Babes In Boyland

By RICHARD CORLISS

The noise you hear when the weather and the movies get hot--aside from the clatter of cash registers and the "Everything stinks" sighs of film critics--is the tumbling of actresses, as male stars push them aside and stride into big action films. Out of the way, ladies. Summer is men's work.

This summer too, nearly every weekend, another gonadal epic storms the box office. These live-action cartoon heroes--icons for the all important 14-to-14 1/2-year-old male demographic--come in many varieties: animal (Wolverine in X2), vegetable (the giant broccoli that is the Hulk) and mineral (Ahnold in T3). Every variety but female.

And, please, spare us the equal-opportunity keening about Charlie's Angels and Tomb Raiders. The first series is a kung-fu pajama party; the giga-giggling Angels are girls, not adult women. Katharine Hepburn had more vim than the three of them put together. And Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft, for all her googol-24-36 figure, is emotionally not a woman at all. She's a rumbustious guy whose response to nearly any challenge is to open the artillery.

It's true that some of the women in this summer's dozen or so male action movies have a bit more to do; instead of twisting an ankle, they kick butt. In X2, Kelly Hu gets to strut her (and her stuntwomen's) stuff. "When I battle Wolverine," she says, "I'm not just sitting on the sidelines looking good. I'm out there taking action." In T3, Kristanna Loken plays a villain robot who's more than Schwarzenegger's match. Her role is nearly speechless, but her glower is eloquent. Besides, notes Loken, 23, "I don't think many women can say they got to beat up Arnold." Michelle Rodriguez, who turns 25 on July 12, is a valued member of the team in S.W.A.T. (a fiction, since there are as yet no real-life SWAT women in Los Angeles, where the film is set). "I like the idea of being powerful," she says of her role. "Plus I get to play with guns. But I don't have many action scenes. I let the guys shoot and kill everybody."

But these are still supporting roles in a genre where actresses come and go while the male stars go on forever. This month, Schwarzenegger will celebrate his 56th birthday, and Harrison Ford, who starred in this summer's flop cop comedy Hollywood Homicide, his 61st. Both actors were stars before the co-stars of their current films were born. Ford is planning another Indiana Jones movie for 2005, when he'll be 63--older than Sean Connery was when he played Ford's father in the last Indy adventure.

These stars and other action figures--Will Smith, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Vin Diesel--are called franchise players, because every couple of years they tote hit movies and their pricey sequels on their meaty shoulders. The bankability of most male stars (Tom Hanks being the perennial exception) can be gauged by the success they've had fronting movies with numerals.

Top male stars are considered essential to a burly action film, but the actresses who support them are interchangeable, disposable, like blonds in Hef's mansion. From the early James Bond films 40 years ago to this summer, action franchises have relied on new faces and nubile bodies. "We're always looking for new leads," says producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who this summer has Bad Boys II with Gabrielle Union and Pirates of the Caribbean with Keira Knightley. "What happens is the Julia Robertses of the world usually are booked."

The problem in Hollywood is that Julia Roberts is the Julia Robertses of the world. And that's partly because studios don't try to promote and recycle actresses the way they do actors. So the babe roles go to young not-yet-stars who work cheap; a star's salary may be 25 to 50 times that of his putative leading lady. Some actresses use the exposure wisely; others vanish. But each summer produces a new crop of babes in Boyland.

Eva Mendes, the female lead (supporting Paul Walker and Tyrese) in 2 Fast 2 Furious, is one such ornament: her character is the trophy at the end of a 100-min. car race. "I have no problem being an accessory," says Mendes, 25, "as long as I'm not just an accessory. Unfortunately, it's part of being a woman. In the Louvre or on a movie screen, we're looked at as objects of beauty. We need to have more going on."

Once there was lots more going on. In the '30s and '40s, when everyone (not just dateless teen boys) went to films, the sexes were equal onscreen. Men and women used to swap banter, fall in love, solve dilemmas together, share top billing. And women could anchor hits, big ones. Gone With the Wind, depicting a Southern belle's struggles and whims, was Hollywood's top grosser for 26 years--until another women's film, The Sound of Music, matched it. Even the current "all time" champ, Titanic, is at heart a shipboard love story. Yet Hollywood is reluctant to acknowledge the potential clout of a two-sex movie.

As a black actress, Union, 29, harbors few illusions about the business. But she dares to dream of a rising tide. "We want what we saw with Halle Berry in the Bond film Die Another Day, where her character, Jinx, is being spun off into her own franchise. Like breeds like, and if that movie makes money, then a lot of us supporting women could get our own franchises."

But this season's crop of action actresses know who's in charge: boys and men. Some relish their second-class status. Says Hu, who also co-starred in last year's The Scorpion King: "I get to be in a great blockbuster and bask in its success without having the responsibility if it fails." Others are happy for an early career push. "You have to get known, and in summer films you do get attention," says Elizabeth Banks, 29, who has the female lead (supporting Tobey Maguire and Jeff Bridges) in the horse opera Seabiscuit. For an actor, working beats not working--so why not in a movie that people will pay to see, rather than one that plays twice at Sundance and then vanishes?

Michelle Rodriguez's first film, Girlfight, won two prizes at the 2000 Sundance fest. The indie film helped get her the female lead (supporting Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and a lot of souped-up cars) in The Fast and the Furious. This summer she has the female lead (supporting Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell) in S.W.A.T.

Still, Rodriguez is not satisfied. "I'm tired of the tough-guy thing," she says. She's not crazy about the Lara tough gals either. "Female leads can be too harsh. There's nothing psychologically exciting in them." So she is stoking her own projects and hopes to play Lucrezia Borgia and photographer-firebrand Tina Modotti--"respected women who were powerful."

Respect. Power. Can women get those in Hollywood? It's fine that a few young actresses are getting a break, but small steps don't answer big questions. Here are two to munch on, along with your popcorn. Why do the femme sidekicks have to be young? There are talented, sexy actresses over 35, as Hollywood remembers each year at Oscar time. And why do nearly all the big films have no loftier intent than to blow stuff up? Movies would be less predictable, more entertaining, if for just one summer the lords of show biz put action in traction. --Reported by Desa Philadelphia/Los Angeles

With reporting by Desa Philadelphia/Los Angeles