Lock the door. Take the phone off the hook and slip that romantic comedy DVD into the machine. It’s been a long hard week and you deserve this. Curl up on the sofa and wallow. Pour the wine, take out the chocolates with the soft centers and have the tissues on stand by. Like soaking in a warm bath, romantic comedies can ease the stress away. Essentially aimed at a female market, there are probably more male fans than we think. Of course, they won’t admit it. The movies have changed over the years, particularly in the area of sex but the basic plot remains the same. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Why would we want to change it? It’s like pulling on an old comfy sweater.
One of the first classics of the genre was It Happened One Night from 1934 and directed by Frank Capra. Starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, it is a familiar tale of a mis-matched couple with chemistry. The socialite and reporter are thrown together and stay in a cabin with just a blanket between their beds. Quite shocking for the time! Nevertheless, it went on to win all the major Oscars the following year.
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Cary Grant was made for
romantic comedies. In 1938, he teamed up with Katherine Hepburn in Howard Hawks’
Bringing Up Baby. Hepburn’s character Susan uses her pet leopard to try to ensnare Grant’s priggish paleontologist in romance. Hawks cast Cary Grant again in His Girl Friday, released in 1940, and co-starring Rosalind Russell. This time, Grant plays a hard-bitten newspaper reporter trying to stop his ex-wife from re-marrying.
The most successful film pairing has to be
Spencer Tracy and
Katherine Hepburn. In all, they made nine movies together, including
romantic comedies that required them to spar with the benefit of sharp dialogue. The chemistry between them was real, as they fell in love in their first outing,
Woman of the Year in 1942. The sparring continued in
Adam’s Rib (1949) and
Pat and Mike (1952).
Most
romantic comedies have happy endings but sometimes reality bites and the couple concerned struggle to control their own destiny.
Roman Holiday (1953) was shot on location in Rome, one of the most romantic cities in the world. It was the first starring role for Audrey Hepburn and you could see the sparks between herself and Gregory Peck. It has a more contemporary feel with Hepburn cutting her hair and jumping on a scooter.
Can a man and a woman just be friends? This is the theme of the 1989 movie,
When Harry Met Sally. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan play old friends who wonder if their relationship should turn into something more. There is a certain naughty scene in a diner (I’ll have what she’s having) that went down in movie history.
Richard Curtis has cornered the market on the British
romantic comedy scene with his witty creations,
Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and
Notting Hill (1999). They both star Hugh Grant in his charming but bumbling persona. However, he plays a cad in
Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001) and its sequel,
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004).
Romantic comedy meets culture clash resulted in a successful movie called
My Big Fat Greek Wedding in 2002. Nia Vardalos plays Toula, a member of a large, noisy Greek family in Chicago. She meets Ian and they fall in love, against the wishes of Toula’s traditional father. None of her relatives have dated a non-Greek before and they must win the family over. It’s a comic tale with an interesting theme on cultural identity.