1) BATTLE OF THE SEXES
Ding. Ding. Ding. Men don’t know what they want! Why are women so emotional! Yes, no Romcom is complete without it. Whether it’s old school Doris Day vs Roc Hudson or our classic Harry vs Sally, our two lovers must battle over everything that’s wrong with love and dating. After all, they’ve had their fair share of romantic difficulties, just like us! The argument can change from story to story, but this epic clash is what makes it feel relevant to our lives. Do men just want sex? Can women and men be friends? How can we find love if we’re so different?!
This year’s box office hit The Ugly Truth doesn’t give us anything new, but it does follow the formula with Gerard Butler, our macho lust guru and cable TV personality, facing off with his new producer, the prissy romantic Katherine Heigl, over the classic debate “Is it true men just want sex and women just want love?” However in Justin Long's and Drew Barrymore’s honest Going The Distance, about a couple trying to carry on a long distant relationship, the story fails to achieve this battle. The gender roles are interchangeable and with the larger strife simply being geographical, the story misses its possible foray into the grand gender debate.
2) THE ROMANCE & THE FANTASY
Let’s face it! Anyone willingly going to a romantic comedy is looking to be swept away by a bit of romance. This is a love story! It needs an element of fantasy. A storybook component. And to fulfill this fantasy, our man must to be able to step into the role of Prince Charming. Sure he may be rough around the edges, immature or emotionally distant, but damn it, when we crack that exterior, he’s just Mr. Right. The Ugly Truth doesn’t compare in this are to say Pretty Woman or Bridget Jones’ Diary, but it does allow its lovers to experience some passion and Gerard butler does become the courageous, yet emotional man. But Going the Distance’s Justin Long falls short here.
The poor guy already has to compete in looks with our hunky Gerard Butler and Hugh Grants, but he’s never given an opportunity to step out of his role a stoner, music exec wannabe and into the shoes of Mr. Right. His passion with Drew is relegated to comical love-making over the dining room table. The fantasy of this movie is lost. Sure, the best fantasies are the most honest, realistic ones, but they’re still fantasies.
3) THEY’RE JUST SO…RIGHT FOR EACH OTHER
Come on, how many cute meets have we seen where the boy and girl want to kill each other at first glance? But we just know they are just perfect for each other. She’s so high-strung, she needs a guy like him to mellow her out. And he’s so rough around the edges and angry. He needs a real go-getter to help him shed his veneer. A successful Romcom allows their lovers to change each other for the better. They share their vulnerabilities, and then they can overcome them. Once again, The Ugly Truth follows the paint-by-numbers, but it gets there as Gerard realizes love does exist and Katherine throws away her list for
4) THE FINAL HURDLE
It’s the final act. They’ve let down their walls, expressed their feelings, and faced the possibility that they could end up together. But there’s still that one major issue: the final hurdle! We know most romantic comedies will end with the couple together, and their romance has given us hope, so this is needed to create fear in our hearts that they may not make it. It’s here, often in the landscape of their gender battle, where the true conflict lies. “But they’re friends,” as in Harry Met Sally! “She’s a hooker and he’s a respected business man,” as in Pretty Woman! Going the Distance actually trumps The Ugly Truth, with a clear larger conflict: they live on other ends of the country and they don’t want to give up their careers for love. Unfortunately it alone is not enough to save the story from the other categorical absences. The Ugly Truth fakes it through, trying to have the looming gender issues between men and women be the larger problem, but there really is no reason why these two can’t be together and that’s exactly what takes the steam out of this third act.
5) HAPPY ENDINGS
Finally, those two lovers who we knew were right for each other have battled through their gender issues, changed each other for the better and overcome that final hurdle. They better end up together! Because if they don’t, well sorry, but it ain’t a romantic comedy. Classically speaking, in regards to all that Greek stuff, the comedies end with the couples end up together. This is because it isn’t a story about one of these lovers. It’s about them collectively. They can’t go their separate ways. They are one entity. Both The Ugly Truth and Going the Distance pull this one out, but it’s actually a surprising hit “Rom Com” that fails in this category and reveals it’s true colors: 500 Days of Summer.
That’s right! It’s not a Romcom. It’s a comedy about one guy, Tom Hansen, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who spends 500 days courting a woman who breaks his heart, but ultimately teaches him love exists and it’s worth a chance. This isn’t about Tom and Summer. It’s about Tom. Stories like this are actually just comedies, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall. They don’t have our classic battle of the sexes or that final hurdle to find love. We actually aren’t rooting for them to end up together. In 500 Days, we’re rooting for Tom to find clarity. It wasn’t just 500 Days fresh and offbeat point of view that scored at the box office. Stepping out of the classic Romcom structure allowed 500 Days to find complexity and open up its demographic.
This is not to say that one should choose these types of Comedies over RomComs. One only need to look at recent box office monsters like the Proposal, It’s Complicated, Knocked Up, the Break-Up or The Ugly Truth to see there are plenty of movie-goers eager for this genre. But if you want your Romcom to succeed, it better follow these principles.
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