Between blog comments and personal emails, I have received about 100 suggestions for romantic comedies to watch for the Rom-Com project. I received an interesting mix of “I want you to see this movie because I loved it!” suggestions, “I want you to see this movie because I hated it!” suggestions, and “I want you to see this movie because I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m curious” suggestions.
I thought about organizing the list of movies in chronological order to do a “Romantic Comedies Over Time” study, but now I have another idea.
Instead of watching and analyzing these movies in isolation, I’d like to do a “paired movies” project, where each week, I’d watch two movies with similar themes and do a compare/contrast.
I thought about doing a compare/contrast analysis about movies with similar themes from different time periods. For example, I think watching Zeffirelli’s The Taming of the Shrew and the updated 10 Things I Hate About You could make for an interesting analysis. Same with an adaptation of Emma vs. Clueless. The two movies don’t even have to be adaptations or updates of each other, just have a similar theme.
I also thought about doing a “mainstream vs. indie” compare/contrast – two movies with a similar theme/plot, one of which was a mainstream hit, the other being a direct-to-DVD movie or a little-seen gem. Think Community‘s comparison between Can’t Buy Me Love and Love Don’t Cost a Thing as one example (you know, with Can’t Buy Me Love being the remake for white audiences, according to Troy).
Leap-frogging off of that idea, I wouldn’t mind pairing movies with similar plots told from different perspectives – a man/woman/man love triangle vs. a woman/man/woman love triangle, with both movies told from the perspective of the person in the middle. (Or a movie with a love triangle of three men, or three women, or a movie with a bisexual character in love with both a man and a woman.)
There are also the “love from the opposite side of the tracks” movies when the main characters come from different backgrounds – the rich girl/poor boy stories and the rich boy/poor girl stories, the white/non-white pairings, the May-December romances where the age difference is an Issue.
Then I thought about expanding the project to include monthly themes. One month for movies about non-heterocentric romances. One month for foreign language romantic comedies. One month for disability in romantic comedies. One month for romantic comedies centering on people who aren’t white. One month for movies about deception, or movies where one of the characters is deliberately deceiving a potential romantic partner where the deception is played for laughter. And so on, and so on.
I want this project to be good, so I need your help once again. I’d love suggestions for paired movies, paired themes, paired monthly themes – any suggestion you have would be much appreciated.You can look at the list of suggestions that I’ve posted below as a reference, or suggest different movies entirely. Thanks.
10 Things I Hate About You
13 Going on 30
27 Dresses
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
50 First Dates
(500) Days of Summer
Adam’s Rib
Along Came Polly
Amelie
Annie Hall
The Apartment
Bedrooms and Hallways
Better Off Dead
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Bride Wars
Bridget Jones’s Diary
Bringing Up Baby
Calamity Jane
Camille
Center Stage
Chasing Amy
Clueless
Definitely, Maybe
Eagle vs. Shark
Eat, Pray, Love
Elizabethtown
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Flick’s Chicks
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Go Fish
Harold and Maude
He’s Just Not that Into You
High Fidelity
Hitch
His Girl Friday
How Do You Know
It Happened One Night
The Jane Austen Book Club
Juno
Just Wright
Kate and Leopold
Kicking and Screaming
Kissing Jessica Stein
Knocked Up
The Lady Eve
Lars and the Real Girl
Latter Days
Laws of Desire
Love Actually
Love and Basketball
Love on a Diet
Love Songs
Mansfield Park
Miami Rhapsody
The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green
Notting Hill
Party Girl
The Philadelphia Story
Plan B
Pretty Woman
The Princess Bride
The Real Blonde
Roxanne
Sabrina
Saving Face
Secretary
Sex and the Single Girl
Shall We Dance?
Shampoo
She’s Gotta Have It
Shop Around the Corner
Show Me Love (aka Fucking Amal)
Simple Men
Sleepless in Seattle
So I Married an Axe-Murderer
Some Like it Hot
Someone Like You
Something New
Something to Talk About
Splash
Step Up, Step Up 2, Step Up 3
Stranger than Fiction
Strictly Ballroom
The Thin Man movies
Tillie’s Punctured Romance
Together
Topper
Top Hat
Trust
The Unbelievable Truth
The Wedding Banquet
What’s Up, Doc?
