Princess Bride? No.
February 6, 2019 2:04 PM Subscribe
Rom-comoisseur Dana Schwartz walks us through the criteria of the rom-com, first and foremost of which is "the film’s primary comedic tension derives from a central romantic relationship."
Here’s a fun script-writing exercise. Every rom-com needs a character(s) that stands in the way of the romantic couple. The villain, so to speak.
Who’s the villain in “Sleepless in Seattle?”
It’s Tom Hanks. He’s the one that doesn’t believe in his son’s story about Meg Ryan coming to the Empire State Building, and he almost drags his son home before she shows up.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:35 PM on February 6, 2019 [7 favorites]
Who’s the villain in “Sleepless in Seattle?”
It’s Tom Hanks. He’s the one that doesn’t believe in his son’s story about Meg Ryan coming to the Empire State Building, and he almost drags his son home before she shows up.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:35 PM on February 6, 2019 [7 favorites]
Tom Hanks is always the villain.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:43 PM on February 6, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:43 PM on February 6, 2019 [17 favorites]
The problem with rom-coms is that they made Trouble in Paradise and then decided to keep going.
posted by East14thTaco at 3:00 PM on February 6, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by East14thTaco at 3:00 PM on February 6, 2019 [3 favorites]
Having just recently watched Sleepless in Seattle for the first time, I would say the villain of the film has to be screenwriter Nora Ephron—for contriving it so that the climax of the movie takes place on top of the Empire State Building instead of the fucking Space Needle!
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:02 PM on February 6, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:02 PM on February 6, 2019 [13 favorites]
I prefer it when rom-coms don't go too elaborate with the Shenanigan, possibly because I'm very tired of seeing variations of this scene:
posted by Iridic at 3:30 PM on February 6, 2019 [24 favorites]
Asshole fiance: Before you break up with me, Rachel McAdams, you might be interested to hear the results of this DNA test I found in Mr. Perfect's luggage. Ahem: "14% Slovak. 10% Irish. 76% Western European Other. And 0% Wookiee."You don't need some sort of bizarre fraud or contrived misunderstanding to keep people from being happy. Not when they do it to themselves all the time.
Rachel McAdams: Grakchawwaa, tell him it isn't true. Grakchawwaa...? Please!—just tell him there's been a mistake!
Seth Rogen: My name...is Seth. [removing Wookiee mask] I'm so sorry, Rachel McAdams. I tried to tell you so many times-
Rachel McAdams: I've such a fool. [beginning to cry] God, I bet you've never even been to the Forest Moon of Endor.
posted by Iridic at 3:30 PM on February 6, 2019 [24 favorites]
MetaFilter: And 0% Wookiee.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:50 PM on February 6, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:50 PM on February 6, 2019 [2 favorites]
Speaking of Tom Hanks, am I the only one who got a real seduction vibe from Saving Mr. Banks? Like, when she opens the door in the middle of the night, and it's Walt Disney in a wet raincoat leaning on the door frame and you're all *gasp*?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:12 PM on February 6, 2019
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:12 PM on February 6, 2019
Underpants Monster: I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know, but I'd read your fanfic.....
posted by acrasis at 4:16 PM on February 6, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by acrasis at 4:16 PM on February 6, 2019 [10 favorites]
Later: Ok, I read the article. It's fine, but could have been longer and less superficial. Calling the complication "shenanigans" doesn't convey how rom coms are constructed using the mores of their time: the shenanigan is actually the crucial thing of interest. Boy meets Girl, Boy eventually gets Girl, but what changes over time is why Boy loses Girl in the middle. Back in the 30s, class distinctions were the shenanigan; in the 40s there were a lot of rom coms where a woman fell back in love with her ex-husband. In the 50s a lot of men had problems with career women. More recently, the problem has been men being infantile dolts, women having to fall in love with men who have less fancy professions (or in Hallmark movies, men who live in little backwoods towns). One thing the author didn't mention except in passing (for "Love Actually") is the genre of rom com from the 90s-00s where an all-star cast performed multiple rom com plots simultaneously, hitting every demographic (and shenanigan) in one movie. Honestly, I haven't seen a rom com in a long time because the most recent ones have been so insulting. On the other hand, if "The Philadelphia Story" is on cable, I can never click past it.
posted by acrasis at 5:27 PM on February 6, 2019 [12 favorites]
posted by acrasis at 5:27 PM on February 6, 2019 [12 favorites]
I would like to see someone, and it would be fine if it were Dana Schwartz, catalog all the ways the disposable fiance is disposed of. The trick of the script being really mean to the existing fiance (for example) is way too overdone but I feel like there are people making movies who think that is the only option.
