But the new romantic comedies take such care to sew everything up so neatly -- to spell out in neon-bright letters that the lovers are so perfect for each other that nothing could ever go wrong -- that they seem like a grappling insistence of love's permanence instead of a kiss for good luck. And somewhere along the way, they've become repositories for all the things women are said to feel most insecure about. Sandra Bullock's too pretty? Put her in a sweater where the sleeves droop past her fingertips -- the image I recall most vividly from "While You Were Sleeping" -- so the audience will be able to "relate" to her. Romantic comedies have always been designed to make audiences walk out feeling good -- that's one of the things that make them wonderful. But in the '90s, that motivation has taken a subtle and unpleasant shift. Now it's imperative that audiences, particularly women, walk out feeling good about themselves -- as if romantic comedies were now just the movie equivalent of mother's little helper.

That's not to say that all women fall for these movies, or that only women fall for them, or that there's anything wrong with anyone's enjoying them on some level. The fact that many of these movies become big hits reflects the idea that audiences are still curious about romantic comedies, still hoping they'll fulfill their expectations, high or low, of having a good time. I see these movies because it's part of my job, but I'd go to see them even if I didn't have to. I'm so in love with the idea of romantic comedies -- as they've been interpreted by the likes of Sturges, Lubitsch, Hawks, Cukor and LaCava or, later, Jonathan Demme, Richard Linklater, Kenneth Branagh and Danny Boyle -- that hope springs eternal. I can't help feeling that maybe the next one will actually have some vitality, some crackle, and so I try to see them all.

But time after time, I find myself hopelessly disappointed -- cast in the "man's" role of yawning and looking at my watch, or averting my eyes in embarrassment. I'm all too aware of the social expectation that women "should" like these movies. When I panned "Notting Hill" in Salon Arts & Entertainment, for instance, I got a charming anonymous e-mail that said only, "What's up with your PMS?" As if the only reason I could possibly have for not liking the movie was that my hormones had gone awry. A woman wrote suggesting that I didn't like the movie because I'd never been in love and urged me to "go out once in a while and maybe you'll find that person that will make you feel better about yourself" -- right after she told me she liked "Notting Hill" so much that she was "dragging her husband to see it." Men are often vilified for not liking the same kinds of movies their partners do. But why should it be considered a fatal flaw (or a shortcoming of one's sex, whether male or female) to dislike a genre of movies that has gone so downhill in the past 10 years?

The hearts of men aren't easily understood (and I hardly envy them for having to fathom ours). But I think that if we had the right kind of romance movies -- movies that were well-written, where the women know their own minds without having to wave a flag of clichés to announce it, where the men could be tender, aggressive, heroic and funny in whatever measures the story (or the love affair) calls for -- then most men would enjoy them as much as we women are supposed to. I have a friend who's enough of a man's man for anybody -- his laser disc collection of loud action movies is unparalleled -- but the one movie he says he can watch any time is "A Room With a View."

And the truth is, I desperately wanted to like "Notting Hill." London is a city I love, and I've been charmed by both Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in the past. But I couldn't get past the idea that both of them were playing nothing more than caricatures; he the shy, shambling English guy (as if by decree or birthright all Englishmen necessarily must shamble) and she the caustically cool (supposedly a substitute for "strong-willed"), successful-yet-sensitive film star who desperately wants a normal life. No matter how much they twinkle and beam in each other's general direction, I couldn't actually see Grant and Roberts falling in love. The fact that she was a movie star and he was an average-guy bookstore owner seemed the least of their problems. Roberts acts like little more than a spoiled star (again, that's the signal that she's a strong, modern woman) with a young man who, no matter what his failings, is clearly crazy about her, and she yields too little too late. By comparison, Barbara Stanwyck's character in the "The Lady Eve" is an all-around tougher character -- you could argue that she's even further afield than Roberts in terms of being likable in any soft "womanly" way. But unlike Roberts, Stanwyck -- an actress who was ahead of her time, playing a character that sometimes seems to be ahead of our time -- doesn't use hardness as an obvious effect, just so our hearts can be warmed by her ultimate transformation. Her dominance over her partner is a given throughout the movie -- which is why it means so much when she finally meets him halfway.

Next page | With so much talent, this could be a terrific time for romantic comedies