Salon.com > Romantic comedy http://www.salon.com Fri, 03 May 2013 21:58:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 “Love Is All You Need”: Pierce Brosnan’s lovely, lightweight rom-com http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/love_is_all_you_need_pierce_brosnans_lovely_lightweight_romcom/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/love_is_all_you_need_pierce_brosnans_lovely_lightweight_romcom/#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13285820 Danish director Susanne Bier has spent her career stuck in the mushy European middle, halfway between Ingmar Bergman and Hollywood. She has a tremendous gift for character and storytelling, coupled with a penchant for preachy, melodramatic message delivery in the Paul Haggis vein, especially as her films have attracted a global audience. She won the foreign-language Oscar for the Euro-guilt odyssey “In a Better World” in 2010 – a picture that was conspicuously trying to be meaningful – and has made one semi-unsuccessful American venture, the 2007 “Things We Lost in the Fire,” with Halle Berry and Benicio del Toro.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/love_is_all_you_need_pierce_brosnans_lovely_lightweight_romcom/feed/ 4 “Admission”: Hollywood blandness claims Tina Fey! http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/admission_hollywood_blandness_claims_tina_fey/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/admission_hollywood_blandness_claims_tina_fey/#comments Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:20:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13247074 Is someone deliberately sabotaging the movie careers of beloved TV comedy actors? Or is some inexorable force of Marxian historical overdetermination at work, compelling Steve Carell and Tina Fey to make the kinds of sub-mediocre, machine-produced formula pictures that would once have starred Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston (and may yet!), and so rendering irrelevant all the qualities that made them irresistible on television?

I’m being slightly unfair to “Admission,” a rambling, well-meaning and largely unfunny Ivy League comedy that tries to establish Fey – famed for her Sarah Palin impersonation on “Saturday Night Live” and her star/writer/creator role on “30 Rock” – as a rom-com leading lady. That doesn't turn out to be a good idea, but my actual point was that Vince Vaughn would never have taken the role Paul Rudd actually plays, as the do-gooder founder of a crunchy alternative high school in the New England woods. The movie’s just too boring and middlebrow; there’s not enough sports talk or jokes about how chicks are maddening and gays are, you know, so gay.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/admission_hollywood_blandness_claims_tina_fey/feed/ 8 “Warm Bodies”: Love with an emo zombie http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/warm_bodies_love_with_an_emo_zombie/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/warm_bodies_love_with_an_emo_zombie/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:28:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13188286 “Warm Bodies” sounds a lot better in theory than it turns out to be in practice. Of course, that’s true of about 90 percent of Hollywood movies, and let’s pause for a second to reflect that the original concept here involves a retelling of “Romeo and Juliet,” with zombies. So to say that the movie is not quite as good as its mind-blowingly moronic premise is not praise. At any rate, “Warm Bodies” is more a mild-mannered, emo-flavored romcom than a zombie movie. It has some tepid action scenes, a few swatches of genuine humor and a general spirit of cheerfulness, especially considering it depicts a future in which civilization has been destroyed. That’s more than enough to make it a hit in the dreary depths of February, and early reviews suggest that we’ve all agreed to overlook the fact that it’s essentially lazy and stupid hackwork that makes the “Twilight” movies look like a collaboration between David Lynch and Robert Bresson.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/warm_bodies_love_with_an_emo_zombie/feed/ 10 “The Dark Knight” reimagined as a romantic comedy http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/the_dark_night_reimagined_as_a_romantic_comedy/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/the_dark_night_reimagined_as_a_romantic_comedy/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:08:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13121499 With just a few changes (bright, poppy music and a few inspirational quotes), Matin Comedy turns the "The Dark Knight" into a rom-com:

h/t Clip Nation

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/the_dark_night_reimagined_as_a_romantic_comedy/feed/ 0 “Silver Linings” is gold http://www.salon.com/2012/11/16/silver_linings_playbook_the_best_new_rom_com_in_years/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/16/silver_linings_playbook_the_best_new_rom_com_in_years/#comments Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:01:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13100807 We get thrown right into the middle of Pat Solitano Jr.’s troubled life story, without any of the usual context or background. Played by Bradley Cooper in a major departure from his customary sleek pretty-boy roles, Pat is the unhinged, overly intense and not always likable protagonist of David O. Russell’s manic, inventive and rewarding “Silver Linings Playbook.” When we first meet him, he’s standing in the corner of his spartan room in a Baltimore mental hospital, talking to himself. His mom, played by the terrific Australian actress Jacki Weaver, has shown up from Philadelphia to sign him out, against doctor’s orders and without having consulted her husband. What did Pat do that got him locked up in the first place? What’s going on with this family? Why do Pat’s wife and the school where he used to teach have restraining orders against him?

