25 Movies That Make It Obvious The Writers Didn’t Consult A Woman

Last week, a Redditor nicknamed Embarrassed-Toe-1920 made a post on the subreddit r/TwoXChromosomes, asking people to share movies that seemed like they were created without any female perspectives in the writing process. In the post, they mentioned watching Just Go With It, starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston and expressed their strong disapproval of the storyline. “The plot features a wealthy plastic surgeon in his 50s, who lacks redeeming qualities, dating a 25-year-old woman. Ultimately, he realises he’s actually in love with his middle-aged assistant and leaves the young woman for her. That’s pretty much the entire movie,” they noted. The user further described the film as embodying a man’s fantasy while feeling like a nightmare for women and invited others to share similar movie titles from which we've shared the most popular below.

#1 Another Adam Sandler movie - Blended. Overall kind of a cute but dumb movie. But there's this one scene where leading lady is helping him pick out tampons for his daughter and basically explains he needs to get small ones because of her small v*gina. They extend it further by having the checkout lady make an awkward comment about the days when she could use those. When cringe meets misinformation...

Image source: salydra, Warner Bros. Pictures

#2 Basically every single James Bond movie ever.

Image source: UnicornOnTheJayneCob

#3 Anything with 90% of men being the protagonist and the overly-objectified women who are only there as love interests.

Image source: Puzzleheaded_Fig6314

#4 It still baffles me how many women were involved in the making of What Women Want. It should be called What Men Think Women Want. It is so so so so stupid.

Image source: lovepeacefakepiano

#5 This reminds me of the woman who wrote about male only writing rooms, she cited an episode of a crime drama where the inspector declared that the k*ller must have redressed the female victim because her "bra and panties don't match". And her underwear was really expensive, at least $20 for her bra alone!

Image source: ProfuseMongoose, cottonbro studio

#6 Passengers, and if you can't tell that Chris Pratt is absolutely evil in that movie, you're definitely not safe to be around. And tbh, I've heard the "he picked the wrong girl obviously " argument, and it also reeks of predatory male privilege.

Image source: Primary-Purpose1903

#7 I love many movies that Ryan Gosling is in, but in The Notebook (2004), the character threatening s***ide (or at least a broken neck and bones) if Rachel McAdams won't date him has got to be one of the more disgusting coercive interactions in a mainstream movie that only a bunch of men in the writers room (and a male novelist) could think of as "romantic". Truly messed up stuff.

Image source: Status_Shine6978

#8 The episode of Ted Lasso in Amsterdam, where Rebecca falls into a canal, goes into the houseboat of the man who helped her out, showers there, and ends up sleeping there. The whole time I was thinking “what MAN wrote this?!” In what universe would an adult woman go into the home of a complete stranger and feel comfortable enough to shower, let alone spend the night?!

Image source: Weasley9, apple

#9 My ex and I rewatched the first National Treasure movie last year and it was...rough. The treatment of Diane Kruger's character was downright criminal.

Image source: F0R3V3R She plays an archivist working in the f*****g National Archives, a bona fide professional in her field, but once she gets wrapped up in the (from her perspective, INSANE) hunt for the Declaration of Independence she's treated like a child. I can't count the number of times the two male leads share a look and shake their head in response to DK's character asking questions. They just oozed "aww isn't she cute, she's trying so hard to keep up" energy. The infantilization was crazy.

#10 Just watched an old episode of the original Star Trek where a woman somehow switched bodies with Captain Kirk against his will as a way to take over his command/life. The way the crew was convinced that the apparent Captain Kirk wasn’t himself was summed up by Scotty: “I’ve never before seen the Captain red-faced with hysteria.” God damn.

Image source: Dense-Consequence-70, Pavel Danilyuk

#11 Lemme add another pet peeve of mine. Strong women characters. When the strong woman character is written and she behaves like a man: fights like a man, is a tomboy, has interests in science or building things. These are things that men value and view as strong. These are female characters written by men imagining that what makes a strong woman is a woman who acts like a man. They are not what makes a strong woman.

ETA the strong woman who doesn't communicate or suffers in silence. Again...a man attempting to write a strong woman character and making them behave like a man. Image source: littleHelp2006

#12 As much as I enjoy M.A.S.H. I still find myself thinking about how it was played as a funny prank to set an officer up to sexually a*sault Margaret Houlihan.

Image source: MisSpooks

#13 I feel like this is basically every movie until "Clueless."

My boyfriend likes a lot of movies from the 70s and he's always watched them through a "filmmaker's eye" and never watched them with a woman. When we watch them together I always end up telling him how problematic the film is afterwards. I'm a bummer. But, it's not my fault - I didn't write this trash! Image source: ZipperJJ

#14 Pretty much every, manic-pixie-girl, who's a huge extrovert, lives an amazing action-packed life, inexplicably falls in love with the quiet, introverted guy who does nothing to show any value and she makes it her personal mission to bring him out of his shell. They're not always the manic-pixie aesthetic, but the concept is the same.

