Romantic comedy film

Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch trailer.

Romantic comedy films are films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as that true love is able to surmount most obstacles.[1] One dictionary definition is "a funny movie, play, or television program about a love story that ends happily".[2] Another definition states that its "primary distinguishing feature is a love plot in which two sympathetic and well-matched lovers are united or reconciled".[3]

Romantic comedy films are a certain genre of comedy films as well as of romance films, and may also have elements of screwball comedies[4] and stoner comedies. Some television series can also be classified as romantic comedies.

In a typical romantic comedy the two lovers tend to be young, likeable, and apparently meant for each other, yet they are kept apart by some complicating circumstance (e.g., class differences, parental interference; a previous girlfriend or boyfriend) until, surmounting all obstacles, they are finally wed. A wedding-bells, fairy-tale-style happy ending is practically mandatory.[3]

Pretty Woman is considered by many critics to be the most successful movie in the genre.[5]

Description

Kathryn Grayson in Seven Sweethearts (1942), a musical romantic comedy film

The basic plot of a romantic comedy is that two characters, usually a man and a woman, meet, part ways due to an argument or other obstacle, then ultimately reunite. Sometimes the two leads meet and become involved initially, then must confront challenges to their union. Sometimes they are hesitant to become romantically involved because they believe that they do not like each other, because one of them already has a partner, or because of social pressures. However, the screenwriters leave clues that suggest that the characters are, in fact, attracted to each other and that they would be a good love match. The protagonists often separate or seek time apart to sort out their feelings or deal with the external obstacles to their being together.

While the two protagonists are separated, one or both of them usually realizes that they are ideal for each other, or that they are in love with each other. Then, after one of the two makes some spectacular effort (sometimes called the grand gesture) to find the other person and declare their love, or through an astonishing coincidental encounter, the two meet again. Then, perhaps with some comic friction or awkwardness, they declare their love for each other and the film ends happily. The couple does not, however, have to marry, or live together "happily ever after". The ending of a romantic comedy is meant to affirm the primary importance of the love relationship in its protagonists' lives, even if they physically separate in the end (e.g. Shakespeare in Love, Roman Holiday).[6]

There are many variations on this basic plotline. Sometimes, instead of the two lead characters ending up in each other's arms, another love match will be made between one of the principal characters and a secondary character (e.g., My Best Friend's Wedding and My Super Ex-Girlfriend). Alternatively, the film may be a rumination on the impossibility of love, as in Woody Allen's film Annie Hall. The basic format of a romantic comedy film can be found in much earlier sources, such as Shakespeare plays like Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Some comedy films, such as Knocked Up, combine themes of romantic comedies and stoner comedies, creating a subgenre that appeals to both men and women. Often known as "bromance", such films usually use sexual elements which bring the two characters together. Films in this genre include American Pie 2 and even Wedding Crashers.

Evolution and Subgenres

Romantic comedies have begun to spread out of their conventional and traditional structure into other territory. This territory explores more subgenres and more complex topics. These films still follow the typical plot of "a light and humorous movie, play, etc., whose central plot is a happy love story"[7] but with more complexity. These are a few ways romantic comedies are adding more subtlety and complexity into the genre.

Extreme circumstances

Some Romantic comedies have adopted extreme or strange circumstances for the main characters, as in Warm Bodies where the protagonist is a zombie who falls in love with a human girl after eating her boyfriend. Another strange set of circumstances is in Zack and Miri Make a Porno where the two protagonists are building a relationship while trying to make a porno together. Both these films take the typical story-arch and then utilize circumstances to add originality.

Flipping Conventions

Other Romantic Comedies flip the standard conventions of the Romantic Comedy genre. In films like 500 Days of Summer the two main interests do not end up together, leaving the protagonist somewhat distraught. While other films like Adam have the two main interests end up separated but still content and pursuing other goals and love interests.

Serious Elements

Other remakes of Romantic Comedies involve similar elements but explore more adult themes such as marriage, responsibility or even disability. Two films by Judd Apatow such as This is 40 or Knocked Up deal with these before mentioned issues. This is 40 chronicles the mid life crisis of a couple entering their 40's and Knocked Up addresses unintended pregnancy and the ensuing assuming of responsibility. While Silver Linings Playbook deals with mental illness and unrequited love that is never resolved.

All of these go against the stereotype of what Romantic Comedy has become as a genre. Yet the genre of Romantic Comedy is simply a structure and all of these elements do not negate the fact that these films are still Romantic Comedies.

Contrived romantic encounters: the "meet cute"

One of the conventions of romantic comedy films is the funny parts and contrived encounter of two potential romantic partners in unusual or comic circumstances, which film critics such as Roger Ebert[8] or the Associated Press' Christy Lemire[9] have called a "meet-cute" situation. During a "meet-cute", scriptwriters often create a humorous sense of awkwardness between the two potential partners by depicting an initial clash of personalities or beliefs, an embarrassing situation, or by introducing a comical misunderstanding or mistaken identity situation. Sometimes the term is used without a hyphen (a "meet cute"), or as a verb ("to meet cute").