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/16/silver_linings_playbook_the_best_new_rom_com_in_years/feed/ 1 “Ruby Sparks”: Writing the perfect girlfriend http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/ruby_sparks_writing_the_perfect_girlfriend/ http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/ruby_sparks_writing_the_perfect_girlfriend/#comments Wed, 25 Jul 2012 00:01:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12963516 Why would anyone want to watch a movie about a writer? In terms of what they actually do when they're working, writers must be the most boring people on earth. But there are a lot more movies about writers than there are movies about UPS drivers or accountants, which can partly be explained by the fact that writing remains a mysterious process -- it requires no training or expertise, and literally anyone can do it -- and that the results, at least on rare occasions, can feel like magic. Also, a bit more cynically, there is the fact that somebody has to write a movie, and that person tends to be a writer.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/ruby_sparks_writing_the_perfect_girlfriend/feed/ 15 Nora Ephron’s romantic-comedy revolution http://www.salon.com/2012/06/27/nora_ephrons_romantic_comedy_revolution/ http://www.salon.com/2012/06/27/nora_ephrons_romantic_comedy_revolution/#comments Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:35:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12946280 Nora Ephron apparently once said that all romantic comedies, from the 1930s onward, were just attempts to rewrite and restage "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Pride and Prejudice." She was right about that, of course, and was far too intelligent a person to claim that she had invented anything new. Her now-classic scripts for "When Harry Met Sally" and "Sleepless in Seattle" depend upon the simplest of reversals -- the two people who seem so wrong for each other are actually right for each other -- and the proposition that the war between the sexes ends in the mutual surrender of marriage. How much these ideas reflect reality is debatable, at best, but as comic conventions they have endured for centuries.

Ephron also learned from Shakespeare and Jane Austen that the genre requires a little bite, the threat of emotional violence not far below the surface. Meg Ryan's last words to Billy Crystal in "When Harry Met Sally," right before the big clinch, are, "I hate you, Harry. I really hate you." Ephron was both a traditionalist and a revolutionary, or perhaps a traditional revolutionary; she brought romantic comedy into the era of feminism without challenging its fundamental assumptions about men and women and what they want. Maybe that reflects underlying truths about human nature and maybe it doesn't, but it certainly both reflected and affected the Zeitgeist of turn-of-the-century America. Ephron's best scripts offered the comfort of an old-fashioned love story in what felt like a fizzy, urbane contemporary setting.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/06/27/nora_ephrons_romantic_comedy_revolution/feed/ 5 Did Nora Ephron’s “When Harry Met Sally” ruin male-female friendship? http://www.salon.com/2012/06/27/did_nora_ephrons_when_harry_met_sally_ruin_malefemale_friendship/ http://www.salon.com/2012/06/27/did_nora_ephrons_when_harry_met_sally_ruin_malefemale_friendship/#comments Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12946207 Mary Elizabeth Williams: Let me start by saying I adore Nora Ephron, who died yesterday evening at 71. Her essays introduced me to Fay Weldon and, more significantly, Jane Austen, when I was a teenager. "Silkwood" had one of the first great LGBT characters I ever saw in a movie. Her New Yorker essay about Manhattan real estate, just a few years ago, made me laugh and weep like something out of a Nancy Meyers movie.

But her greatest legacy will likely be ruining countless viable, thriving, necessary relationships. That, and giving us the phrase "Steve Harvey, relationship expert." I'm talking about "When Harry Met Sally." The moment Harry said, "Men and women can't be friends" 23 years ago, it passed from being a provocative line uttered by a guy who, by the way, is pretty much a jerk, and into accepted doctrine. "When Harry Met Sally" remains an ersatz Woody Allen movie about two incredibly irritating people. I still can't think of that film without wishing it'd been "When Jess Met Marie."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/06/27/did_nora_ephrons_when_harry_met_sally_ruin_malefemale_friendship/feed/ 26 Remembering Nora Ephron http://www.salon.com/2012/06/26/remembering_nora_ephron/ http://www.salon.com/2012/06/26/remembering_nora_ephron/#comments Tue, 26 Jun 2012 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12945876 We once wrote of Nora Ephron that "her cultural influence is so elemental ... she’s like hydrogen." We've written about -- and chatted with -- her and her work so frequently that when news broke Tuesday evening of her death, it came as a swift, sad shock.

