Romantic Comedies' - Do they all conform to Hollywood film-making standards?

The Romantic Comedy or the ‘RomCom’ is a typical example of genre of film which highly conforms to the Hollywood film-making standard. Whilst they may not necessarily become the biggest blockbusters or highest grossing, they are easy to make and are churned out month after month as people are willing to watch them in the cinema.

“...it employs so formulaic a storyline, is so over-familiar a product, that it is easy to take for granted” (2007, Jeffers Mcdonald)

The key ingredients of a romantic comedy usually includes two famous or well-known protagonists, both of whom are normally very good looking (if not the male then the female, who tend to always be better looking) and a plot which involves the two characters not getting along or hating one another at the beginning, they then begin to fall in love which is halted by a minor event, and finishing with the two characters realising they belong together and living happily ever after.

A perfect example of this scenario is:

“’Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back’ is exhibit A of standard plots in all fictional media.” (2003, Shumway, p.157)

What Women Want (2000) directed by Nancy Meyers and starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt is probably one of the best known and most clichéd Romantic Comedy of all time. IMDb describes the plot as “After an accident, a chauvinistic executive gains the ability to hear what women are really thinking.” The storyline portrays the two characters having nothing in common and not getting along; but after an accident with a hairdryer allows Nick to hear the thoughts of women, he realises that he is falling for his employee Darcy.

With a budget of $70 million the film was a huge success and grossed $182,811,707 worldwide – the second highest grossing RomCom of all time. The storyline is easy to follow and doesn’t require a lot of thinking whilst watching it. The large budget, A-list protagonists and fairytale ending all highlight how much What Women Want, and the Romantic Comedy genre in particular, conforms to Hollywood and mainstream film-making standards.

To some people (500) Days of Summer, directed by Marc Webb, can be classed as a Romantic Comedy, but to others it can be seen as totally the opposite. This is because the storyline focuses on two people who start a romance, break up and never get back together. The film does not run in chronological order, and it was easy to expect the two to end up getting back together at the end of the film – which does not happen.

Whilst the two main characters - played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zoey Deschanel - can be described as good looking, they both don’t conform to the Hollywood stereotype of ‘attractive’. They are both pale with dark features and in the film both of their personalities are very different and odd (in comparison to a normal, outgoing American protagonist).

The budget for (500) Days of Summer was a tenth of what it was for What Women Want, $7.5 million, but it still managed to do well by grossing $60 million worldwide. It also gained good reviews from critics, as it was described as “refreshing” compared to its stereotypical love story companions.

Overall, whilst the film can still be classed as ‘Hollywood’ it completely subverts the standard mainstream film-making standards used by so many others in regards to romance. The film does end with a relatively happy ending, perhaps proving that audiences aren’t quite ready for a completely miserable ending to a love story.

References

JEFFERS MCDONALD, T., 2007. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Genre. Great Britain: Wallflower Press.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0207201/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1022603/?ref_=sr_1

http://bigfrog104.com/10-top-grossing-romantic-comedies-of-all-time/

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=500daysofsummer.htm

http://www.imdb.com/list/KdTlHjWsMSs/