Chalk it up to a lack of talent both in terms of actresses and writers. They'll come back around again.

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I myself have not seen "Knocked Up", so I couldn't agree or disagree with Heigel's comments. I'm not quite sure what aspects of the film she is criticizing. Yet, I will use the similarly in humor "There's Something About Mary". Why was that film so successful? Was it because of the Farrelly brothers? Perhaps. Was it Ben Stiller? He certainly has his audience but he's not quite Jim Carrey popular. Oh yeah, and then there's Cameron Diaz. Her role as Mary made that film. A woman who got the humor and was certainly game to play along with the guys and yet still manged to be the heart of that movie.

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Anne Hathaway springs to mind. She's been the star of several 100 million dollar films.

Personally, I think it comes down to who the studios are trying to reach. As long as they aim for the bottom of the barrel then stuff like Iron Man - yes it was a limp film with an even more threadbare plot than Transformers - will continue to be made. They build films for teen boys.

The films made for the rest of us barely get any press or wide release.

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Notes on a Scandal was a damn good movie. Far better, imho, than sitting through Iron Man. While Downey was a fantastic rake, the rest of the characters were paper thin, lacking motivation and any backstory. There was a villain in the movie right? Yeah, an old guy with a beard, Bridges, who appeared in maybe 10 minutes of the movie before we endured 15 minutes of two bad CGI robots fighting.

Movies are made for teens. Most movies seem to be aimed at teen boys, with teen-aged minded adults boys the next target.

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The gay perspective: I wrote this before, but for reason it didn't show up. Let me try again. The problem isn't women, and by that you must mean white women, since there has always been a dirth of roles for women of color (I note you don't mention that). The problem is that Hollywood entertains only the fantasies of average looking guys like Apatow who want to imagine they can get girls that they wouldn't get in real life. I don't dislike all of his movies. Some of them are very good (40 Year Old Virgin being still at the top of the list), but the reality is that they really are straight white male wet dream material about the women they can't attract in real life. If the women seem lesser in such movies, it's because these guys wouldn't be dating stronger women since those types of women would be attracted to a different type of guy. About the only one who fits the type of guy I imagine a strong attractive woman who thinks might date is Tony Stark. He's more of the uber guy rather than the poor average looks, average life, average personality guy who couldn't get the women often casted in these movies. As my friend said of Knocked Up (he's also gay)- she would have to be so blindly drunk as to be out cold to have had sex with that guy. That's the reality. I imagine a lot of guys here will say that ain't true. But that's more of their fantasizing. So long as everyone thinks they are being served by this narrow demographic- not much will change.

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Isn't Ms. Heigel the same woman who densely declared in USA Today that she'd rather pay someone to have babies for her, since it looks like childbirth hurts?

Not exactly the pinnacle of intellectual thought, is Ms. Heigel.

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Who gives a damn? God was misogynistic. Deal with it.

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as a young woman and self-professed feminist i am more inclined to believe that hollywood still has a long way to go. the problem seems to be that no one can decide what makes a good female role. movies with weak, over sexualized women are considered sexist. where is the line between normal human and weak human? where is the line between sexual freedom/independence and sex object? these are the kinds of questions writers need/have to ask when creating characters. more women writers and producers would probably help but i doubt this situation will change anytime soon. which is a shame.

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I declare this post misogynistic for choosing the ugliest picture of Anna Farris possible.

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Misogynistic? Probably not, but the sad fact is that the majority of these big commercial films are aimed squarely at guys, so everything is skewed in their direction. I'm sure if the studios were to actively go after the female audience again, we'd see more of a gender-balanced landscape like there is on TV.

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YouTick:

Give me a break. Most women, with extremely rare exceptions, marries slobs below their on social standards. That's again the fantasy of his movies. Apatow isn't some poor middle class slob like the characters he tends to write about in his movies.

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Tell y'all what. When hollywood starts making action movies with NO romance plots of any kind in them, then you can start to say hollywood is gender biased and only appeals to men without sounding like a TOTAL ASS.

youtick: woman are less shallow then men? can i buy some pot from you?

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I don't think Hollywood is misogynistic so much as it's just dumb. Not Hollywood it self, that is, but the movies it makes. The majority of people out there don't want deep, compelling, realistic movies. The men want ridiculous explosions and car chases with little to no character development and the women want farcical, sophmoric Reese Witherspoon romantic comedies or weepy, melodramtic Nicholas Sparks garbage. It's all a business and that's what sells tickets. Complex roles for women isn't part of the equation, but complex roles for me aren't really included either. When it comes to indie films and smaller releases where the goal is to make art rather than to simply drag as many people into the theater as you can, there can be meatier roles for me and I would argue that there are plenty of meaty roles for women to be had as well. The women who can handle those roles don't neccessarily become as famous since they're not doing Maxim shoots and getting spotlighted in US Weekly, but I'm quite okay with that.

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