The Movie Boyfriend

He's handsome, supportive, wise, experienced -- and completely uninteresting.
By AMY ARGETSINGER
WASHINGTON POST
Pay no heed to what your whiny women friends say: The perfect guy is quite easy to find these days -- at least in the movies.
He's gazing soulfully at Debra Messing. He's murmuring sweet encouragement to Sandra Bullock. He's wrinkling his brow, adorably, at the antics of Drew Barrymore. He's sweeping Julia Roberts around the dance floor.
Now here he is again, in a gold-lit haze, jogging shirtless on the beach past Jennifer Lopez in her new film, "Monster-in-Law." We learn that this vision of manliness is single, a successful doctor and ...
Well, that's about it, really. Did you need more? Look, there's Jane Fonda! Doesn't she look great? How much longer 'til she and J.Lo start catfighting? Bring on the main event!
For years actresses complained about getting stuck in the generic supporting role of The Girl -- the lady scientist who spars with the hero before melting into his arms, the radiant young wife who coos supportively to the cop before her murder propels him into a bloodbath of vigilantism.
But amid a renaissance of female-dominated films, and at a time when more than a dozen actresses command $10 million or more for a movie, there's a new archetype on the screen -- and this time the cardboard-cutout character is The Guy.
You can't have a chick flick, after all, without someone for the Chick to pine for, or banter with, or flee from the villains with, or bid farewell from her deathbed. Now a whole cadre of actors specialize in meeting the elusive demands of this particular role. Or at least we keep seeing the same guys play The Guy over and over again.
Meet 'The Guys'
So for the handsome doctor caught between mom Fonda and fiancee Lopez, producers tapped Michael Vartan, who played Barrymore's boyfriend in "Never Been Kissed" before he was Jennifer Garner's honey on TV's "Alias." But they might just as easily have cast Benjamin Bratt, who was Bullock's sparring partner in "Miss Congeniality," Halle Berry's boo in "Catwoman" and Madonna's sweetie in "Next Best Thing." Or Goran Visnjic, suitor to Bullock in "Practical Magic" and Heather Graham in "Committed" and Garner in "Elektra." Or John Corbett, whose yeomanly fulfillment of boyfriend duties on TV's "Sex and the City" earned him not just the right to play Kate Hudson's gentleman caller in "Raising Helen" but perhaps the quintessential Guy (handsome, inoffensive, looks good in a tux) of our times -- the groom in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." (As producer, Bullock went out and found Enrique Murciano from "Without A Trace" on CBS to do stand-up duties in "Miss Congeniality 2.)
Remember that Guy? Remember him? Yeah, didn't think so.
Perhaps the hardest-working boyfriend in the biz is Dermot Mulroney. The Alexandria, Va., native is a veteran actor who has done standout work in many well-respected movies you never saw. In the ones you did see -- the big studio ones -- he played The Guy.
He may even have pioneered the role as we know it. He was the sweet, dorky photographer whom Bridget Fonda couldn't tell about her job as a government assassin in "Point of No Return." The stable, loving fiance that Winona Ryder felt very guilty about cheating on in "How to Make an American Quilt." The mysterious male escort that made Messing swoon in "The Wedding Date." And in "My Best Friend's Wedding" -- arguably the defining chick flick of the past decade -- he was the sportswriter caught up in the clash of the titanesses that was Julia Roberts vs. Cameron Diaz.
A certain quality
What is it about these Guys, and why do they always end up holding the door while the Chick kickboxes or pratfalls her way into America's heart?
In part, of course, it's because they can't all be Brad Pitt.
"For men in their thirties, there are the actors who had that big hit that propelled them to the Tom Cruise level, and there are those who are really talented but never got the break into international markets," says Randi Hiller, a Los Angeles casting director who rounded up the boys for the surfer girl epic "Blue Crush" and the Kirsten Dunst vehicle "Crazy/Beautiful."
The hunger of overseas audiences for big-name stars increasingly drives casting decisions for the vast majority of movies made today. "The rest of these guys, no matter how talented they are, end up with the next level of roles," Hiller says.
Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin, however, cites a grand tradition going back to the 1930s, with handsome sub-stars like Ralph Bellamy, Franchot Tone, John Loder -- men who were capable of both kissing Rosalind Russell and losing her to Cary Grant in the final reel.
George Brent, co-star of classics including "Dark Victory" and "Jezebel," was perhaps the preeminent screen boyfriend of the era. "The strong leading ladies like Bette Davis liked having him as their leading man because he wasn't threatening to them," says Maltin, author of the new "Classic Movie Guide." The same principle carries on today.
What women want
Thest guys represent what Hollywood suspects women everywhere really want. What, then, do the movies tell us about the perfect Guy?
UHe is the consummate straight man. He may react in an adorably bemused way to the antics of the heroine or her wacky friends, but he does not deliver the punch line.
UHe's experienced. No virgins or loners, please; he's had other girlfriends, whom he tends to trot before the heroine in a well-meaning way. But they turn out to be vapid, or duplicitously evil, and he comes to recognize the error of his ways within 90 minutes.
UHe is supportive and wise. He can deliver the piercing observation that spurs the heroine to action or onto a path of self-improvement. ("No more trying to be someone I'm not!" weeps Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde," and Luke Wilson says, "What if you're trying to be someone you are?") Yet his own character may never develop beyond his growing recognition of how wonderful the heroine truly is.
UHe may occasionally throw a punch or two -- in her defense, of course. But he never really kicks anyone's butt.
UFinally, he doesn't have a whole lot of -- how can we put this? -- edge. Edge apparently makes for a bad boyfriend. Consider the brothers Wilson. With his sweet, earnest squint, Luke has logged time as on-screen boyfriend to Barrymore ("Home Fries") and Diaz ("Charlie's Angels") and Witherspoon. Whereas his brother Owen zoomed straight to action and comedic leads without ever playing a boyfriend, his stoner drawl, bar-fight nose and willfully bad haircut sending a strong subliminal message to the women of America: not relationship material.