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Why I Like Romantic Comedies
- Robert Bouffard
- May 23, 2018
- 3 min read
Spoiler alert for The Big Sick, Silver Linings Playbook, La La Land, and (500) Days of Summer.
Last month, I wrote about how there can be more to movies in the horror genre than just cheap jump scares and gore. I had this attitude because I had never seen the right movies in the genre. Well, a few months ago, I had a similar attitude about romantic comedies. But it was a similar case. I’d not seen enough of the right kind of romcoms. Now, I’ve given some a chance. What I realized was not all romcoms follow the same stereotypical formula. Yes, the main characters still usually end up together (except for in La La Land), but the road there can be interesting and different.
In this post, I want to take a short look at the three movies that changed the way I view romantic movies: Silver Linings Playbook, (500) Days of Summer, and The Big Sick.
Silver Linings Playbook was the first of these movies that I saw. I didn’t totally know what it was about when I saw it – I just saw the big name actors and thought it would be a good movie. But as it turns out, it’s is a romantic comedy in disguise. I say that because the characters don’t think that they’re being romantic. At first, they’re just trying to help each other out. They even make sure to clarify that them going out to dinner isn’t a date. But by the end of the movie, Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper’s characters are together. As the last 30 minutes or so of the movie are happening, I found myself being tricked into having seen a romantic movie. But what made it so good was the fact that the romantic plot was just a vehicle to send a message about mental health.
(500) Days of Summer was a movie that I wasn’t expecting to love, but that I loved nonetheless. I typically enjoy movies that present their plot non-linearly in the first place, so this is right up my alley. Because you’re watching a romance movie, you expect the two main people to end up together by the end. But that doesn’t happen! We spend about 85% of the movie thinking we’re watching the ups and downs of a relationship that will eventually end in marriage. Surprisingly, though, Tom and Summer both end up finding different people – Summer gets married and Tom finds a New Girl (pun intended) in the very last scene of the movie. This scene is charming, cute, funny, and overall well-executed. It gives hope to a character who seemed hopeless and whose attitude was bleak. Ending the movie on a high note was actually unexpected once you get to that point. And the movie is better off for it.
Finally, The Big Sick. This is actually the movie that inspired me to write this post. The story of this movie is based off the real life love story of Kumail Nanjiani – who plays himself – and Emily Gordon – who is played by someone else. Nanjiani is on Silicon Valley, which immediately gives him the credibility to be in a comedy. But what he’s able to do well is portray the heart, worry, and even desperateness that the character demands. It’s not a normal by the numbers romcom – the main female character is in a coma for most of the movie, after all – but Kumail still has the hope of a romantic relationship as the driving force behind everything he does. And as with Silver Linings, the romance is merely a vehicle to carry the message about culture that it’s really trying to sell.
So all of this is to say that a romantic movie won’t feel like just another movie in a tired genre if it brings something new or if it has something important to say. When a movie portrays life realistically, it usually resonates better than one that doesn’t. And that’s what these movies are able to do. It’s why every once in a while, a good romantic movie still comes out, even though they heyday of the romcom has passed.
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