Babies, mamas, men and women

By Steven Zeitchik

Regular readers of this blog know there's nothing we enjoy more -- besides for random references to sports teams, that is (puzzling Jets draft, no?) -- than parsing weekend box office for trends. So what can this weekend's tally teach us? Well, "Baby Mama," a pregnancy comedy starring two women but with enough raunch gags to keep ye local frat house amused and quote-happy earned more in its opening weekend than last week's opener, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," a male comedy in which (by writer Jason Segel's admission) the men get all vulnerable and teary and act like, well, women.

Michael McCullers' Tina Fey/Amy Poehler-starrer earned about half a million more, or 4% ($18.3 to $17.7m) than Judd Apatow's and Nick Stoller's pretext for writing really academic pieces about genitalia -- we mean poignant rom-com -- despite opening on fewer screens.

That means that by the new Hollywood rules, if you're making a comedy of love and raunch, you're better off aiming at women and sneaking in something for the men than the other way around.

Strictly speaking, this shouldn't surprise us given the demographers who are always telling us about female purchasing power. But since each of these movies camouflages its humor for one audience by aiming it at another, there's another lesson: Women don't mind seeing women act like men, but men don't want to see men act like women, at least not to the same extent.

Some gender-studies students are going to have a field day with this one.