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Love HurtsThe five deadly sins of romantic comedies.

By Lisa Levy
Posted Thursday, Dec. 27, 2001, at 12:34 PM ET
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Romantic comedies did not always, well, suck. Some of the most beloved directors in American cinema made their reputations on them: Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, Woody Allen, Cameron Crowe. And it really is possible to combine romance and comedy, as The Lady Eve (1941), Annie Hall (1977), and Tootsie (1982) all attest. But 2001's top-grossing romantic comedies were The Wedding Planner, Someone Like You, Serendipity, Bridget Jones's Diary, and What Women Want (released in late 2000). In other words: The genre's in woeful shape.

Things are so bad that romantic comedies are now making jokes about their own lameness. In Kate & Leopold, this holiday season's showcase for Meg Ryan's preciousness, she's Kate McKay, marketing whiz, and Hugh Jackman is Leopold, an oddly dressed fellow whose impeccable manners and excellent taste mean he must be from another century. We meet Kate at the end of a test screening of a typical romantic comedy, Love for Sale: the protagonists playfully kissing in a park at sunset, with insipid lite rock swelling over the scene (Vanessa Williams' "Save the Best for Last"). The audience loves it, even when the director fumes that this process is "sucking the life out of American cinema."

Sorry, Mr. Director, but test audiences aren't the ones to blame: They don't make the movies, they just watch 'em. It's your job to fix them. And as a devoted fan of the genre, I have a few small requests for you.

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1. No more Sleepless in Seattle rip-offs.
The way to build romantic tension is not to show us two characters who don't really know anything about each other. The latest offender in this category is Serendipity, in which Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack meet cute at a glove counter and, rather than exchanging phone numbers, subject themselves, their friends, and the audience to a series of unholy coincidences and near-misses before reuniting even cuter. To be sure, the hardest part of writing romcom is coming up with a plausible obstacle—something to keep your lovers apart for 90 minutes before you bring them together in the final 15. But the Sleepless/Serendipity approach inevitably creates gaping plot holes and deprives the audience of the pleasure of actually seeing people fall in love or at least have amusing arguments. 

2. Smart and capable is sexy.
Only in the movies do the high-strung and the hapless find mates so fast. These heroes (to use the term loosely) undermine themselves by being neurotic or clumsy or just plain stupid. This is painful, not funny, to watch. Bridget Jones's Diary is a series of Bridget's humiliating pratfalls and faux pas, usually in front of one of her two suitors: posh cad Hugh Grant (playing against his usual type) or arrogant yet sensitive Colin Firth. Grant became a romcom star in part because he could stutter convincingly, fumbling his encounters with Andie MacDowell and Julia Roberts.

3. Make the men less repulsive.
Someone Like You portrays a workplace love triangle in which Ashley Judd is seduced by Greg Kinnear's questionable charms before realizing sleazy roommate Hugh Jackman is actually the one for her. There's also a running comparison between the mating habits of men and cows, but the less said about that the better. America's Sweethearts, billed as an updated screwball romantic comedy, asks the audience to believe that Julia Roberts (fat suit or not) is pining away for John Cusack, when his character has nothing tangible or otherwise to offer besides the somewhat kinky fact that he was once married to her prettier sister.

4. Romance isn't everything.
The classic romantic comedy formula is boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. But most romcoms concentrate so breathlessly on the love dance that they never establish their leads as anything more than besotted nincompoops. But life, alas, does not stop because love comes to town. In contrast, the year's two best romantic comedies were career stories as well as love stories. Amélie, which introduces the lovely Audrey Tatou, is just as much about the title character's transformation from a shy misfit to a certified do-gooder as it is about her romance with dreamy fellow loner Nino. The film lets its lovers find each other in their own circuitous way. Legally Blonde, wherein Elle Woods metamorphoses from a SoCal sorority princess to a slightly more serious Harvard Law School princess, fits into the same category.