So we immediately returned to -- and urge you to, as well -- Rebecca Traister's fine and defining profile of Ephron in 2006:

For 40 years, Nora Ephron has been a wicked social critic and storyteller, spotting and eviscerating trends, spinning somber tales into comic gold, and revivifying a moribund cinematic genre — the romantic comedy — for a country still trying to recover from the sexual revolution. She began her writing career in the ’60s as a reporter for the New York Post and covered the media, fashion and women’s issues for Esquire and New York magazines in the ’70s. In 1983 she wrote the novel “Heartburn” and then adapted it for film; soon she was penning Oscar-nominated scripts for “Silkwood” and “When Harry Met Sally,” and by the time the ’90s rolled in, she had largely abandoned journalism for Hollywood, directing and producing movies like “Sleepless in Seattle,” “You’ve Got Mail” and “Bewitched.” It was in this last stage of her career that Ephron became most famous; these starry, heavily soundtracked films are also what got her labeled schmaltzy.

Yet while she has surely trafficked in some synthetic twinkle, Ephron is no sap. In fact, in much of her work, she is a lot like her beloved Manhattan: protean, resilient, sharp, eager to crack a grim smile in bad times, susceptible to big-strings romanticism, but often willing to resist — yes, resist — sentimentality in the face of change.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/06/26/remembering_nora_ephron/feed/ 4 He slept with a lesbian: Summer’s hottest rom-com http://www.salon.com/2012/06/13/he_slept_with_a_lesbian_summers_hottest_rom_com/ http://www.salon.com/2012/06/13/he_slept_with_a_lesbian_summers_hottest_rom_com/#comments Wed, 13 Jun 2012 00:05:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12936842 Summer is here (or almost), and with it comes new attempts to twist and tweak the romantic-comedy genre to make its delights accessible to younger moviegoers. OK -- actually, that happens in every season. But there's no doubt that the outbreak of short skirts and tight T-shirts, and the general atmosphere of youthful pheromones drifting through the air, ramps it up.

Here's the good news: This year's warm weather brings with it an especially intriguing crop of indie rom-coms. There's Daryl Wein's "Lola Versus" (which hit theaters last week), with a terrific lead performance from Greta Gerwig and a hilarious supporting turn from co-writer Zoe Lister-Jones, which strengthens Wein's claim to be a 21st-century riposte to Woody Allen. There's Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo's exquisitely silly and sweet "Extraterrestrial," in which an uncertain love quadrangle plays out against the backdrop of an apparent alien invasion. (Stay tuned for more on that one.)

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/06/13/he_slept_with_a_lesbian_summers_hottest_rom_com/feed/ 1 Kate Hudson’s cancer horror show http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/kate_hudsons_cancer_horror_show/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/kate_hudsons_cancer_horror_show/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 18:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12914370 Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to mourn a sad loss. A luminous, unique presence who ably graced our lives and then was snuffed out far too early. A moment of silence, please, for Kate Hudson's career.

It seems like only yesterday we were beguiled by the lively, bohemian Penny Lane in "Almost Famous." But it's been a painful decade since, as I know many of you gathered here can bear witness. Those of you who steadfastly supported Hudson over the years, who paid good money for "Bride Wars," for "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," for "Raising Helen," "You Me & Dupree," "Fool's Gold," "My Best Friend's Girl," "Alex and Emma," "Le Divorce," and "Something Borrowed" -- you know what I'm talking about. You're heroes for sticking around this long. That's why it's both tragic and necessary to come to the end of our journey now, to let her go off to a better place. The D-list. It's called "A Little Bit of Heaven."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/kate_hudsons_cancer_horror_show/feed/ 21 “The Avengers” and Hollywood’s gender wars http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_and_hollywoods_gender_wars/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_and_hollywoods_gender_wars/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 23:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12913831 I don't think I'm breaking any news if I tell you that "The Avengers," Joss Whedon's ensemble action-adventure that unites an entire posse of Marvel Comics superheroes, will be far and away this weekend's No. 1 film at the box office. (In fact, "Avengers" is already the eighth-highest grossing film of 2012, with more than $260 million in global revenue before its North American release.) Or that a large majority of those ticket buyers will be teenage boys and young men. Like most summer "tent-pole" productions -- those designed to support franchises, and ensure the financial future of major studios -- "The Avengers" is aimed squarely at guys under 35, long the demographic, psychological and economic bulwark of the movie industry. In the weeks ahead, we'll see a whole bunch more male-centric, big-budget releases: "Battleship," "The Dictator," "Men in Black III," "Prometheus," "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "The Dark Knight Rises," potentially the biggest of all.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_and_hollywoods_gender_wars/feed/ 57 “Think Like a Man”: Why are rom-coms still segregated? http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/think_like_a_man_why_are_rom_coms_still_segregated/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/think_like_a_man_why_are_rom_coms_still_segregated/#comments Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:55:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12891281 So there's a black guy in the White House who may (or may not) get reelected, and we're long past the point when anyone finds it weird to find white rural kids listening to hip-hop in their Chevy pickup with the Rebel flag sticker. We absolutely do not live in a post-racial society, as the Trayvon Martin case has made clear, and for many African-Americans, economic and geographic segregation remains a fact of life. But at least in the cultural arena, racial signals are more mixed and mingled than ever before, as Barack Obama's complicated ancestry and upbringing exemplify. With the emergence of fast-growing and newly confident Latino and Asian-American cultural identities, the old black-white polarity of American life is gone forever.

