[May's] films—A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid—deal with dependent weak characters…. [Her] characters, male and female, are equal and both weak in some major, emotional way. They meet out of mutual need …, fall in love and support each other's weaknesses…. The films are less generic satires than rather traditional romances or man vs. women comedies of courtship.

The protagonists are both openly neurotic victims who, like the protagonists of Woody Allen's films, triumph, achieve what they want, a love relationship earned through pain. Secondary characters in May's films are generally pragmatists …, people who use other people. However, May sees this social pragmatism as a neurotic weakness behind which people hide. For May, like Allen, open vulnerability and weakness are virtues compared to a false pragmatic front of security.

Her plots deal with men who see women as objects to be used to fulfill a fantasy...