Recently, my wife pulled me to the new Farrelly Brothers’ (Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary) movie, Fever Pitch, which billed itself as a chick flick disguised as a sports movie. Or, as ESPN’s Bill Simmons explains in this absolutely hilarious article on the movie, a “Spork Flick.”
Mr. Simmons recently attended Fever Pitch with his father because the film was billed as a funny spork flick, but he realized after enduring the movie that it was really just a straightforward chick flick:

Here’s the plot for “Fever Pitch” in one sentence: Guy loves the Red Sox, meets Drew Barrymore, tries to love them both, nearly loses her because of the Sox, decides to give up his season tickets next to the Red Sox dugout because he loves her, she stops him just in time, and they get back together and end up making out on the field after the first Red Sox championship in 86 years. The end.

Mr. Simmons goes on compare the movie with other chick flicks (don’t miss his analysis of My Best Friend’s Wedding), and then reveals that the key to success of a chick flick is hitting on the top ten generic themes of chick flicks, a couple of which are the following:

4. If you’re dating someone who is passionate about something, he will absolutely give that up for you because all men change once they fall in love. Especially if you have a nice apartment.
5. You can have only three friends: A smart friend who’s pretty in a quirky way, a calculating beauty who’s morally corrupt and an overweight girl who doesn’t say much. You can only hang out with these people all at once. If there’s anyone in your life who doesn’t fit one of those three categories, get rid of them.

Trust me on this one — read the entire article. Hat tip to Craig Newmark for the link.