Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad?
I think the author of this piece purposely omitted all the oeuvres from the Turn-of-the-Millennium Teen Romantic Comedies That Are Actually Amazing genre, just because they don’t support his thesis. (Or because he is a middle-aged man and was never particularly aware of them.) Homeboy needs to check out some of these babies on Netflix:
Admission is gonna be my new favorite movie, I can JUST FEEL IT! (As if I wouldn’t immediately watch literally anything starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd.)
I thought Ruby Sparks was a really cute movie. And not just because I went to high school with Paul Dano and my ex was (is?) in a band with him. (Sorry to be a terrible name-dropper.)
Sam: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Suzy: I don’t know…I want to go on adventures, I think. Not get stuck in one place.
I loved Moonrise Kingdom. A lot. Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of my very favorite movies and I did enjoy The Royal Tenenbaums but, other than that, I’m not a huge Wes Anderson fan. But Moonrise, apart from being as beautiful to watch as a vintage storybook come to life, warmed my heart on a few different levels.
I know what it’s like to be 12 years old and kind of sad and angry and not entirely sure why. Not that I went around stabbing people with scissors like Suzy, but I still remember fervently wishing for someone—just one person—who truly understood me, even if I didn’t really understand myself (unlike Suzy, I didn’t get my wish).
I know what it’s like to be fully enchanted by nature. I grew up in the woods in Connecticut and it’s so incredible to me now that my brother and I were outside so often as kids. We had a TV and a Sega Genesis and a computer (sans Internet, of course) but we weren’t all that interested in them. In the summers, we were outdoors for most of the day, exploring nature with childlike wonder. It’s hard to fathom how we spent hours upon hours roaming around the yard and woods, making up games and imaginary scenarios, climbing rocks, catching frogs, riding bikes, building block houses for caterpillars, dancing in the rain. It was usually just the two of us in our own little imaginary world, going on adventures. When I think of my brother, that’s the sweet, happy kid I think of and I miss him.
I know what it’s like to feel like you only need one other person on earth. I’ve had those fleeting moments of satisfaction where you and the person you love are just sitting, being, doing nothing, and you think, “I could do this forever and it would be okay.” Like if you washed up on a beach with nothing but a couple of book-filled suitcases and a tent, you’d never get bored or want anything else. (That’s never true, of course—and probably unhealthily codependent—but that’s why those moments are fleeting.)
Aside from allowing me to recapture these memories, the movie is also clever, cute, funny, dark and sad, all at the same time. I recommend it.
I surprised myself by wanting to see the Katy Perry movie. I like some of her songs but I sometimes find her “Look at my quirky watermelon boobies!” schtick off-putting, like she’s trying to stand out and be weird just for the sake of getting attention. This New York Times article about the process of creating the film piqued my interest and after seeing several trailers for it while I was at my parents’ house recovering from surgery, I decided to check it out.
And I actually enjoyed it very much. It was interesting to see how the album-and-tour sausage is made, and seeing the concert footage in 3-D was very cool and made me feel like I was there at a live show. From the old photos and video footage and interviews with friends, it seems that Katy’s stage persona really is a reflection of her personality, and not something she dreamed up to get a record deal. Even footage of her as a 5-year-old singing in a church performance showed what a natural ham she has always been. Her fascination with over-the-top commercialized cuteness makes sense from a psychological standpoint, as she was raised in a strict, no-frills Pentecostal household. Even Lucky Charms were off-limits, her brother says on film, because luck is related to Lucifer, the devil. What better way for Katy to compensate for her childhood deprivation than to essentially dress up as a giant Lucky Charm onstage every night?
The one aspect of her fame that makes me uncomfortable is the fact that her cartoony, childish stage persona contradicts the adult lyrics she writes and sings. The film shows a bunch of footage of her very young fans talking about how much they love her and it’s pretty disturbing to think of a first-grader singing along to lyrics like, “Is this a hickey or a bruise?” I wonder how the parents of her young fans handle it because the inappropriate allusions in her songs are rather blatant and all over the radio, everywhere. Hopefully, in the future, her songs will trend more towards the inspirational (like “Firework,” which I’m pretty sure is now the official anthem of the 4th of July) and less toward the winking entendres.
My life really is a bad romantic comedy, I guess. As my beloved Wombats say, if this is a romcom, kill the director…
Movie Genres I Enjoy, According to Netflix
- Feel-good foreign comedies
- Cerebral suspenseful TV dramas
- Goofy TV shows
- Critically-acclaimed mind-bending foreign movies
- Cerebral romantic movies
Seeing my crush on a day that I don’t look good
Or, uhhh, seeing anyone I know when I’m running errands in a T-shirt and yoga-pants-I-don’t-do-yoga-in.
P.S. I need to rewatch Little Giants, I probably watched it 100 times when I was a kid.
Waiting a really long time for someone to text you back
And then all they say is: “K.”
I still reference Mean Girls at least once a week and that movie is from EIGHT YEARS ago. I made the last dude I dated watch it and I lost a little bit of respect for him after he said it was a chick flick and didn’t really like it. I feel like that movie is just objectively good, whether you have ladyparts or manparts. If you don’t agree, I don’t really know what to do with you.
I made it about 40 minutes into The Tree of Bored to Death, as I like to call it, before I gave up and went to sleep.