How, then, do we account for the near-total segregation of the relationship comedy and the rom-com? If anything, "Think Like a Man," the awkward but intermittently amusing black-centric ensemble film built out of comedian Steve Harvey's self-help bestseller "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man" deserves a gold star for its generous portrayals of Caucasians. OK, it's true that one of the white guys in the movie (Gary Owen) is your standard-issue ultra-square doofus, found in black-oriented movies since time immemorial, whose role is to serve as the butt of white-boy jokes and make accidental racist remarks that the black characters then acknowledge are partly true.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/think_like_a_man_why_are_rom_coms_still_segregated/feed/ 64 When Harry met Sally — and ruined the rom-com http://www.salon.com/2012/03/06/when_harry_met_sally_and_ruined_the_rom_com/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/06/when_harry_met_sally_and_ruined_the_rom_com/#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12538011 As my closest female friend likes to muse when contemplating the marketplace for books and movies and other forms of entertainment, nobody ever went broke trying to convince heterosexual women that men will fall in love with them and stay faithful forever, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Is pure biological imperative enough to explain the persistence of the most formulaic kind of romantic comedy, even in the age of widespread divorce and destigmatized single-parenting and same-sex marriage? I'd hate to think so, and in fact I don't think so. But something must explain it. A desire for old-fashioned comfort in chaotic times? You tell me.

"Friends With Kids," an enjoyable new indie comedy that marks the directing debut of writer and actress Jennifer Westfeldt (best known for "Kissing Jessica Stein" in 2001 and her recurring role on TV's "Notes From the Underbelly"), has a lot going for it. But its excellent collective craftsmanship, its rampant dirty talk and its gloss of contemporary metropolitan morality only convey the appearance of novelty and flexibility, while in fact the underlying formula is as rigid as the sonnet. Like almost every rom-com of this epoch -- and I'm including some more adventurous films that don't at first look like rom-coms, including "Bridesmaids" and "Crazy, Stupid, Love." -- "Friends With Kids" is enslaved to a template established two decades ago by screenwriter Nora Ephron, first in "When Harry Met Sally ..." and then in "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/06/when_harry_met_sally_and_ruined_the_rom_com/feed/ 95 “Friends With Benefits”: Justin and Mila in the other, other sex-pals movie http://www.salon.com/2011/07/22/friends_with_benefits_3/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/22/friends_with_benefits_3/#comments Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:05:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/07/22/friends_with_benefits I'm calling lazybones on all the critics who are saying that "Friends With Benefits," starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake as a couple who seek to get physical without emotional consequences, is almost exactly the same movie as "No Strings Attached," which came out six months ago and featured Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher as blah blah blah. It's actually almost exactly the same as several other movies too, notably "Going the Distance" with Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, and "Love and Other Drugs" with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal, which in terms of degree of difficulty and actual sex appeal remains the champion of this ill-starred mini-genre (although nobody cared about it then and fewer do now). In fact, "we're just two adults doin' it like donkeys" has replaced Mr. Darcy-style misunderstandings as the central rom-com device. Bag the pride and the prejudice; whip out the ribbed condoms.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/22/friends_with_benefits_3/feed/ 22 “Larry Crowne”: Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts’ tepid screwball love affair http://www.salon.com/2011/06/29/larry_crowne/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/29/larry_crowne/#comments Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/06/29/larry_crowne Tom Hanks' cheerful recession-themed romantic comedy "Larry Crowne" doesn't have a whole lot going on, which I guess makes it the perfect grown-up-aimed counterprogramming to Michael Bay's "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," which has way too much of everything (not counting significance and coherence). This lightweight star vehicle for Hanks and Julia Roberts, which was co-written by Hanks and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" creator Nia Vardalos, has no sex, no nudity, no violence, and no more than the precise number of curse words that still allows you to get a PG-13. This is the level of realism we're dealing with here: Roberts' no-good movie husband (Bryan Cranston of "Breaking Bad," who is suddenly everywhere) is supposed to be addicted to big-boobs Internet porn, but when we get a look at it, it seems to be pictures of women in bathing suits. She shouldn't dump him because he's a perv; she should dump him because he spends all his time online and can't find anything dirtier than Sports Illustrated.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/29/larry_crowne/feed/ 24