When Harry Met Sally…
Working Girl
Articles
Interviews
Novels, Fiction & Silliness
Reviews
Truly, Madly, Deeply was sometimes promoted as “‘Ghost’ for intelligent people.” I’m not a fan of ‘Ghost’ (don’t even suppose it qualifies as Rom/Com, come to think of it) and I adore ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply.’ I don’t know if that means I’m intelligent or just that I am passionate about Alan Rickman. Either way, I’d love to hear your take on these two films.
Thanks for the recommendation. I do love Alan Rickman and I’ll check that movie out.
I think (500) Days of Summer and Eternal Sunshine would be a great pair looking at the idea that many female characters in male-perspective romantic comedies are less actual people and more a conglomeration of everything the male character thinks is “perfect,” which he obsesses over. In both films I think the obsessive quality of the men is a very interesting comparison, since in both that manifests plot-wise and character-wise fairly differently but the female characters still felt like the same not-real-just-fantasy trope to me.
I am very much looking forward to this series because I hate RomComs and would love to read more about them! If that seems odd, know that I have two degrees in film, and my reasoning might be obvious 😉
That’s a really, really good point about (500) Days and Eternal Sunshine. Plus, both stories are told in a non-linear fashion. If I can find a few more movies with “non-linear” romances, that could be a lot of fun.
I will say, though, that I quite enjoyed (500) Days, and Eternal Sunshine is one of my favorite movies, period. I think the second of the two films does a better job with the female lead, though.
It’s a bit cliche but how about a month of critically acclaimed features and a month of top grossing flicks? How does this genre express itself in mainstream film snobbery and mass appeal, and how do the serious fans of the genre feel about them? Are big budget features well received by that base or spat out like sci-fi fans rejecting Avatar and later Matrix films? Do fans consider the critical darlings good representations of the genre and if so do they resent it if that aspect is downplayed? Will I ever stop reliving my romantic comedy film study course in the comments sections of your articles on his topic? Probably not; this is going to be so interesting!
Critical acclaim vs. mainstream hit could work very well. I’ll definitely take that into consideration. Thanks!
Heh, obvs I think the Hartley films should be discussed as a trilogy!
And I always pair Topper/The Thin Man together because it’s got charming drunken couples at the heart of things.
A whole month to “charming drunken couples” would be hilarious. And yeah, three films by the same director just HAS to be discussed together.
I’d love to see what you think of Just Wright, a rom com with Queen Latifah. Please add it to your list! She plays a physical therapist who falls in love with the NBA player she’s working with, and the plot revolves around whether he will choose her or her gold-digging friend who wants to be his trophy wife.
Also, Brittany Murphy’s rom com Love and Other Disasters would go nicely with Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Jacks, the main character in this flick, is obviously inspired by Audrey’s Holly and the characters make references to both the film and the book it was based on.
I like Queen Latifah a lot, so I’ll add it to the list. Thanks.
Brittany Murphy…*sigh*. Poor Brittany. I’ll look at that as well, thanks.
It might be interesting to take together a group with the same leading lady – there’s a handful starring Katherine Hepburn and Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts and Katherine Heigl and probably someone(s) else I’ve overlooked on your list. There are probably enough to make a themed month of “repeat offenders” (or something less judgmental that I’m too bleary to come up with, considering that some of the movies are actually quite good, and all of these actresses are working in a system that’s structured to offer them a fairly narrow set of roles).
‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ and ‘Love, Actually’ (and ‘Valentine’s Day’, which isn’t on your list, and possibly some of the titles on your list that I’m not familiar with) have huge casts and lots of intersecting plots. It might be fun to pull apart whose stories they choose to tell and how.
Ooh, “leading ladies” is a great category. The modern ones that immediately come to mind are Roberts, Ryan, Witherspoon, Heigl, Bullock, Aniston, Barrymore, and Hudson, but I’d also love to focus on some of the more classic rom-com leading ladies, like the two Hepburns.
Heck, I could spend a whole year JUST on the movies with the “repeat offender” leading ladies. I have to figure this out.
