focused on the project, but no real headway was made and the title was sold to Ted Turner as part of MGM's library. He, in turn, bought New Line and made the film a starring vehicle for Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan, with James L. Brooks signed on to direct (1994). It was at this point that Diane English was brought on to the production, a writer known for her work on Murphy Brown. It took a handful of years and then she was named director of the project in 2001. It took another 5 years to get further, when Matt Bradshaw posted about the cast of the film, which consisted of Meg Ryan, Lisa Kudrow, Anne Hathaway and Candice Bergen. It was supposed to start shooting in March, but nothing happened when Spring rolled around.

Now Variety has the scoop on The Women, which almost has a finalized cast, and has gotten an actual start date -- August 6 -- over ten years after the adaptation was put in the works. Some of the cast has stayed the same, and some have changed. Along with Ryan and Bergen, actresses in final talks are Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith and Debra Messing. That's really one hell of a cast considering that the film has got a budget under $20 million. One of the backers is Dove, you know, the soap? When the film begins to be marketed, I imagine there will be lots and lots of soap-centric commercials with these leading ladies. As for how the title is translated over 60 years later, word has it that English's "script maintains the arch spirit of the original, and the all-female cast, but the gals aren't as relentlessly catty this time around." It is, however, still about the group of female friends and how one's husband is cheating on her.

The Kasdan family of filmmakers has been busy lately. We learned this week that Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, The Accidental Tourist) is scripting a remake of Clash of the Titans. His son Jake's film The TV Set was released in theaters earlier this month. And his son Jon Kasdan's feature writing/directing debut, In the Land of Women, opens this weekend. The title may sound vaguely like a Fifties science-fiction movie, but the film is actually a low-concept, low-key drama about a young man's encounters with a variety of ordinary women in one neighborhood.

In the Land of Women opens cute, with porn-movie screenwriter Carter (Adam Brody) being dumped by his gamine supermodel girlfriend Sofia (Elena Anaya) while young women approach her seeking autographs. Devastated, Carter decides he wants a change of scene, and since his grandmother Phyllis (Olympia Dukakis) claims to be dying, he travels from LA to Michigan to stay with her for awhile. Meanwhile, across the street from Phyllis's house, Sarah (Meg Ryan) has just discovered that she might have breast cancer, and breaks the news to her teenage daughter Lucy (Kristen Stewart). Carter gets to know both the mother and daughter, and provides a sounding board for their troubles, while also mourning his relationship with Sofia. Naturally, he gathers important life lessons, or at least good writing material, while also adding a little magic to their lives.

For a while now, I wondered what on earth William H. Macy was thinking by being a part of Wild Hogs. While it is great to be silly now and then, it helps to not have audiences groaning when the trailer comes on, and shouting: "Why, Macy? Why?" at the screen. Okay, the last part is exaggerated, but I've been on the search for the "why" for a while now, and I think I finally have my answer -- he was doing a dorky family film to raise money for his passion project -- The Deal -- a film he wrote with long-time collaborator and the feature's director, Steven Schachter.

Erik shared news of the film last year, when Macy was going to co-star with Friends alum, Lisa Kudrow. Now Variety has Macy headlining the feature with Meg Ryan -- so either Phoebe has been axed, or downgraded, or maybe they didn't consider her big-screen material. The film was originally going to be a Showtime original movie, but it was re-imagined for wide-release. Then again, it's not like Ryan's career is roaring either. These days, the most she seems to drum up is questions about whether she's had work done to her face, and what happened to her chest.

The movie, in short -- Macy plays a struggling movie producer who cons a studio into letting him head a big-money action flick. The lead is kidnapped and the movie is shut down, but Macy's Charlie Berns (not Charlie Burns) uses the money for a secret picture without the studio's consent. While it might seem like just a goofy comedy about movie-making, it's also been Macy's labor of love. He's spent the last few years raising close to $8 million for the picture, all from non-Hollywood investors -- ones who have been quite understanding, according to Variety. The film will begin production this March in South Africa.

Meg Ryan is interesting. Over the last twenty years, I've watched her take on volcanoes and find love with angels. Year after year, for over a decade, she indulged in lip-locking and feel-good fare. Once she found love via AOL, she began to take it easy. Unfortunately, just when she ventured into new territory with In the Cut, she threw in Against the Ropes and then took the longest hiatus in her career -- three years. Now she's making up for lost time, without the drama.

As Erik Davis shared in September, Ryan is joining Colin Hanks for the romantic comedy Homeland Security, where FBI agent Hanks has to spy on her and her lover, Antonio Banderas, both of whom are suspected of theft. It'll be full of crazy hijinks, I'm sure. Along with this, she's got the comedic melodrama, In the Land of Women, with Adam Brody. Does someone have a new thing for tall, thin, late-twenties actors with brown hair?

While it's unfortunate to not see her in more gritty roles like Cut, her upcoming miniseries might be her taste of some less-silly comedy. She is set to star in The Best Awful, an adaptation of Carrie Fisher's follow-up novel to Postcards From the Edge. In this installment, a divorce sends the Suzanne Vale to go off her meds, have a mid-life crisis and become institutionalized. Richard LaGravenese is joined by the pair behind American Beauty, Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks, to produce the adaptation. Linking that with Carrie Fisher's more snarky, black humor and this might become more than the typical Ryan comedy.