Everybody loves a passionate love story, and if you spice it up with some good lighthearted humor? All the better! Romantic comedies are feel good films that have evolved into a movie category in their own. We all have our favorites, which is yours? Come this week and let’s talk about them.
I know romantic comedies often resort to cliché. For example, after watching a couple of Adam Sandler films I’m ready to advance my hypothesis of an “Adam Sandler formula for a chick flick”: first, we meet our beloved character (the man himself, of course) through voice over, good old first person narrative; he is a serial womanizer for some hard to relate reason but unfailing success has made him bored or something. Secondly, he falls for a very special lady (the others weren’t, I guess) and very easily wins her over with a couple of grand gestures. Thirdly, He gets into trouble one way or another with her; he is trying to change but he is still pretty much a bully, or a loser, or both. Fourthly, She is faced with the decision to leave him, which she does, obviously (He is a womanizer, remember?). Fifthly, this experience makes him a better person, humbling him, wising him up, etc. and he discovers a fundamental truth about life or love. Sixthly, love saves the day and everybody lives happily ever after.
Other genre standards include chases to the airport, embarrassing and brave public declarations of love, brutes who are really diamonds (wink wink) and beauties that beastly brake hearts, compatible and complementary couples that find out that are neither or both, and a long list of predictable tricks and plot twists. And still, we love romantic comedies. Why? Do you like them? Do you have a favorite Romantic Comedy? Come next Wednesday to the Conversation Club and let’s have a chat about it.