Image source: resilindsey

#15 Knocked Up. Let's break down the numerous reasons why I think Judd Apatow did not consult with a single woman before writing a movie about something that deeply affects women:

The main character is a hot, mid-twenties woman who just landed her dream job. Other than thinking her nieces are cute, we get no information about how she feels about parenting. She never says she longs to be a mother. She seems extremely focused on her new career in the entertainment industry. Suddenly she's impregnated by Seth Rogan after a one night stand. She seems to *loathe* this man. Like cannot stand him for longer than a couple minutes. And his character is written to be so gross and obnoxious, it makes sense no woman would want to be around him. But of course, since this movie about pregnancy centers on a man, he goes from annoying and disgusting to "not" and that's the major arc of the movie. He's also *horrible* to her as a partner and expectant father, which is simply glossed over. Everyone in this woman's life tells her not to have this baby. Her mom and sister are very stressed out for her, her mom even urges her to have an abortion. Other than sit there with a stupid look on her face, the pleas of her family have no effect on her. She also has to hide the pregnancy from all her friends AND everyone at work, lest she be fired (wow Judd, could have written an entire movie on this premise alone. Too bad the movie about pregnancy was just a vehicle for Seth Rogan jokes.) The movie could have introduced the female lead as a devout Catholic, which would have explained why she was not only against abortion, but also wasn't using birth control. She could have been 15-20 years older and always wanted a child but was too wrapped up in her career. We could have opened the movie with her leaving her husband or long term partner after they reach an impasse about having children or not. S**t, the story could have taken place in a state with restrictive abortion laws instead of California. But no. We get absolutely no reasoning for why this woman would make such an extreme and life changing decision. Image source: allworkandnoYahtzee

#16 Just watched Daddy’s Home (Will Ferrel and Mark Wahlberg) with my parents. As someone who’s just coming out of an emotionally abusive relationship with a narcissist, I was floored by the amount of gaslighting played for comedy on display in that movie. Both of those men were treating the wife character as an object to be won. It’s was pretty gross. If I was watching it on my own I would have turned it off 10 mins in.

Image source: Illogicat5764

#17 I can't imagine any Adam Sandler movies holding up especially well tbh .

Image source: eoz

#18 Ghostbusters, specifically the manipulative creep that is Peter Venkman. Literally his entire character is that he is a sex pest that manipulates women into sleeping with him , from his first scene trying to hook up with a student through his entire romantic subplot that is just him using the fears of a distraught client to get into her pants.

Image source: SomeGuyNamedJason

#19 Knocked up. I always thought it was a horror film with a laugh track. Only men would find the plot humorous - having your life’s plans ruined by a one night stand with a loser. Abortion - abortion was an option. But that writers room clearly didn’t consider completely f*****g up a woman’s life as anything more serious than a funny plotline.

Image source: Goodgoditsgrowing

#2o Not a movie, but the S1 Supernatural episode [Home]

There is NO way in hell a woman would open up the house to a male stranger (much less TWO) who knocked on the door and asked to come in just because they "used to live there", and ESPECIALLY not when she has a young child with her at home too. WtaF. Image source: basementdiplomat

#21 Love Actually.

Image source: katybear16

#22 Supernatural

Image source: MsMcClane The sheer amount of times that the woman costars died instead of their male ones was enough that people started memeing it. And then the people in charge got all mad when we started shipping them with the other male characters. They've got no one to blame, but their own s****y writing.

#23 I haven’t seen the whole thing but just the premise of The Switch and knowing they end up together anyway is revolting to me. I had to stop watching it.

Him switching the semen to his own in the cup she’s gonna use for insemination must be some form of a*sault if not r*pe adjacent. And obviously the movie wants it to be this romantic thing that it was his son all along when it’s actually horrifying that he overrode her choice and made her have his child instead. (I don’t care that the character is drunk as he replaced the semen. When she finds out and loves it instead of running for the hills is disgusting.). Image source: PlainsHognoseSnake

#24 Pretty much every Judd Apatow movie.

Which k*lls me, because I find them genuinely funny a lot of the time, and they have some funny women in them. But women are either sexy dreamgirls, or mean mommies. They don't get the joke and they stop men from having fun. In Knocked Up, Katherine Heigl is supposed to be like an E! Tv reporter, and yet she doesn't get a Back to the Future reference? Image source: Leucadie

#25 "There's Something About Mary" Just watched it this morning and that exact thought kept popping up everytime a joke was made.

Image source: LukaJoestar