Sometime early last year, I was home sick, and I caught the 1995 romantic comedy “French Kiss” on HBO. If memory serves, when “French Kiss” was released, it was a well-received, entertaining flick. Rewatching it, I couldn’t help but think that, if it were released today, “French Kiss” would win multiple Oscars. It’s that much better than pretty much every Hollywood rom-com released in recent memory.
Take, for instance, “Leap Year.” It doesn’t come out until tomorrow, but I kind of feel like I’ve already seen it. I heart Amy Adams to pieces, but every time the trailer comes on TV and Amy’s character flips out because her BF only bought her a giant pair of diamond earrings (what a jerk!), or that she will NOT die before getting engaged, I just want to hit something. Hard. And then go watch “It Happened One Night” again.
It doesn’t offend me, but it does bore the hell out of me. Things Hollywood is not allowed to do until further notice:
- drench its heroines in water/slime/cow poop/spaghetti sauce/something else gross;
- contrive situations where heroine and that guy she can’t stand (but whom she deep-down looooooves) have to pretend-kiss;
- give female rom-com leads jobs that no human being could possibly have and support oneself, e.g., real estate staging person, crossword puzzle writer, indie-weekly sex columnist, etc.
- weddings.
What sucks is that none of the things on that list are inherently awful; most of them date back to the golden age of screwball comedies 70 and 80 years ago. The problem is that the creativity isn’t there. We’ve seen these things so many times that any child can predict how the average rom-com will play. It’s a genre that’s crying out to be turned on its head.
The delicious challenge of writing stories is that one has to meet the expectations of the particular genre while somehow still catching the audience by surprise. And right now most TV sitcoms are doing that better than movies.
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