5. Support your supporting characters.
As a rule, the better your supporting characters, the better your romcom (think Tony Roberts in Annie Hall and Play It Again, Sam, Kristen Scott Thomas in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Bonnie Hunt in Jerry Maguire, Thelma Ritter and William Demerest in just about anything). As Elle Woods, Reese Witherspoon invokes a classic smart-dumb blonde in the spirit of Judy Holliday, but much of the comedy in Blonde should be credited to the sharp supporting characters (especially her forlorn manicurist, Jennifer Coolidge). A true ensemble model means doing away with the "one friend" rule: You know, where every character has a less attractive but funnier person s/he can confide in about the travails of romance. This old saw is used most egregiously in Serendipity, where two personable if frumpy actors, Molly Shannon and Jeremy Piven, are forced to remain in the shadows cast by the hateful Cusack (where is the boy who held up the boom box in front of Ione Skye's window?) and insipid yet comely Kate Beckinsale. More characters means more comedy—and it might help elevate some of these character actors to leads. Next Christmas, please give Molly Shannon a decent wardrobe and a romantic comedy of her very own.

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Lisa Levy is a writer in New York.
Stills from: The Wedding Planner by Ron Batzdorff © 2001 Franchise Pictures; Serendipity by David Lee © 2001 Miramax. All rights reserved.
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Notes From The Fray Editor:

Texwiz defended romantic movies here, and started an excellent thread. There were recommendations for Shakespeare in Love, Bull Durham and When Harry Met Sally (nicely deconstructed by Adam Masin here .)

Comments:

I don't like many of the romantic comedies of recent years, but I don't think they're any worse than they used to be. The old romantic comedies that people remember fondly are best of their era--the duds have been forgotten. Comparing the current crop, duds and all, with the best of the old stuff is unfair.

Also, even some of the classic romantic comedies have exactly the same problems that she's complaining about. I recently saw It Happened One Night and was struck by what a creep the Clark Gable character is. And dizzy, ditzy females in romantic comedies are an old tradition--see Bringing Up Baby or My Man Godfrey. The one advantage that the old romantic comedies have over the new ones is that they're usually shorter (as most movies were then). They're more quickly paced, and they don't bog down.

--Temaj

(To find or answer this post, click here .)


I personally don't understand the distinction between funny and painful; they are the same sensation. It's always seemed to me that excruciating embarrassment is humor in its purest form. It's true that it can be a bit overwhelming. It's the social equivalent of people opening a door that clearly has a homicidal maniac behind it in horror films. You want to turn away but can't. The best example on TV right now is Frasier, though BritComs also provide many examples. And indeed, Bridget Jones' Diary was true to its muse: Jane Austen wrote the most painfully embarrassing scenes I have ever read.

It is true there is another school of humor, which seems to rely on people being nasty to each other, rather than to themselves; Roseanne and the Three Stooges being possible examples. Of course, then there is always God being mean to people: that would be the Simpsons.

I refuse to try to explain the Far Side, but if anyone else can, I'd be very grateful.

--Common Puffin

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It seems the usual formula is that the men aren't that great but the women are wonderful--not only is that not true, what sort of message does that send? Movies are quite often a reflection of the popular culture mindset.

I adore romantic comedies both old and new, in fact, my favorites in recent years was Keeping the Faith, or Prelude to a Kiss and old favorites would be Sullivan's Travels, Barefoot in the Park, or Born Yesterday (the original). But it gets hard to keep watching movies that fall so far short of the mark. IMHO, one of the main problems is that the directors expect less of the audience, and often dumb things down, or oversimplify them.

Bland characters are bland characters, whether in romantic comedy or drama. If you'll notice, a lot of the ones on my short list started as plays--the theater demands good writing, whereas a screenplay doesn't necessarily--at least not judging by a lot of the movies out there.

Isn't a true love story in real life often full of stops and starts, misunderstandings, and near misses? Romantic comedies remind us of that, and remind us of the importance of love.

--Rachel

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