Nine flavors of comedy

What’s funny this summer? Male anxiety, men not wanting to grow up, ticked-off chicks, ticked-off chicks with superpowers, long-legged chicks who can drink you under the table.... Do we detect a theme here? The battle of the sexes percolates through the summer laugh-fest, with enough dollops of teen antics, sophisticated Streepian high jinks and Ali G doing NASCAR to keep the rest of us amused. Our own Rachel Abramowitz offers a taste test.

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Dreamers

“Amateurs� -- A small town gets together to make a porn film.

“Nacho Libre� -- A cook (Jack Black) dreams of being a masked Mexican wrestler to save a poor orphanage.

“From the genre point of view, someone who has to juggle two worlds is classic comic fodder. Whether it’s like Jack in ‘School of Rock,’ where it’s this uptight prep school, or a monastery where all the monks and nuns are hard-core and humorless. Putting him in that world, and him trying to be the antic wild guy that Jack can be -- it always lends itself to the explosive comedy that Jack does so well.�

-- MIKE WHITE, co-writer and producer, “Nacho Libre�

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Men growing up

“Groomsmen� -- A wedding, what else?

“You, Me and Dupree� -- Best friend (Owen Wilson) moves in with newlyweds.

“It’s five guys the weekend before a wedding, and they’re all sort of constitutionally opposed to growing up. How this came about: I just turned 35. I had just gotten married [to model Christy Turlington]. I was staring at a bunch of my friends -- all of us in our mid-30s -- no one had graduated to that level of responsibility that our dads had gotten to at 25. Someone was still living at home! No one had married. No one had kids. That’s how the idea was formed.�

EDWARD BURNS, writer and director, “The Groomsmen�

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Teen comedy

“Zoom� -- Superhero prep school.

“Accepted� -- Rejected by every college? Create your own.

“The premise is this kid who fails to get into college invents his own college. Each step of the way he gets more and more into trouble. At first he writes a letter getting into a fake college so hopefully his parents will leave him alone. Then his parents want to see it, so he rents an old mental hospital. Because they set up a website, 300 kids who didn’t get into college show up to go. The screws keep turning. The fun of the movie is if the character of Justin can survive, and then turn it into something.�

-- STEVE PINK, director, “Accepted�

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Wacky families

“Little Miss Sunshine� -- Wacky family on a road trip.

“Keeping Up With the Steins� -- Wacky family at a bar mitzvah.

“Little Man� -- Wacky family produced when wannabe dad mistakenly adopts a criminal.

“Little Miss Sunshine� co-directors JONATHAN DAYTON and VALERIE FARIS:

DAYTON: “We had one day of rehearsals where we gave Toni [Collette] and Greg [Kinnear] $400 and a van, and said, “Alrighty, you plan a family trip.� We just went along filming it.�

FARIS: “Everyone had to stay in character all day long. Greg was driving. Alan [Arkin] was in the back, and Alan kept trying to get Greg to pull over so he could pee. They took the van over to Jerry’s Deli in Studio City and had lunch, and then they bowled. Steve [Carell’s] a pretty good bowler, and so is Greg. They kept trying to one-up each other.�

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Drinking and driving

“Beerfest� -- Competitive beer drinking.

“Talladega Nights� -- Will Ferrell does NASCAR.

“It has little to do with the real world of NASCAR. It’s just these crazy people they invented running around with the real people of NASCAR. The people who did the second unit on ‘The Bourne Identity’ did all the driving for us. It makes us laugh to have this ridiculous sense of humor, but the car stuff looks as if it were a Tom Cruise movie.

“Will and all the actors went to a track to learn how to drive. The first thing was for them to go in the car with a real driver to see what it feels like to go 140 miles per hour. Afterward all the actors were so scared that none of them wanted to drive the car at all.�

-- JUDD APATOW, producer,

“Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby�

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Rocky romances

“Just My Luck� -- Lindsay Lohan romance.

“The Break-Up� -- Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston break up; no one moves out.

“Trust the Man� -- Couples breaking up.

“I Could Never Be Your Woman� -- Older woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) falls for younger man (Paul Rudd).

“There was a time when every night on TV people were making jokes about Cher’s Bagel Boy. There’s been less and less [joking] with Ashton and Demi, and when my daughter is in her 40s, it’ll be: ‘How old is your boyfriend? Is he 10 years older or 10 years younger?’ That age of being a person who does stuff and dates -- it just seems to be getting larger.�

-- AMY HECKERLING, writer and director,

“I Could Never Be Your Woman�

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Superpower comedy

“Click� -- Adam Sandler has a magic remote control.

“My Super Ex-Girlfriend� -- Luke Wilson jilts a needy superhero.

“There’s always a battle of the sexes. Wherever there’s romance, there’s tension. My phrase on this one is: ‘Never break the heart of a superhero.’ �

-- IVAN REITMAN, director,

“My Super Ex-Girlfriend�

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Meryl laughs

“The Devil Wears Prada� -- Fashion editrix torments assistant.

“A Prairie Home Companion� -- Based on the Garrison Keillor broadcasts.

“This is like an imaginary last broadcast, after it’s been bought by Clear Channel. We’re not allowed to say Clear Channel; probably we’d be killed because they own everything. It’s the end of mom and pop-dom, which is analogous to a lot of things in the world. Big systems taking over small local things. [I play] a very pliant, kind woman who is sort of moved by events around her, and doesn’t move events in her life. It’s so infused with music. I sing endlessly.�

-- MERYL STREEP

on “A Prairie Home Companion�

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Ticked-off chicks

“John Tucker Must Die� -- They’re betrayed. He’s in trouble.

“Three girls find out the same guy is dating all of them and not telling them. A new girl shows up and tells them, ‘Why don’t you get even?’ They try everything they can -- they try to make him undatable, but they realize that’s never going to work. They finally realize that they have to try to break his heart the way he broke their hearts. It’s kind of ‘First Wives Club’ for high school kids. It’s really fun. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s a feminist piece.�

-- BETTY THOMAS, director, “John Tucker Must Die