The Best _____ _______ of all time

The other day a buddy of mine mentioned (in an email chain) that the new Jake Gyllenhaal/Anne Hathaway movie Love and Other Drugs is "the best chick flick of all time," which of course got me thinking about what the best chick flicks of all time actually are. Now I have yet to see this film, although I will say that it is 1 of 4 movies that either have been recently released or will soon be released that I want to see (the others being How Do You Know (another chick flick), The Black Swan, and The King's Speech), so I can't include it on these rankings just yet, but I have a feeling it will compare very favorably to a few of the following.

As far as chick flicks go, the criteria to be considered one is pretty ambigious. I'll let Wikipedia explain, "Generally, a chick flick is a film designed to have an innate appeal to women, typically young women. Defining a film a chick flick is, as the New York Times has stated, more of a parlor game than a science. These films are generally held in popular culture as having formulaic, paint-by-numbers plot lines and characters. Some frequent elements of chick flicks include having a female protagonist, thematic use of the color pink (along with metaphorical allusions of the color), and romance and/or dating based storylines. Longtime producer Jerry Bruckheimer has remarked about the plots as "How do you cope with money and love?"

For our purposes I've decided to not include any movies that have garnered attention from the Academy Awards. Those movies (I'm looking at you Titanic) are dramas.

And now, without further ado, the top 10 chick flicks of all time that guys could easily put up with/might secretly enjoy.

1.) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003)- An intriguing plot where a magazine columnist (Kate Hudson) dates a guy and does everything imaginable to get dumped in 10 days, but little does she know that the guy (Matthew McConaughey) made a bet that he could get her to fall in love with him in 10 days.

Also, not for nothing, Kate Hudson looks phenomenal in that yellow dress. As I've previously written, normally guys aren't overly impressed with a dress because if a girl is good looking she's going to look good in just about any dress, but this yellow dress was perfect for Kate Hudson.

2.) Definitely, Maybe (2008)- A soon to be divorced father (Ryan Reynolds) tells his daughter about three of his past relationships, including the one with her mother, and soon after the story is over the plot shifts to the present (a la Forrest Gump) as his unresolved feelings for a woman from his past come to the forefront.

I think what makes this chick flick so entertaining is that the protaganist is a male. The plot involves plenty of female emotions, but you see them from a male perspective.

3.) (500) Days of Summer (2009)- To be honest, I'm not even sure if this one counts. I've seen it referred to as a "male chick flick", so we'll go with that. Either way the plot centers around a male 20 something (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who tries to figure out where things went wrong with a girl (Zooey Deschanel) that he dated.

As I've repeatedly stated over the past few months, Zooey Deschanel is my current #1 celebrity crush and I can almost guarantee that she will be yours as well once you're done watching this movie (and Yes, Man).

4.) Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)- This is a bit of a throwback and it did garner an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, so I'm breaking my own rules, but I feel like it's a movie that not too many people have heard of. Maybe because it's British. Anyway, as the title indicates this movie tells the story of two people (Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell- a something about her/sneaky hot type of girl) that fall in love over the course of four weddings and a funeral.

5.) Love Actually (2003)- This is almost like the British version of Crash (2004), but it's set around Christmas time. There are 5 or 6 storylines that seem to weave together. It's basically like a bazooka to the face of Christmas spirit. Incredibly heartfelt and hard not to like. I know at least 3 girls who say that this is their favorite movie of all time.

6.) When Harry Met Sally (1989)- It's been called the ultimate date movie and I threw it on here mainly because of that. Not to mention that there aren't too many chick flicks that I've seen and enjoyed (surprising, I know). The movie is about a guy and a girl (Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan) who drive to New York together from Chicago and seemingly can't stand each other, but they become friends as they keep running into each other over the years in NYC and eventually fall in love.

7.) Raising Helen (2004)- A young, career-first socialite (Kate Hudson) is tasked with raising her sister's 3 kids (the oldest played by a young Hayden Panittiere) after she and her husband die in a car accident. As the title infers, Kate Hudson's character Helen matures through this experience of raising her sister's children.

I know it sounds like a brutally painful movie to watch, but it's actually heartwarming and borderline enjoyable.

8.) The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)- I thought this movie was semi-worthwhile mainly because I didn't fully grasp the rules to this time travel. Basically Eric Bana jumps through time and pops up at different stages of his life. Whenever he goes to another point in time he always shows up without any clothes. If you think that's bizarre, it's get crazier. He starts showing up at different points of this girl's childhood (Rachel McAdams) and eventually they "fall in love" and get married (as if she had a choice- this guy kept showing up and practically told her that they were destined to get married), but he keeps disappearing for stretches and she is forced to deal with the reality that her husband will never fully be there for her.

Maybe I enjoyed this film (sort of) because I'm a big Rachel McAdams guy, but I will say that girls ate this movie/book up big time.

9.) Serendipity (2001)- Hopefully you know what you're getting into when you see Cusack and Kate Beckinsale on the cover. This film reinforces the largely female notions of "everything happens for a reason" and "if it's meant to be, it's meant to be."

10.) The Proposal (2009)- The plot is a bit ridiculous, but the movie isn't horrible. A female CEO type (Sandra Bullock) is getting deported (she's Canadian), so she forces her male assistant (Ryan Reynolds) to marry her so that she can stay in the country. They go away to his hometown for a long weekend and, you guessed it, fall in love.