By Brian “Pac” Sostak

We here at Chris Peteresen’s Film Blog try to cover as much movie news and as many film genres as we can while providing our unique and sometimes humorous perspective to what we see in the news and on the screen. However, since our inception there has been one genre that we have vastly overlooked and have sometimes been criticized for neglecting; the romantic comedy. Well I am here today to put an end to the negativity directed toward our site. “How are you going to accomplish this?” you might ask; simple, by redirecting it toward the genre itself.

I was asked recently why I disliked romantic comedies and as a serious film enthusiast I wanted to provide an educated and well thought answer; so here it is. The romantic comedy is completely shallow, unrealistic, and is doing everything in its power to ruin the real life relationships of its viewers. While that answer may not sound very educated or well thought, I do have some concepts to support that argument, five of them in fact.

5. Extravagance is Expensive

Ladies, have you ever watched a romantic comedy and sat in awe as the leading man performs some giant romantic gesture to win the leading lady’s heart and thought, “I wish someone would do that for me.” Men, have you ever sat through the scene of the same film and thought to yourself…

Simply put ladies, extravagance is expensive. The men on the movie screens can afford to put together these expensive and/or elaborate gestures to win the hearts of their women (and the women watching) because Hollywood is funding their cause. Us normal men, who may love our women just as equally, can’t afford to pull out all the stops to rent out Tiffany’s for a night; and if we could, the conclusion of our date would probably have to go a little something like this…

Take The Notebook for example, Ryan Gosling’s character (Noah) bought Allie’s (Rachel McAdams) dream home using his GI bill from WWII and an approved government loan. In 1947 the GI bill guaranteed approval for a home loan and provided $20/week of unemployment to ex military. The average salary in 1947 was $3,500 annually and the average price of a home in 1947 was around $13,000, meaning that this romantic gesture cost Noah at least 4 years of his annual salary.

Greatest Offender:

Then there is Love Actually, possibly the worst at depicting the grand gesture and you may not even realize it. There’s the writer, Jamie (Colin Firth) who retires to his French cottage and hires a Portuguese housekeeper, Aurelia (Lúcia Moniz). When he realizes he is in love with Aurelia, he learns Portuguese and travels to Portugal to propose to her, also stating that he is willing to relocate to be with her – a costly gesture.

And how about Sam (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), with encouragement from his stepfather Daniel (Liam Neeson) he breaks countless federal laws in an airport to profess his love to Joanna. Federal court, lawyers, fines, they can all add up to a lot of money to make a romantic gesture; not mention Sam was around 10 years old!

Hell he already purchased and learned how to play drums for this girl, now he’s committing federal crimes in an airport 2 years after 9/11 (release date: 11/14/2003). All for a girl in his class, do you remember the girl (or boy) you had a mad crush on in elementary school? Me neither.

4. Life is not Scripted

Now the ladies reading this might be thinking to themselves, “It’s not the dollar amount that makes the gesture worthwhile, it’s the amount of effort and thought that lets us know you care.”

So what about the gestures that don’t cost much, but took time to plan; or the sweet and romantic things the leading man says to his love during the third act? Why doesn’t your man do that for you? Simple, because he doesn’t have a team full of screenwriters and Hollywood magic to help him come up with these brilliant plans. Romantic Comedies, like any other fantasy film, relies on a tool so integral to movie magic that most films wouldn’t exist without it, the suspension of disbelief. Basically, the chances of things working out the way they do on-screen to favor the movement of the plot (and often the survival of a character) are astronomical and the filmmakers are asking the audience to just go with it.

This works great for an action movie because no one in the audience really expects that stuff to happen in real life. Who among you reading this really believes that Jason Statham can survive falling out of a plane with no parachute? If it weren’t for suspension of disbelief Crank: High Voltage wouldn’t exist.

The problem with suspension of disbelief in romantic comedies is that the plot doesn’t involve falling out of airplanes with no parachutes or surviving exploding vehicles, it involves love notes and elaborate plans, something completely plausible (but still unrealistic in real life).

Greatest Offender:

No other RomCom suspends disbelief greater than P.S I Love You. Even if you can get over the fact that Hilary Swank is capable of marrying a ripped Irishman, is able to take months off of work to fulfill the plot (after complaining about money early in the film), and that Gerard Butler would be totally cool with his wife sleeping with his best “chum”, there is still so much more unbelievable plot devices that drive this movie.

P.S. I Love You is about a widow (Hilary Swank) who receives various notes from her recently deceased husband that are encouraging her to move on with her life and pursue happiness. That’s right, her dead husband. Now these letters aren’t coming to Holly (Hilary Swank) in some supernatural way, that’d be too believable. Gerry (Gerard Butler) orchestrated the delivery of all of these letters to come at the perfect time before he died, though he did convince his mother in-law (who disliked him) to assist in the delivery.

