Romantic Comedy Repeat Offenders

I’m still putting together my ideas for next year’s “The Rom-Com Project,” and I’ve received many helpful and interesting comments from readers (thanks!) One in particular intrigued me and got me thinking about how I want to structure this project.

From APgeeksout:

“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).”

That comment got me thinking, and it occurred to me that, if I wanted to, I could base the entire year around the “repeat offenders.”

You know which actresses I’m talking about – the ones who star in rom-com after rom-com, occasionally taking time off to do a more serious or quirky film for which they receive critical acclaim, only to go back to making formulaic movies. (Then, they get reviled or criticized for not doing more interesting movies more often, as though there are just so many roles outside the formulaic rom-com genre for these women to do and it’s their fault for not trying hard enough.) The ones who make their name for primarily doing romantic comedies.

I’m thinking of Julia Roberts. Meg Ryan. Jennifer Aniston. Sandra Bullock. Kate Hudson. Katherine Heigl. Reese Witherspoon. Jennifer Lopez. Or some of the more “classic” romantic comedy leading women like Katherine Hepburn or Audrey Hepburn.

When you look at the above list, you’ll notice that about half those actresses have Oscar nominations or even wins. Yet despite that fact, I don’t think Julia Roberts is going to go down in film history for her performance in Erin Brockovich, and Reese Witherspoon isn’t going to be largely remembered for Walk the Line. I don’t mean to diminish their accomplishments or deride their performances in said movies. (I haven’t even seen Erin Brockovich, so I can’t comment on that.) I’m only pointing out that the public perception of these actresses is that they’re primarily Romantic Comedy Leading Ladies.

I also thought of adding Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz onto the list but ultimately decided against it – I get the sense (perhaps inaccurately) that they’re known more for being primarily comic actresses who do some romantic comedies.

Then again, the romantic comedy genre also has its share of leading men that are reused over and over again – Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant, Patrick Dempsey (as of late, anyway), just to name a few.

I don’t think it would be worth my time to spend a whole year focusing on a different leading lady a month. So many of their movies have very similar plots. But it might be interesting to look at the different character types that these actresses play and do a compare/contrast.

For instance, Julia Roberts has two distinct settings: America’s Sweetheart Julia and Sassy Brassy Julia. Sandra Bullock has Tough Bitch Sandy and Daffy Awkward Sandy (and Miss Congeniality seemed to combine those two character types into one). Meg Ryan has Cute and Trying Way Too Hard to Be Cute.

And what of the older, classic stars? What types do Katherine Hepburn and Audrey Hepburn play? (I’m asking honestly, as I’ve seen very few of their films. My knowledge of the “classics” is limited to the bigger Oscar-bait movies, not the classic rom-coms.) Is there a big difference between the character archetypes from the Hepburn/Marilyn Monroe days and the ones we see today? Is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype fairly new, or has the MPDG existed since the old days, and we just call it by a different name?

(As an aside, it kind of bums me out that the MPDG was coined in a review of Elizabethtown to describe Kirsten Dunst’s character; I feel the MPDG trope is the exception, not the rule, in Kirsten Dunst’s career.)

Anyway, I wonder if I should spend just one month on the different Leading Ladies of Romantic Comedies, or if I should spread them out in different months. Decisions, decisions.