Seriously, Where Have All the Good Rom-Coms Gone?

This is a question I've been wanting to ask for a while...

My personal collection is stocked with the gems...You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, The Devil Wears Prada, My Best Friend's Wedding, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Notting Hill, Pretty Woman, While You Were Sleeping...you get the idea.

Now trust me, I don't expect cinematic greatness from your average rom-com. I mean, c'mon, I absolutely loved The Wedding Planner and it stars J.Lo.

But I'd argue that there was even a little something about The Wedding Planner that puts the recent stinky trifecta of Bride Wars, Confessions of a Shopaholic and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past to shame. It's called comedy and romance, the very words that describe the genre itself and endeared it to a sap like me.

Matthew McConaughey had had a couple of great rom-com moments (namely in the aforementioned Wedding Planner and the first time he teamed up with Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Fool's Gold, on the other hand, was merely an excuse to let him and Kate spend 10 or so hours a day at the gym and tanning bed), but Ghosts is definitely not one of them. In fact, it'll make you forget the past you thought wanted to run from, and inspire you to find the theater's exit instead. Pronto.

Not only is he so unlikeable as yet another boy/man cad that you seriously wish he'd stumble off a cliff during his drunken stupor rather than reconcile with Jennifer Garner's character, but he's so unforgettable that you wonder if there was any reason (other than the paycheck) that drew him to a script that cast him in such a bad, predictable light. I mean, I'm sure he's got enough self awareness to know that he's not about to win an Oscar any time soon, but you think he'd want his work to challenge him a little, right?

Or at least to actually entertain his bevy of female fans?

Alas, the movie is just as flat and lame as the trailer would indicate, which still leaves The Holiday as the last rom-com I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish. I hear there's a new Hugh Grant (!!!) on the way in December, but until then, my fingers are crossed that Sandra Bullock's return to rom-coms will deliver in The Proposal. Sigh.

Comments

[Amy]

There has been a serious lack of films that aren't about the world blowing up, people getting attacked by this and that, and of course, horror flicks of isolated torture...yeah...I'm not into that.

No wonder WE has been on so much lately. :)

I agree; we definitely need more QUALITY rom coms. And, on top of that, we need more Hugh Grant movies in general. I don't know what it is about the guy but he makes me laugh.