On topic:
I guess I'm like Unitarian-Universalist when it comes to the Church of Romantic Comedy? I welcome all. Is there a couple that belongs together and is there banter? If so then I'll take it. I would consider all The Thin Man sequels romantic comedies for example.
Some of the recent offerings have been getting better but so many romantic comedies have been so unimaginatively formulaic for so long I don't want to impose any limits. As acrasis alludes to above, the late 30s/early 40s had comedies of remarriage that did not involve two people meeting on a Friday, arguing then bonding over a weekend of crazy hijinks, then ditching their long term partners on Monday.
posted by mark k at 6:51 PM on February 6, 2019 [2 favorites]
On topic:
I guess I'm like Unitarian-Universalist when it comes to the Church of Romantic Comedy? I welcome all. Is there a couple that belongs together and is there banter? If so then I'll take it. I would consider all The Thin Man sequels romantic comedies for example.
Some of the recent offerings have been getting better but so many romantic comedies have been so unimaginatively formulaic for so long I don't want to impose any limits. As acrasis alludes to above, the late 30s/early 40s had comedies of remarriage that did not involve two people meeting on a Friday, arguing then bonding over a weekend of crazy hijinks, then ditching their long term partners on Monday.
posted by mark k at 6:51 PM on February 6, 2019 [2 favorites]
The problem with rom-coms is that they made Trouble in Paradise and then decided to keep going.
You're on to something, but it can't quite be that, because Design for Living postdates Trouble in Paradise. Maybe the problem is just that they let anyone other than Lubitsch make them.
The really shocking thing about Schwartz's piece is that it seems to make no room for the so-called comedy of remarriage: no The Awful Truth, no The Philadelphia Story, no His Girl Friday. If these don't number among touchstone romantic comedies, whatever could?!
(Advanced question: is The Apartment a romcom?)
posted by kenko at 10:12 PM on February 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
You're on to something, but it can't quite be that, because Design for Living postdates Trouble in Paradise. Maybe the problem is just that they let anyone other than Lubitsch make them.
The really shocking thing about Schwartz's piece is that it seems to make no room for the so-called comedy of remarriage: no The Awful Truth, no The Philadelphia Story, no His Girl Friday. If these don't number among touchstone romantic comedies, whatever could?!
(Advanced question: is The Apartment a romcom?)
posted by kenko at 10:12 PM on February 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
I don't actually know much about the other two, though the plot summary of The Philadelphia Story is ... pretty wretched. But His Girl Friday is kind of astonishingly racist. Can do without it.
posted by kafziel at 11:35 PM on February 6, 2019
posted by kafziel at 11:35 PM on February 6, 2019
His Girl Friday poses an interesting example of an element of romantic comedies, and movies in general, that often gets ignored for being too readily accepted.
The central characters in His Girl Friday, Walter and Hildy, are almost completely unethical but smarter and, in the world of the film, better than almost all the others only by dint of their awareness of the rules of the system they operate in and ability to manipulate those rules. Just working from the assumption that their perspective in that world should match that of the real world in terms of the rightness or wrongness of their actions is to invest too much into the characters as ideals because they are the focus of the story.
The movie's pull is in seeing Walter and Hildy get back together on the romantic side, but that's a more "intellectual" pleasure in seeing how Walter wins back Hildy as there is no real alternative to them being together since the rest of their world is so screwed up. The strongest emotional pull in the film though is that around the character of Mollie Malloy, the one person in the movie who is shown as being genuine and compassionate. She fights to save the shooter Earl Williams because she believes he's not being treated right by the press or the police. She's been libeled by the press, calling her Williams girlfriend due to her attempts to defend him from execution, while she explains she only met him once and saw he was distraught and out of sorts.
