Romantic Comedies Suck, But They Don't Have To

I don't understand it either, Owen.

If you're a film lover on a budget in Victoria, there's one theatre you go to, and that's the Roxy. It sets you back four bucks, it's in Quadra Village, and the interior looks like, depending on your inclination, either an airport hangar or a cremation chamber before things get cooking.

If the latter seems like a weird group of thoughts to be having at the movies, then clearly you haven't recently paid four dollars to see How Do You Know? as it limps through second-run theatres. In short, this movie inexplicably packs Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson into your standard romcom. There's Our Plucky Heroine, Charming Blonde Bastard and Standup Brown-haired Guy. Our Plucky Heroine then takes her sweet time getting from Guy A to Guy B before the credits can finally, blessedly, roll.

These movies do two things: they make me contemplate cinema architecture in boredom. And then they anger me. Romantic comedies don't have to be bad. Some of the best movies (His Girl Friday, It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey, Top Hat) ever made are romantic comedies. They give you your romance (they meet cute, they crack wise), your comedy (end preferably on a wedding, but at least not a funeral) and usually your Cary Grant or Ginger Rogers too.

So, it's theoretically possible for rom coms to be good. But modern romantic comedies are so bad because the people who make them are lazy.

I have a feeling that a lot of the studios assume that the audiences for rom coms are inelastic. Good or bad, high movie prices or streamed online, they must think that the same people will go and see them. So why bother making good product, if people will so happily consume the bad?

How Do You Know? doesn't just have a flabby script and lazy acting from everybody except Owen Wilson. It also looks like the director, James L. Brooks, didn't really care where the camera was pointing, as long as it was pointing somewhere. I am generally not conscious of the set decoration in movies, but at several points during this one, I had cause to reflect on really, really ugly lamps.

Scripts for romantic comedies need to start getting smart again. They need to start featuring characters who act like real - or at least slightly improved and wittier versions of- people. Right now, I often feel like the people on screen are just bundles of character traits that pump out plot complications for themselves. There should be less Katherine Heigel, less of the goddamned lamps, and better dialogue. Because right now, I would trust a video game adaptation to be assembled with more care.

To the ramparts, people- and don't forget your snacks and soda!