Bring back real rom-coms:
Clueless, The Notebook, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Sleepless in Seattle, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, The Proposal, Pretty Woman, 10 Things I Hate About You. All of these movies are absolute classics. Must-sees for everyone and guaranteed to lift your spirits, hopes, and expectations. However, while these movies and many other rom-coms are spectacular household staples for me, I have come to notice they were all made at least two decades ago. The rom-com genre is in a drought, and society is thirsty for new material.
These movies used to rule the box office. Starring Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, and other heartthrobs, these actors had audiences selling out theaters eager to feel the tender and comforting embrace of a romance. However, as movie technology has progressed significantly, and streaming platforms have taken over, the characters, writing, and overall creation of rom-coms have dissipated into a joke.
Although rom-coms from the early 2000s were predictable and often cheesy, they were timeless and classic due to the well-rounded and relatable characters. Films today often assign one or two defining traits to a character, making them narrow and hard to relate to. For example, while Anyone But You was a fun time, full of laughs and lighthearted moments, I can only remember Glen Powell’s character’s fear of heights and his love for the song “Unwritten”. Yet I can rattle off every aspect of Ryan Gosling’s Noah in The Notebook, and why he is the perfect man for Allie. Characters used to be so much more three-dimensional and relatable. Watching Julia Roberts laugh with childlike glee and Renne Zellweger dance around her living room makes it so easy to get lost in the movie, and even imagine you are in their position.
Another reason rom-coms today are dry and incomplete is due to the lack of major romantic gestures and moments, which I deeply hope still exist in the real world. I can recite almost every word to multiple iconic love confessions, as can many of my friends, but with the significant change in societal norms in the past decades, these are becoming near obsolete, making filmmakers scared to enact and create such scenes in fear of seeming dated, and unrealistic. What filmmakers don’t realize is that due to this recent drought in romantic gestures, rom-coms need those scenes to establish connections with their viewers. Heath Ledger singing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” in 10 Things I Hate About You, or Ryan Gosling building a girl her dream house in The Notebook, although he wasn’t sure he would ever see her again, are in a whole different playing field than sending a text or buying flowers. These scenes define the movie and are what have made them timeless for so long.
While certain modern rom-coms make an exception (Crazy Rich Asians, Set It Up, etc…) attempts at rom-coms today are usually out of touch, and don’t satisfy their audience. Modern movies do a spectacular job of handling delicate and sensitive societal themes, but not every movie has to have a deep underlying message. Movies that were created to please an audience and provide hope are not useless, but necessary. We go to the movies to escape from reality. To lose ourselves and get lost in someone else’s world. By bringing back cheesy rom-coms filled with passionate characters and heartfelt gestures, I believe that the world would be a slightly better place.