Williams himself presents as a man who is not mentally balanced. He'd been fired from his job and lost his senses to despair. He is easily manipulated and not all there. His and Mollies story intersects with Walter and Hildy's uncomfortably because of the distance between Earl and Mollies reality and that in which Walter and Hildy operate in. The movie doesn't really attempt to reconcile this beyond allowing the suggestion that Hildy manipulates Earl into an acceptable explanation for his crime that just might help him, or might just help her have a better story. There is no clear answer to the moral questions being raised, they are left as evocative background to be thought about without answers given. The politicians and police are corrupt and incompetent, the press is hardly any better, more competent perhaps, but no less morally corrupt, and the rest of the people are shown as pawns, fools, unbalanced, or weak, save for perhaps poor Mollie who stands out from all the rest for being decent and trying to make a difference.
Choosing to accept Hildy and Walter as anything like paragons of virtue because they're the stars isn't the best way to view the movie, which is often true for romantic comedies which frequently show the main couple acting callously or indecorously to those around them. Their blindness to some aspect of the world is often a central theme or plot point in why they aren't able to find romance. The resolution of romantic comedies doesn't necessarily suggest a better world, just the rightness of the couple being paired for good and/or bad.
Watching any kind of movies with the ideas the characters are shown to be emulated in their actions or assuming that their perspective is being posited as one that should be our own isn't a great method for viewing. Movies need to be pushed back against to untangle their overall perspective, not just that of the main characters. Some are understood better when viewed against the grain, while others have little resistance to the more straight forward reading.
(When it comes to morality in movies, all Hollywood movies were made under enforced racism during the production code era and most maintained a racist perspective long after. While there are better and worse examples of that, the history of movies in the US, like that of the country as a whole is inescapably racist even when there is no mention of race at all in the films as that too is a part of the method of maintaining privilege.)
posted by gusottertrout at 1:24 AM on February 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
The central characters in His Girl Friday, Walter and Hildy, are almost completely unethical but smarter and, in the world of the film, better than almost all the others only by dint of their awareness of the rules of the system they operate in and ability to manipulate those rules. Just working from the assumption that their perspective in that world should match that of the real world in terms of the rightness or wrongness of their actions is to invest too much into the characters as ideals because they are the focus of the story.
The movie's pull is in seeing Walter and Hildy get back together on the romantic side, but that's a more "intellectual" pleasure in seeing how Walter wins back Hildy as there is no real alternative to them being together since the rest of their world is so screwed up. The strongest emotional pull in the film though is that around the character of Mollie Malloy, the one person in the movie who is shown as being genuine and compassionate. She fights to save the shooter Earl Williams because she believes he's not being treated right by the press or the police. She's been libeled by the press, calling her Williams girlfriend due to her attempts to defend him from execution, while she explains she only met him once and saw he was distraught and out of sorts.
Williams himself presents as a man who is not mentally balanced. He'd been fired from his job and lost his senses to despair. He is easily manipulated and not all there. His and Mollies story intersects with Walter and Hildy's uncomfortably because of the distance between Earl and Mollies reality and that in which Walter and Hildy operate in. The movie doesn't really attempt to reconcile this beyond allowing the suggestion that Hildy manipulates Earl into an acceptable explanation for his crime that just might help him, or might just help her have a better story. There is no clear answer to the moral questions being raised, they are left as evocative background to be thought about without answers given. The politicians and police are corrupt and incompetent, the press is hardly any better, more competent perhaps, but no less morally corrupt, and the rest of the people are shown as pawns, fools, unbalanced, or weak, save for perhaps poor Mollie who stands out from all the rest for being decent and trying to make a difference.
Choosing to accept Hildy and Walter as anything like paragons of virtue because they're the stars isn't the best way to view the movie, which is often true for romantic comedies which frequently show the main couple acting callously or indecorously to those around them. Their blindness to some aspect of the world is often a central theme or plot point in why they aren't able to find romance. The resolution of romantic comedies doesn't necessarily suggest a better world, just the rightness of the couple being paired for good and/or bad.
