A meet-cute is a situation in which a future romantic couple meets for the first time in a way that is considered adorable, entertaining, or amusing.[1]
This type of situation is a staple of romantic comedies, commonly involving contrived, unusual, or comic circumstances. The technique creates an artificial situation contrived by the filmmakers in order to bring together characters in an entertaining manner. Frequently the meet-cute leads to a humorous clash of personalities or beliefs, embarrassing situations, or comical misunderstandings that further drive the plot.
| “ | [the character] is conveniently importuned by this attractive young fellow she happens to run into—to "meet cute," as they say—on a Fifth Avenue bus. | ” |
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—Bosley Crowther, in his February 1964 review of Sunday in New York[2] |
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The term was standard among screenwriters - Billy Wilder uses it in his Paris Review of Books interview in relation to his 1938 film Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, for instance. [3] Film critics such as Roger Ebert[4] or the Associated Press' Christy Lemire popularized the term in their reviews. In Ebert's commentary for the DVD of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which he co-wrote, he describes the scene where law student Emerson Thorne bumps into the female character Petronella Danforth. Ebert admits that he, as the screenwriter, wrote into the script a "classic Hollywood meet cute." He explains the meet cute as a scene "in which somebody runs into somebody else, and then something falls, and the two people began to talk, and their eyes meet and they realize that they are attracted to one another."