So what this film is assuming is that Gerry, while suffering from a brain tumor, was able to orchestrate the timing and delivery of various letters to his wife from around the world and assume that she’d fulfill each of his wishes at the exact time he planned? Just in case this still seems believable, here are some of the symptoms of a brain tumor:

Severe Headaches

Seizures

Mental and/or Personality Changes

Mass Effect

Ringing/Buzzing and Hearing Loss

Decreased Muscle Control

Lack of Coordination

Weakness or Paralysis

Difficulty Walking, speaking, balancing, and seeing clearly

Still, this guy had the time and energy to visit his local travel agent and plan a trip to Ireland for his wife and her two friends?

3. Love at First Sight is NOT real

No other topic on this list irritates me as much as this one when it comes to Romantic Comedies, and one that is most often used. Girl meets Boy, Girl overcomes personal obstacle to be with Boy, Boy screws up, but their love overcomes and they end up together – in the span of a week.

Sure this happens more often in teen RomComs, and to be honest every high school romance feels like it’s life or death, but this concept isn’t exclusive to 17 year olds. Pretty Woman, What Women Want, Love Actually, and Hitch are 4 of the top 16 grossing romantic comedies (I’ve only seen 10 of 16, wow that’s too many) and they all follow this very premise: Love at First Sight. These films perpetuate the concept that once you meet the man (or woman) of your dreams you will instantly know and your love will overcome all odds.

It is almost comedic to me to watch on-screen as the two main characters (who’ve been together 2 weeks) embrace in a moment where everything else seemingly disappears and then one of them utters: “I love you”. This never happens in real life, there are only two instances when one person tells the other that they love them after two weeks:

A man tells a woman he loves her after two weeks because despite all of his previous efforts he has been unable to go “all the way”.

A woman tells a man that she loves him after two weeks because she is crazy, obsessive, possessive, and/or depressed.

You want a more realistic scenario of what would happen if a man told a woman that he loved her after such a short period of time, watch this:





Greatest Offender:

Leap Year is on my short list of the worst films of 2010 and for good reason; it is the poster child for Love at First Sight. In Leap Year, after Anna Brady (Amy Adams) is not proposed to by her boyfriend Jeremy (Adam Scott), her father tells her about this old Irish tradition where a woman can propose to a man in Ireland on February 29th. By great coincidence, God happened to add an extra day, February 29th, to the 2010 calendar (the next leap year isn’t until 2012) and Jeremy will just happen to be in Ireland on business. So Anna, with the help of her drunk father, gets the bright idea to travel to Ireland, find her husband and propose to him.

Now here’s where it really gets ridiculous. When her plane is forced to land in Wales, Anna employs the services of Declan (Matthew Goode) to escort her to Dublin so she can propose. Of course Declan says yes because he is a deadbeat bar owner with no money and is in debt up to his ears. Apparently none of that matters because he is Irish and when Amy Adams finally gets to her boyfriend Jeremy, she realizes she’s in love with Declan. (SPOILER ALERT) Anna decides to leave her boyfriend and travel to Ireland where Declan promptly proposes to her. If you want to watch a film where the good guy gets completely screwed and the villain walks away with the girl, then Leap Year is for you. This dude Jeremy waits just a few days too long to propose and his girl is stolen by some Irish bum with a ton of debt. This is the moral of Leap Year, propose to your girl ASAP.

2. Lust at First Sight IS real

It is easy to assume that the filmmakers just interpret the feeling of lust and associate with the feeling of love. If it were that easily explained then I wouldn’t be writing this column, but they seem to have love and lust completely backwards. Hollywood spits out films like Leap Year, where a girl goes to Ireland and falls more in love with a complete stranger than her own long time boyfriend in 5 days, but they also spit out films where “Plain Jane” pines over the stud for years and years finally to win over his heart. This is completely ass-backwards and it all plays into the fantasy that a woman will find the man of his dreams. Ladies, here is how you will end up with the man of your dreams:

You meet a tall, dark, and handsome man who is sweet enough to love but rugged enough to drive you crazy, and you love it. You will both know instantly that you’re in love but aren’t willing to admit it until some obstacle forces you to come to terms with your love. And he has an accent. You will meet the most popular, best looking, ripped, and richest man in the city and all the women want him, including his incredibly gorgeous girlfriend who he’s been with for years. However, after years of pining after him and acting like an idiot every time he’s around, he’ll realize that his perfect life and perfect woman isn’t perfect after all and he’ll leave all that behind to be with you. He may also have an accent.

Sounds great doesn’t it, too bad it’s all B.S. In reality (as any woman’s magazine will tell you), a woman will know within 5 seconds of sizing up a man whether or not she would sleep with him; for men it takes about 4.9 seconds less. That means that if you are waiting around for the guy of your dreams to notice your wit and charm, you’re probably missing out on a bunch of other, more compatible men for someone that will never be interested.