Watching any kind of movies with the ideas the characters are shown to be emulated in their actions or assuming that their perspective is being posited as one that should be our own isn't a great method for viewing. Movies need to be pushed back against to untangle their overall perspective, not just that of the main characters. Some are understood better when viewed against the grain, while others have little resistance to the more straight forward reading.
(When it comes to morality in movies, all Hollywood movies were made under enforced racism during the production code era and most maintained a racist perspective long after. While there are better and worse examples of that, the history of movies in the US, like that of the country as a whole is inescapably racist even when there is no mention of race at all in the films as that too is a part of the method of maintaining privilege.)
posted by gusottertrout at 1:24 AM on February 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
One of the subjects my wife and I must never go anywhere near is Which Is Better The Philadelphia Story Or High Society. Because one has Cary Grant, James Stewart and Katharine Hepburn, and the other has Louis Armstrong breaking the fourth wall and Did You Evah. It is the argument that can never be settled.
posted by Hogshead at 3:41 AM on February 7, 2019
posted by Hogshead at 3:41 AM on February 7, 2019
You're on to something, but it can't quite be that, because Design for Living postdates Trouble in Paradise. Maybe the problem is just that they let anyone other than Lubitsch make them.
Design for Living is so great and so amazing what cinema in the US was allowed to do before the code.
posted by octothorpe at 5:04 AM on February 7, 2019
Design for Living is so great and so amazing what cinema in the US was allowed to do before the code.
posted by octothorpe at 5:04 AM on February 7, 2019
In a romantic comedy, that journey has to be internal: Two people have to overcome mental or societal obstacles in order to be together, obstacles that challenge their relationship.
So, like...the Princess Bride? Arguably, it's a romantic comedy where the romance is aimed at kids and tweens. A lot of the movie is great for adults, but everything about the romantic plot is blown out to fantasy proportions because that's what kids would need to understand it and feel it, complete with Fred Savage framing device to hold your little, sweaty hands.
But love crossing the boundaries of class and then surviving tragedy, the whims of the upper-class, the mechanization of thieves and political opportunists, trust-issues and deceit, nature, supernatural/technological forces...that's a romance check list.
And since that romance propels every plot element, it also informs every joke. Kids find the heroes rakishly endearing and the villains cowardly and buffoonish and it is pleasing to see the moral world bent around the troubled romance in the center, just as it's frustrating to see selfishness and lies imperil that relationship. Again, I'm not saying it's breathless and simple. It's a movie that's practically designed to awaken (hopefully positive) romantic ideals in prepubescent kids.
posted by es_de_bah at 6:39 AM on February 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
So, like...the Princess Bride? Arguably, it's a romantic comedy where the romance is aimed at kids and tweens. A lot of the movie is great for adults, but everything about the romantic plot is blown out to fantasy proportions because that's what kids would need to understand it and feel it, complete with Fred Savage framing device to hold your little, sweaty hands.
But love crossing the boundaries of class and then surviving tragedy, the whims of the upper-class, the mechanization of thieves and political opportunists, trust-issues and deceit, nature, supernatural/technological forces...that's a romance check list.
And since that romance propels every plot element, it also informs every joke. Kids find the heroes rakishly endearing and the villains cowardly and buffoonish and it is pleasing to see the moral world bent around the troubled romance in the center, just as it's frustrating to see selfishness and lies imperil that relationship. Again, I'm not saying it's breathless and simple. It's a movie that's practically designed to awaken (hopefully positive) romantic ideals in prepubescent kids.
posted by es_de_bah at 6:39 AM on February 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
The really shocking thing about Schwartz's piece is that it seems to make no room for the so-called comedy of remarriage: no The Awful Truth, no The Philadelphia Story, no His Girl Friday. If these don't number among touchstone romantic comedies, whatever could?!
How do you mean? Comedic tension flows from the central relationship, tone and composition adhere to the standards too. Seems to meet her standards.
I could see someone arguing over composition but despite the characters knowing each other at the start they all have , for example, the "other guy/girl" who is obviously "not right" and needs to be disposed of in addition to various other tropes of the form. The only thing they are missing is the meet cute.
posted by mark k at 8:18 AM on February 7, 2019
How do you mean? Comedic tension flows from the central relationship, tone and composition adhere to the standards too. Seems to meet her standards.