Good point about the system offering very few roles to these actress. I think that’s why I never got so upset with Heigl’s comments about Knocked Up being sexist, even though she went right onto doing 27 Dresses. 27 Dresses is hardly revolutionary and it relies on too many sexist “women are obsessed with marriage!” cliches, but at the very least, it actually shows a female character’s perspective and point of view, even if that POV is a traditional one. In Knocked Up her character was more of a cipher. I think Knocked Up is funnier but I can see Heigl’s line of thinking about the movie and the sexism in it.
I think that’s why I never got so upset with Heigl’s comments about Knocked Up being sexist, even though she went right onto doing 27 Dresses. 27 Dresses is hardly revolutionary and it relies on too many sexist “women are obsessed with marriage!” cliches, but at the very least, it actually shows a female character’s perspective and point of view, even if that POV is a traditional one.
’27 Dresses’ also has James Marsden drunkenly bursting into song, for which I will apparently forgive a lot.
However, I am still annoyed at Heigl’s following up those comments by appearing in ‘The Ugly Truth’, which was painful to watch, featuring as it does loads of misogyny, a complete absence of humor, and Gerard Butler’s smirking face.
With the addition of Jennifer Aniston’s ‘Bounty Hunter’ that might provide a whole new category – Heroines Inexplicably Charmed by Abusive Douchebags Who Look Like Gerard Butler – though I’m not sure I’d wish that assignment on anyone.
Having seen both Love, Actually and Valentines Day as well as He’s Just Not That Into You I would really like to see your thoughts on a direct comparison between Love, Actually and Valentines Day.
Love, Actually is my favourite romantic comedy of all time for the realistic down to earth vibe I feel it gives off but I’ve never looked hard at it from a feminist viewpoint (and just beginning to think about it now I can identify some problematic stuff). Since seeing Valentines Day I strongly beleive it was meant as some kind of Hollywood rip off of Love, Actually, and an infinitely inferior one so I’d think they’d be perfect to compare. I saw He’s Just Not That Into You for the first time recently and don’t think it’s as similar as the others are to each other, but it does have a few similarities.
I think Valentine’s Day is exactly what you described it as – a ripoff of Love, Actually, and one of those cookie-cutter star-studded romantic comedy ensemble movies. New Year’s Eve is coming out, too, and I suspect it will be another ripoff.
I think I might do a month focusing on the ensemble rom-coms, so thanks for that suggestion.
I agree with pairing “Love Actually” with “He’s Just Not That into You” (BTW, the Polish translation of the latter is something like: “Women desire more” yyygh).
How about pairing “Annie Hall” with “When Harry Met Sally”? Both are set in NYC and there is something Allenesque in “When Harry Met Sally”, especially in Harry (though in a milder, slightly more optimistic form).
As to Jane Austen related movies– well, that task itself could take a year. I counted three on your list; you could:
a) do them all at once — hard as it is
b) contrast them with the novels, maybe adding some other adaptations
c)Do “Clueless” (Oh, you made me want to watch it again! It’s on my shelf along with other JA adaptations) alone, or with “Pride and Prejudice: A Latter Day Commedy” or “Bride and Prejudice”, or any other modernized version of a JA novel AND/OR do “The JZ Book Club” with “Bridget Jones’ Diary” (Both adaptations of books inspired by Austen).
Hope it helps. Whatever you’ll do will work, really:)
Yeah, the Austen adaptations could take a year in of itself. Narrowing this down is so hard!
Seeing “Shop Around the Corner” on your list made me immediately scan to the bottom to see if “You’ve Got Mail” was there. I don’t know how useful it would be, but they’re based on the same story and they both explore relationships where the pair hate each other in real life while at the same time they’re falling in love via letters/email. Also, another Meg Ryan film for your “leading ladies” list.
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Maybe you could look at The Truth About Cats and Dogs and…oh I can’t think of a pair film right now but anything where a woman/man uses a front woman/man Cyrano style (Oh! Cyrano! Oh no wait…not a rom com). This project seems totally cool and I look forward to seeing it progress. Rom coms are kind of my favorite thing ever.