Roger Ebert describes the "concept of a Meet Cute" as "when boy meets girl in a cute way." As an example, he cites "The Meet Cute in Lost and Found [which] has Jackson and Segal running their cars into each other in Switzerland. Once recovered, they Meet Cute again when they run into each other while on skis. Eventually,... they fall in love."[10]

In many romantic comedies, the potential couple comprises polar opposites, two people of different temperaments, situations, social statuses, or all three (It Happened One Night), who would not meet or talk under normal circumstances, and the meet cute's contrived situation provides the opportunity for these two people to meet.

Use of "meet cute" situations

Mary Astor and Joel McCrea in The Palm Beach Story, a screwball romantic comedy

Certain movies are entirely driven by the meet-cute situation, and contrived circumstances throw the couple together for much of the screenplay. However, movies in which the contrived situation is the main feature, such as Some Like It Hot, rather than the romance being the main feature, are not considered "meet-cutes".

The use of the meet-cute is less marked in television series and novels, because these formats have more time to establish and develop romantic relationships. In situation comedies, relationships are static and meet-cute is not necessary, though flashbacks may recall one (The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mad About You) and lighter fare may require contrived romantic meetings.

The heyday of "meet cute" in films was during the Great Depression in the 1930s; screwball comedy films made a heavy use of contrived romantic "meet cutes", perhaps because the more rigid class consciousness and class divisions of this period made cross-social class romances into tantalizing fantasies.

While film critic Roger Ebert has popularized the term "meet cute" in his reviews of romantic comedies, the term is mostly used in the film and screenwriting industries, where it provides a convenient shorthand for screenwriters who are doing a very compressed pitch to a film production company.

History

The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines romantic comedy as "a general term for comedies that deal mainly with the follies and misunderstandings of young lovers, in a light‐hearted and happily concluded manner which usually avoids serious satire". This reference states that the "best‐known examples are Shakespeare's comedies of the late 1590s, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It being the most purely romantic, while Much Ado About Nothing approaches the comedy of manners and The Merchant of Venice is closer to tragicomedy."[11]

Comedies since ancient Greece have often incorporated sexual or social elements.

It was not until the creation of romantic love in the western European medieval period, though, that "romance" came to refer to "romantic love" situations, rather than the heroic adventures of medieval Romance. These adventures, however, often revolved about a knight's feats on behalf of a lady, and so the modern themes of love were quickly woven into them, as in Chrétien de Troyes's Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart.[12]

Shakespearean comedy and Restoration comedy remain influential. The creation of huge economic social strata in the Gilded Age, combined with the heightened openness about sex after the Victorian era and the celebration of Sigmund Freud's theories, and the birth of the film industry in the early twentieth century, gave birth to the screwball comedy. As class consciousness declined and World War II unified various social orders, the savage screwball comedies of the twenties and thirties, proceeding through Rock Hudson–Doris Day-style comedies, gave way to more innocuous comedies. This style faded in the 1960s, and the genre lay mostly dormant until the more sexually charged When Harry Met Sally had a successful box office run in 1989, paving the way for a rebirth for the Hollywood romantic comedy in the mid-1990s.

The French film industry went in a completely different direction, with less inhibitions about sex. Virginia Woolf, tired of stories that ended in 'happily ever after' at the beginning of a serious relationship, called Middlemarch by George Eliot, with its portrayal of a difficult marriage, "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people."

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bill Johnson. The Art of the Romantic Comedy Available online at: http://www.storyispromise.com/wromance.htm
  2. ↑ http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/romantic-comedy Accessed June 20, 2011
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Comedy and Tragedy".
  4. ↑ Romantic comedy: boy meets girl meets genre. Tamar Jeffers McDonald. Wallflower Press, 2007. p.3
  5. ↑ Mandell, Zack (2012-05-18). "Julia Roberts' Romantic Comedy Career Flourishes with Time". Yahoo! Voices.
  6. ↑ Mernit, Billy. Writing the Romantic Comedy (Harper Collins, 2000)
  7. ↑ "Romantic comedy - Define Romantic comedy at Dictionary.com". Dictionary.com.
  8. ↑ "She has a Meet-Cute (three, actually) with Prince Charmont (Hugh Dancy)" - Roger Ebert, reviewing "Ella Enchanted". Available at http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040409/REVIEWS/404090304/1023
  9. ↑ Review: McGregor, Plummer delight in `Beginners' http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110601/ap_en_mo/us_film_review_beginners. Accessed June 20, 2011.
  10. ↑ Roger Ebert (28 June 1979). "Lost and Found".
  11. ↑ Cited in Answers.com http://www.answers.com/topic/romantic-comedy-1 Accessed June 20, 2011
  12. ↑ C.S Lewis, The Allegory of Love, p 19 ISBN 0-19-281220-3

External links