Romantic movies: aka coffee makes me strange(r)
Ah that magic moment, when a romantic movie gave you exactly what you wanted. Are rare but wonderful feeling. I've watched a lot of movies lately, alternating between popcorn crunching action thrillers and romantic comedy. The popcorn crunching action thrillers have been pretty good so far, the romantic comedies however...well let's just say they left a whole lot to be desired.
My list for this week includes, Ghost of Girlfriends Past, 27 dresses, High School Musical 3, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.
Let us start at the beginning, Ghost of Girlfriends Past, which is a crime against film and romantic comedies everywhere. Who ever wrote the script should seriously consider why they became a writer and was their integrity worth it. It is the most poorly written piece of shit ever, and it's badly acted. Though to there credit there are very few actors who could possible pull of that dialogue without sounding insipid and cliche. This is the kind of movie that makes people NOT believe in love.
27 Dresses was also very poorly written and the plot was kind of stupid, but at least we could enjoy the leads on screen together, though whenever they interacted with somebody else you rolled your eyes and sighed.
High School Musical 3 is, well, it's High School Musical 3, it was a disney TV movie that forgot it's place and went big screen. There is something about it that attracts 3-7 year olds, and everyone else is baffled.
and Sisterhood of the travelings pants 2, the last one I saw and the reason I'm writing this. I should preface this that Pants2 is not a romantic comedy it's a "girlfriends" flick in the vain of now and than and yaya sisterhood, but unlike these predecessors, Pants2 the main focus is on the relationships 3 of the 4 girls have. With a 3 love stories going on you would hope at least 1 delivers and it does, spectacularly.
Starting the movie I was already sighing thinking this was going to go into the land bad cliche plots. Good-Girl and her boyfriend from the previous movie brake up and she meets hot new guy. Fat-shy-girl meets really cute guy who is for some unknown reasons has fallen madly in love with her, but look out bitchy-pretty girl is jealous. Crazy-Rebel-girl attempts to sabotages really good relationship. Pretty generic, right? That's what I thought too, and it is. Possibly the reason Pants2 succeeds where so many movies fail is that it has more to work with than just getting Character-1 and Character-2 into the same bed. But I think that the success comes because as cliche as the stories were we wanted exactly the ending we got.
Just like the action thriller, when we watch a romantic comedy we know what we're getting ourselves into. We know in the end they will be together, because for a few hours we want to forget about how hard it is to find someone and how unsure we are about love and soul-mates. We want to believe in true perfect everlasting love and happily ever after. But in order for it to work we have to want it. The main character in Girlfriends Past is so morally reprehensible we don't want him to get the girl. 27 Dresses spends so much time telling you how in love the Girl is with the Other guy that you want her to get him. High School Musical...yeah....
But in Pants2 you want the ending. You want Good-girl and her first love to get back together. You want Fat-shy-girl to get the guy even if you're not sure why he looked twice. You want Crazy-rebel-girl to make it work with her boyfriend. And because you want it when you get it you're happy and you can believe at least for those 2 hours, that true love is waiting for you.