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Friends with Money stars Jennifer Aniston. Frances McDormand. Joan Cusack and Catherine Keener. Fine actresses all, but not one of them trusted to carry a major film on her own. It's gospel that no one in Hollywood knows what to do with female stars once they've passed the age when they can flaunt their butt-cheeks in cut-off denims. And so it's four for the price of one! Welcome to the world of the Multiple Chick Flick.
The mother of this sub-genre is The Women, which packed in five major box-office stars including Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford. It's no secret that its director George Cukor was gay - and one suspects the overgroomed bitches in many oestroegen-fests are stand-ins for gay guys, especially when they're decked out in the sort of outfits one associates with drag queens. For the reductio ad absurdum of this
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Actresses need to be megastars to avoid the chick flick ghetto, says anne billson
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syndrome, take a look at the screamingly camp 8 Femmes, in which Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant swan around in swanky frocks and have a catfight on the floor.
Few multiple chick flicks are so tongue-in-cheek. More typically po-faced is How to Make an American Quilt, in which Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn and Jean Simmons simply can't stop wittering homespun words of wisdom. Or Steel Magnolias, featuring the terrifying trio of Shirley MacLaine, Sally Field and Olympia Dukakis, as well as Julia Roberts, who started out in multiple chick flicks such as this and Mystic Pizza.
Julia had the right idea. She finally got to star in films where she didn't have to jostle half a dozen other actresses for screen space. She just got very, very famous. 
FIRST POSTED MAY 25, 2006
Film Three View: Down in the Valley
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