If you really want to get the attention of the one you’ve been lusting for all these years, the one you’d live happily ever after with if they’d just notice you, here’s a real life way to do it:

Women: consult a plastic surgeon

Men: get a better job

or get famous (applies to both)

Lust and sexual attraction is a shallow emotion, and if the movies aren’t willing to admit that fact I’ll be more than happy to do so. You can even call me a jerk if you want; the movies say that makes me more desirable.

Greatest Offender:

For a Romantic Comedy that was supposed to set the record straight on the real-life scenarios of love, He’s Just Not That Into You really dropped the ball on this one. Let me preface this by saying that I actually enjoyed this movie, and the characters I’m discussing for this topic are among my favorite in the film, but Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Alex (Justin Long) embody everything that is wrong with Lust at First Sight in the movies. Gigi meets Alex at the bar he manages while essentially stalking Alex’s friend Conor (Kevin Connolly). Gigi turns to Alex for advice on how to handle men and he provides her with advice such as “if a guy is treating you like he doesn’t give a sh**, he genuinely doesn’t give a sh**” and “you’re not the exception to the rule, you are the rule”. But after her pining over his best friend, then her pining over him he finally decides to go to her and say “You’re my exception”.

Instantly, the film just turned its back on everything it had been preaching for the past ninety minutes. It masqueraded as the truth and revealed itself to be just another run of the mill chick flick where against all odds boy falls for girl. I enjoy this film, but I want to hate it so bad because it is corrupting the minds of impressionable women everywhere. Just when they are on the verge of being convinced that life is not a fairy tale and as the title goes, He’s Just Not That Into You… Sike, he’s totally into you! You’re obsessive and stalkerish and often have emotional breakdowns, but there’s something he sees in you that he didn’t before and it is the one thing that was keeping him from loving you before.

Give me a break. I couldn’t even think of any images to accentuate the ridiculousness of this concept, it stands well enough on its own. And finally, the one thing that most all RomComs get wrong…

1. Happily Ever After DOES NOT Exist

Not in the manner it’s portrayed in these films anyway. Look, I’m not a cynic, I’m a realist; don’t peg me as being the a single and lonely man who is bitter about his love life, that’s not me. I’m even willing to admit to the 500 people who read this column (If I’m lucky) that I am in love with an incredible and beautiful woman (if it weren’t for these movies that gesture would seem romantic). But like I said, I’m a realist and love is hard, and life is even harder; it is filled with arguments, and compromise, and budgets, and accidents, and 9-5 jobs, and illness, and a whole lot more. Romantic Comedies don’t want to show you the tough side of happily ever after because it is not glamorous and it isn’t part of the fantasy that drew you to the theater in the first place.

You want so badly to believe that if you have love that nothing else matters and everything else will just fall into place. Unfortunately, that is not how it works and if Romantic Comedies evolved past “the honeymoon phase” of relationships we’d see that, if we actually went to see that movie.

Greatest Offender

This is the second time referencing this film, but I haven’t seen too many Romantic Comedies, they’re not my taste if you haven’t noticed. However, my greatest offender of the “happily ever after” complex is Sweet Home Alabama. Once again we have a girl, Melanie (Reese Witherspoon), who leaves her fiancé (Patrick Dempsey) to be with her husband (Josh Lucas) whom she already left once for being a loser. However, this time around Josh has made something of himself by taking glass he finds and selling it at an incredible mark-up. Not to mention, Andrew (Dempsey) is totally cool with her following her heart and living happily ever after with some other guy.

I’d like to pause from my current argument and point out something that most of the ladies who have seen this movie willfully overlook, Melanie is a gold digging slut. She got knocked up by her popular football playing boyfriend in high school and left him because he didn’t make anything of himself. She then went to NY to get famous and get engaged to a wealthy politician (who knows what/who she did in the meantime). Finally, she returned to Alabama to discover that the original guy, who she liked more but was a loser, has his own business, so she leaves the politician for the entrepreneur.

Most romantic comedies, including Sweet Home Alabama conclude with the two lovers getting together and supposedly living happily ever after, they fail to even montage what the rest of their relationship is like, leaving naïve viewers to believe that love is like that all the time, it’s not. Let me show you the synopsis of the proposed (by me) sequel to Sweet Home Alabama, it’s called Sweet Home Alabama: Double Wide.

After being left at the alter, Andrew Hennings (Patrick Dempsey) redirects his focus to politics. After becoming president and marrying Ms. America, he deems the beaches in Alabama a national park, forbidding Melanie’s husband Jake (Josh Lucas) from creating lightning glass, according to federal law. Because he’s a redneck, Jake ignores the law and continues to make glass until he’s struck by lightning and killed. Jake’s insurance didn’t cover his death because he was breaking federal law so Melanie (Witherspoon) and her two kids are forced to move back in with her parents; but it’s ok, they have a double-wide (chuckle b/c it’s in the title). Strapped for cash, Melanie is forced to go back to work as a fashion designer and re-realizes her dream as she designs a line exclusively for K-Mart, Sears, and Bass ProShops.

Perhaps Jake sends Melanie a case of beer from the afterlife, how romantic.



