10 Romantic Comedy Films to be on Your Bucket List

We've no shame in admitting it - we love a good rom-com. The genre may get a lot of stick and, to be honest, there's been some awful ones. But overall, romantic comedies are pretty to look at and always a good laugh. Here's ten you absolutely have to watch.

10. PRETTY IN PINK (1986)
John Hughes. Molly Ringwald. That soundtrack. You don't need any other reason to watch this. Need more? This film - and most of John Hughes' films - are the blueprint for all teenage rom-coms. 10 Things I Hate About You, American Pie, Never Been Kissed, Clueless - they're all more or less working off what John Hughes did in Pretty In Pink, not to mention all his other films. Molly Ringwald plays Andie, a working-class girl who has a tumultous relationship with Blane, a rich kid with some dickish friends. One of whom is James Spader. In between Andie and Blane is Duckie, played by Two And A Half Men's Jon Cryer. Looking back, it's a little obvious in places but that's only because it was setting the trend for things to come.


9. CRAZY STUPID LOVE (2011)
Let's make it clear - we are not selecting this film because Ryan Gosling gets topless in it. If anything, we're selecting IN SPITE of the fact that Ryan Gosling gets topless in it. Playing a slick, suave womaniser who takes a separated-but-married Steve Carrell under his wing, Gosling's performance in Crazy Stupid Love confirms his under-utilised talent as a comedic actor. Put that with Steve Carrell - who's funny in anything, frankly - Emma Stone, Julieanne Moore and a great script and you've got one of the best romantic comedies of the last five years. I'm sorry, is this bothering you?

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For more information about a wonderful romantic comedy please visit What Would Meg Do?

A Look at 'Vijay and I'

Like the characters played by Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie” and Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” Bleibtreu’s Will Wilder is an actor whose career has become stuck in neutral, a German emigre with classical training reduced to playing a giant green rabbit on a New York City children’s TV program. Adding insult to injury, he’s about to turn 40, the spark has gone out of his marriage to Julia (Patricia Arquette), and his moody teen daughter, Lily (Catherine Missal), barely acknowledges his existence. Then an incredibly contrived series of coincidences results in Will being mistakenly declared dead — and, like Tom Sawyer before him, he decides to prolong the charade, curious to know what it would feel like to attend his own funeral.

Enter Will’s best friend, Rad (“Community” star Danny Pudi), an Indian-American restaurateur who happens to be seasoned in the art of ethnic deception: Because he’s convinced that real Indians will steal his recipes and open their own competing businesses, his entire wait and kitchen staffs consist of Latinos wearing turbans and sporting singsong accents. With the help of a little brown foundation and a paste-on gray beard … voila! Suddenly, Will is transformed into the stately Sikh banker Vijay Singh.

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For more information about a wonderful romantic comedy please visit What Would Meg Do?

Swooning Over 'Austenland'

Keri Russell says she thinks many moviegoers will relate to the character she plays in the new romantic comedy "Austenland" because they, too, are looking for some form of escape from their everyday lives.

The film casts Russell as Jane, a contemporary American woman so obsessed with Jane Austen's classic romance novel "Pride & Prejudice" -- and its dashing hero Mr. Darcy -- she spends her life savings on a three-week trip to an English estate that recreates the book's 19th century setting, complete with servants and chaperones, as well as handsome suitors to woo guests.

Of course, once modern Jane is there, she feels ridiculous as she realizes the manufactured experience doesn't quite live up to the fantasy she has been entertaining most of her life.

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For more information about a wonderful romantic comedy please visit What Would Meg Do?

 

$45 Ticket Specials for 'Burt & Me'

Broadway Palm opens it 21st season with musical comedy "Burt & Me," which will run August 22 - Oct. 5. The show features 20 of the most popular Burt Bacharach and Hal David songs like "Do You Know the Way to San Jose," "Always Something There to Remind Me" and "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head."

Kate Marshall, who played Princess Fiona in "Shrek," will be will co-star with Broadway Palm favorite John Ramsey. They will be joined by Chuck Caruso, Rendell DeBose, Sheira Feurstein, Sami Doherty and Taylor Murphy Hale in his Broadway Palm debut.

Broadway Palm is offering a "Season Opener Special;" all tickets are just $45 for dinner and the show. Buy four or more tickets and receive a house appetizer and a cocktail in a souvenir glass (valid through September 8, 2013). Call (239) 278-4422 or online at BroadwayPalm.com.

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For more information about a wonderful romantic comedy please visit What Would Meg Do?

Queer Film Festival Ready for a Romantic Comedy

It sounds like the title of a porn parody, but the U.S. indie flick Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf? turns out to be a gentle romantic comedy, a film-within-a-film about an aspiring director who writes her low-budget feature debut as a ploy to cast the hot girl she just met.

Upsetting expectations has become the stock in trade of the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, which opens its 25^th edition with a gala screening of Magnificent Presence (7 p.m. Thursday, Vancouver Playhouse), Turkish-born Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek’s supernatural comedy. Italian star Elio Germano plays a lonely aspiring actor in Rome who gets some unexpected company when he rents an upscale apartment at a bargain price, and finds out the place is inhabited by a family of ghosts.

From an actor playing an actor, we go to a director playing a director, as American Anna Margarita Albelo directs herself as a character named Anna in the amusingly titled Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf? (7 p.m. Aug. 24, Rio).

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For more information about a wonderful romantic comedy please visit What Would Meg Do?

'Downtown Abbey' Promises Comedy and Romance

Downton Abbey executive producer Gareth Neame says Season 4 of the hit period drama will demonstrate that the show “never sits back on its laurels. It shakes up and moves on.” Neame spoke with me ahead of a press screening today of the first episode of the new season which brings the action into the Roaring Twenties. The series picks up in 1922, six months after the death of Dan Stevens’ character Matthew Crawley, whose fatal car crash came in the last minutes of the Season 3 Christmas episode.

The “spine” of next season will be the fate of his widow, Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery), as she heads to the next stage of her life, Neame tells me. It’s a “heavy situation to kick off with,” but it won’t be all brooding at the Grantham estate. The majority of the goings-on throughout the season will variously be “dramatic, comedic and romantic.” The audience is “still left reeling with the death of Matthew” as it comes to the new season, but Neame says he and Downton creator Julian Fellowes, “have always said that while it was clear we didn’t want to lose Dan, we weren’t able to persuade him (to stay) and so we rethought the whole thing. It was positive for the story.”

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For more information about a wonderful romantic comedy please visit What Would Meg Do?

'I Give It a Year' Gives a New Vibe

Effortlessly emerging from an ocean of belabored romantic comedies, I Give It A Year is a breath of fresh air; it's brash, witty, and insightful.

On paper, Dan Mazer's script sounds stereotypical and schematic: a couple rush into marriage, experience romantic tributions, and are tempted toward infidelity by others. In execution, however, Mazer's directorial debut is dextrous and surprising, swiftly introducing tropes and then, just as quickly, taking the piss out of them.

Rose Byrne and Rafe Spall play the couple in question, named Nat and Josh, respectively. She's a marketing consultant, he's a writer. They're both fit, attractive, and in their thirties, anxious to settle down and get on with their lives. They marry after seven months of courtship, but within nine months they're seeing a marriage counselor.

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For more information about a wonderful romantic comedy please visit What Would Meg Do?