I could see someone arguing over composition but despite the characters knowing each other at the start they all have , for example, the "other guy/girl" who is obviously "not right" and needs to be disposed of in addition to various other tropes of the form. The only thing they are missing is the meet cute.
posted by mark k at 8:18 AM on February 7, 2019
I fundamentally disagree with this caveat near the end of the article: "Couples in romantic comedies do not need to end up together."
Yes, they do. A rom-com should be not just a comedy in the modern sense, but also in the classical sense: it has a happy ending. Or at least an ending that's intended by the filmmakers to be a happy ending. Edward Scissorhands is not a rom-com. And further to that point:
Is there a couple that belongs together and is there banter? If so then I'll take it.
By this criterion, The Remains of the Day would be a rom-com, which it definitely is not.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:22 AM on February 7, 2019
Yes, they do. A rom-com should be not just a comedy in the modern sense, but also in the classical sense: it has a happy ending. Or at least an ending that's intended by the filmmakers to be a happy ending. Edward Scissorhands is not a rom-com. And further to that point:
Is there a couple that belongs together and is there banter? If so then I'll take it.
By this criterion, The Remains of the Day would be a rom-com, which it definitely is not.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:22 AM on February 7, 2019
Or as me and my friends call them "oh, straight people!" movies
posted by Automocar at 9:55 AM on February 7, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by Automocar at 9:55 AM on February 7, 2019 [4 favorites]
I used to enjoy The Philadelphia Story for the witty dialogue if nothing else. But the older I get, the harder it is to get past being sickened by the whole "You forced your father to screw around on your mother by not being the right kind of warm and worshipful daughter" angle. I mean, I know people took Freud pretty seriously back then, but I was blamed for my own assault with language very similar to what was used in the movie, and it's hard not to find it pretty gross. At least High Society is redeemed by the great music. And Bing's Dexter is gentler than Grant's; it's possible to imagine him feeling contrition for his share of the marital problems.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:41 AM on February 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:41 AM on February 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Or as me and my friends call them "oh, straight people!" movies
Isn't that a bit vague though? That covers almost the entire history of movies from every genre.
At least on the surface anyway. There are a lot of movies, rom-coms included, with some interesting queer subtext, sometimes pretty blatant, like Design for Living mentioned above.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:47 AM on February 7, 2019
Isn't that a bit vague though? That covers almost the entire history of movies from every genre.
At least on the surface anyway. There are a lot of movies, rom-coms included, with some interesting queer subtext, sometimes pretty blatant, like Design for Living mentioned above.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:47 AM on February 7, 2019
I wholeheartedly endorse this plate of beans. But I do agree with this comment:
I fundamentally disagree with this caveat near the end of the article: "Couples in romantic comedies do not need to end up together."
For example, 500 Days of Summer is explicitly an ANTI-rom-com. That's the entire point. It sets you up to believe that it's a rom-com and then it subverts the trope by making Zooey Deschanel awful.
And, La La Land is not a rom-com, but rather is a horrific piece of trash and wish fulfillment that deserves to be consigned to the dustbin for all time.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:51 AM on February 7, 2019
I fundamentally disagree with this caveat near the end of the article: "Couples in romantic comedies do not need to end up together."
For example, 500 Days of Summer is explicitly an ANTI-rom-com. That's the entire point. It sets you up to believe that it's a rom-com and then it subverts the trope by making Zooey Deschanel awful.
And, La La Land is not a rom-com, but rather is a horrific piece of trash and wish fulfillment that deserves to be consigned to the dustbin for all time.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:51 AM on February 7, 2019
If you wish Philadelphia Story was better, I heartily recommend Holiday, another Hepburn/Grant/Cukor team-up from a couple years earlier.
posted by Iridic at 11:22 AM on February 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Iridic at 11:22 AM on February 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Those of you saying it can't be a rom-com if the couple doesn't end up together, what about Roman Holiday?
posted by RobotHero at 8:22 PM on February 8, 2019
posted by RobotHero at 8:22 PM on February 8, 2019
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posted by lunasol at 2:26 PM on February 6, 2019 [5 favorites]