Chick Flick Boyfriends: Guys Gone Mild

What is it about these Guys, and why do they always end up holding the door while the Chick kickboxes or pratfalls her way into America's heart?

In part, of course, it's because they can't all be Brad Pitt.

"For men in their thirties, there are the actors who had that big hit that propelled them to the Tom Cruise level, and there are those who are really talented but never got the break into international markets," says Randi Hiller, a Los Angeles casting director who rounded up the boys for the surfer girl epic "Blue Crush" and the Kirsten Dunst vehicle "Crazy/Beautiful."

The hunger of overseas audiences for big-name stars increasingly drives casting decisions for the vast majority of movies made today. "The rest of these guys, no matter how talented they are, end up with the next level of roles," Hiller says.

Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin, however, cites a grand tradition going back to the 1930s, with handsome sub-stars like Ralph Bellamy, Franchot Tone, John Loder -- men who were capable of both kissing Rosalind Russell and losing her to Cary Grant in the final reel.

George Brent, co-star of classics including "Dark Victory" and "Jezebel," was perhaps the preeminent screen boyfriend of the era. "The strong leading ladies like Bette Davis liked having him as their leading man because he wasn't threatening to them," says Maltin, author of the new "Classic Movie Guide." The same principle carries on today.

"You don't want someone so bland that you can't understand the leading ladies' attraction," he says, "but you don't want someone so dominant that they overshadow the star."

Another casting director holds a fonder view. It takes a very special kind of guy, says Lisa Beach, to play the boyfriend. When casting "The Sweetest Thing" -- the first movie that earned Cameron Diaz a $20 million paycheck -- Beach looked at dozens of actors before settling on Thomas Jane. (Who? Exactly.) "He had the right amount of sweetness," Beach says. She describes Jane and his screen brethren as "boyish" and "a little softer than your classic leading action hero."

"The actors who work in these boyfriend roles have a quality that women respond to," she says, "because women think they can take care of them."

In other words, they represent what Hollywood suspects women everywhere really want. What, then, do the movies tell us about the perfect Guy?

· He is the consummate straight man. He may react in an adorably bemused way to the antics of the heroine or her wacky friends, but he does not deliver the punch line.

· He's experienced. No virgins or loners, please; he's had other girlfriends, whom he tends to trot before the heroine in a well-meaning way. But they turn out to be vapid, or duplicitously evil, and he comes to recognize the error of his ways within 90 minutes.

· He is supportive and wise. He can deliver the piercing observation that spurs the heroine to action or onto a path of self-improvement. ("No more trying to be someone I'm not!" weeps Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde," and Luke Wilson says, "What if you're trying to be someone you are?") Yet his own character may never develop beyond his growing recognition of how wonderful the heroine truly is.

· He may occasionally throw a punch or two -- in her defense, of course. But he never really kicks anyone's butt.

Finally, he doesn't have a whole lot of -- how can we put this? -- edge. Edge apparently makes for a bad boyfriend. Consider the brothers Wilson. With his sweet, earnest squint, Luke has logged time as on-screen boyfriend to Barrymore ("Home Fries") and Diaz ("Charlie's Angels") and Witherspoon. Whereas his equally dishy brother Owen zoomed straight to action and comedic leads without ever playing a boyfriend, his stoner drawl, bar-fight nose and willfully bad haircut sending a strong subliminal message to the women of America: not relationship material .

But, ahhh, Michael Vartan. "I would have agreed to anything to get you to move in here," he murmurs to Lopez. His shirt is back on at this point. But the soulful gaze, the crinkly smile -- they never waver.

"This isn't my world anymore," he tells her when she's humiliated in front of his mother's hoity-toity friends. "You're my world." He is, indeed, perfect.

Pity they don't put him in any of the interesting scenes.