The holiday movies are out and films like The Fighter and Black Swan are creating a buzz. One film that looks intriguing is the Reese Witherspoon movie, How Do You Know. You don’t have to know how to cook for the Food Network to figure out the recipe for a bad romantic comedy. And just to be sure the ingredients hadn’t changed, last night I suffered through The Back-up Plan featuring Jennifer Lopez and Alex O’Laughlin.
First Hollywood starts with a super babe and a super stud. The super babe and super stud actors are interchangeable. I think Hollywood producers have a giant “wheel of fortune” spinner labeled with names like Katherine Heigl, Jennifer Aniston, Matt McConaughey, Ryan Reynolds, Gerard Butler, and Sandra Bullock. When a producer acquires a script to his liking, he simply spins the wheel and plugs in the names of the first female and male actors the spinner selects. Alternate spins may be necessary if the two leads have already appeared in a romantic comedy together.
Next the producer speed dials the two most important architects for his film: the lighting director and the music director. Romantic comedies are filmed in a different light than other movies. They’re brighter, sunnier, happier. Even in scenes with rain, the precipitation is peppy. Secondly, the producer has to have the latest Top-40 hits from his musical director for the scenes where the lead characters are driving together through the rolling countryside (on a bright sunny day) and for the montage where the characters spend “months” falling in love in the span of sixty seconds.
Another important person is the location director. Since the lead characters are usually highly successful, career-minded folks, the location director has to find the perfect upper-Westside brownstone, or spacious downtown loft in which the characters can live. How these beautiful, accomplished people struck it rich financially while failing miserably in their relationships always befuddles me. Often the characters own their own businesses or are artists. It’s the artists that live in the downtown lofts, filled with eclectic antique furniture arranged haphazardly around the drop cloths, easels, and cans of paint.
Next the producer double checks the script to make sure all the necessary plot points are included. The basic story line goes like this: boy and girl meet. They first hate each other. They go on a date. They fall in love. They know their relationship is doomed. They break up. The initiator of the break up realizes that he or she made a mammoth mistake. He or she begs for a second chance. They live happily ever after in their bright sunny penthouse that you see as the camera pulls away, Colbie Caillat music playing, while the credits start rolling.
The main characters will always have really annoying friends, which may explain why they can’t find a date. There may also be an older friend who is married with children. This friend is known as the fountain of wisdom. The FOW has to be there to point out the mammoth mistake made by the initiator of the break up. Usually this friend will drone on and on about problems of married life and try to live vicariously through the romances of the main character.
Also, one of the protagonists has to do something really stupid. In The Back-up Plan, Jlo, newly with child, visits O’Loughlin’s picturesque goat farm where he is the creator of fancy organic cheeses. She wanders into the kitchen on her own, spots a bubbling pot of stew, and overcome by hormones and hunger, begins to shovel the stew into her mouth with handfuls of bread. Really? Maybe on the second visit. Ever heard of a ladle? A bowl? O’Loughlin is so enamored by Jlo’s stew-covered grin that he quickly shuttles her off to the barn for a roll in the hay. Literally.
When the main characters in bad romantic comedies get together at the beginning of the movie there is nothing left to surprise. The characters have already expressed their “love” and “acceptance” of each other. They don’t have any reason to grow as people until the break-up hits. The movies of this genre that work for me are the ones in which the main characters don’t get together, until the end. In such films there are characters that have their own imperfect lives around which their own stories revolve. And while we know they are going to live happily ever after together, we get to watch as creative writers and directors intertwine the two stories. We see characters who doubt, worry, cry, laugh, take risks, and slowly grow in order to win the acceptance and love of the other person.
The benchmarks for romantic comedies are When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. A few of my other favorites are Four Weddings and Funeral, Love Actually, and Stranger than Fiction. Another jewel is 2000’s Return to Me staring Minnie Driver and David Duchovny. This movie somewhat fits into the mold but smartly so. Driver is an artist and a waitress, living under the protective eye of her grandfather (the late Caroll O’Connor in his last movie role) and his card-playing, music-loving cronies. Duchovny, a well-to-do architect, is a recent widower. He is the one with the annoying friend. The FOW is played excellently by Bonnie Hunt (also the writer and director). Duchovny lost his wife in a traffic accident. His pain and grief are intense. We see his misery as he attempts to put his life back together. Driver recently had heart-transplant surgery. She is insecure and worried about the giant scar bisecting her torso. They both have to overcome these issues in order to grow closer to each other. We as viewers realize the connection between the two long before Driver and Duchovny do. Their romance is sabotaged only when this secret is discovered, not by some act of stupidity or a change of heart.
Return to Me didn’t win any big award, but it worked. I had serious doubts about How Do You Know before the “critics” slapped it with the grade of a C. How did I know? Watch the trailer. The lighting, music, and filming locations give it away.
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