A little box-office bonding for mothers and daughters

Forget shopping. Movies have become the ultimate bonding ritual for moms and daughters. There’s something freeing about sharing laughter, tears and, yes, heartthrobs. It’s as if the parental curtain comes down and mom and daughter become gal pals. The trick is in choosing what to see.

New York-based humorist Rosemary Rogers (wife of cult director Robert Downey Sr.) and her daughter Nell Rogers Michlin have been watching movies together for 20 years. And now they have compiled their top 101 in “Mother-Daughter Movies,” a breezy new humor book (St. Martin’s Press, $13.95) co-written with Christine Ernst Bode. Besides offering plot summaries and trivia, the writers grade each movie on a scale of 0 to 10 in categories like “bonding potential,” “hunk factor,” “hankie factor” and the all-important “squirming in your seat watching a sex scene with your mother/daughter factor.”

Under “hunk factor” for last year’s “Bend It Like Beckham,” they write: “Here in the States, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers should do for soccer coaches what Hugh Grant did for stammering suitors. You’d gladly run drills for him any day.”

Movies are grouped under such headings as “If It’s Not One Thing, It’s a Mother” (which includes “Ever After,” “Mommie Dearest” and “American Beauty”) and “Family Ties” (which takes in “Dirty Dancing “ and “Terms of Endearment”). As they put it: “The movies have it all -- shame spirals, virginity (or lack thereof), boundary issues, and bad skin.”

You’ll probably quibble with some of their assessments (Freddie Prinze Jr. with a hunk factor of 10 in “She’s All That”?), but some conclusions are indisputable. It really is best to see “Basic Instinct” and “Secretary” with someone besides your daughter (or mom).