Why Do We Fall in Love With Romantic Comedies?

Populaire, a fifties-set French romantic comedy which opens the 2013 Glasgow Film Festival

Did you and your partner meet a) at a friend’s dinner party, b) smoking outside a pub or c) when the heartless multinational company they work for bulldozed your cosy little wedding dress shop to make way for a heartless multinational office block?

The last time the two of you had a fight, did you a) act pissy for a few days and then make up, b) peek at their Facebook messages while they were in the loo, thus storing up resentments that can now never be aired, or c) make a mad dash to the airport just in time to catch them before they gave up on you forever and moved to South America?

Do you have a best friend who is a) a bit like you, really, b) not like you at all but you’ve known each other since school and it’s just sort of stuck, or c) an outrageous, loudmouthed eccentric with a mild weight problem, a hilarious line in hats, and an even more disastrous love life than your own?

If your answers to these questions are mostly ‘c’s, then congratulations: you are a character in a romantic comedy. And you don’t exist.

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

Digging Into "Punch Drunk Love"

During the press conference for Magnolia at the Cannes Film Festival, Paul Thomas Anderson announced his next project was going to be an Adam Sandler comedy. Everybody laughed. Nobody took him seriously; after all, this was the man who had directed two incredibly large and challenging films in Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Three years later when Punch Drunk Love was released, people were still surprised.

Admittedly, I have never liked Adam Sandler – I always found him annoying and grating – and I have never liked him in anything since this film either, which is a great shame as Paul Thomas Anderson manages to channel all of Sandler’s awfully annoying qualities into something powerful and unique. Sandler’s screen persona is childish, immature, crass and strange, but Anderson’s genius here is that he works all that into this darkly twisted romantic comedy-drama. With a great director and electric screenplay, Sandler comes alive in ways that were unimaginable before. Sandler reveals a peculiar depth to the character of Barry Egan – a sharp menace that is present in his comedies,  but is fully exploited to great effect here.

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

"Austenland" Graces Sundance Festival

If you have longed to live in the time of formal introductions, empire waist gowns and gentleman callers wearing cravats with buttoned-up vests, you too may have fallen into the Jane Austen trap.

Shannon Hale, a Utah author, capitalized on this period fascination in her novel "Austenland," which has been turned into a screenplay and will premiere on Friday, Jan. 18, at the Sundance Film Festival. Directing the film is Utahn Jerusha Hess, who has found success at Sundance previously as co-writer of "Napoleon Dynamite."

The Hale-Hess combination has produced a family-friendly romantic comedy that has sold out all scheduled Sundance screenings.

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

"Atlas" Opens in Church

EDMONTON - What’s a five-letter word starting with A for “opens in the middle and gives you the world?”

That would be Atlas, the multi-award-winning indie theatre co-op. It returns Friday, Jan. 18 to active duty with a two-hander romantic comedy that got cancelled at the last moment in 2011 due to an actor injury. The play is 2 Across, by the American writer Jerry Mayer, who threw over TV — hot TV, that is, with such names as M*A*S*H, All In The Family and The Bob Newhart Show on his resume — in favour of live theatre. His 2004 romantic comedy introduces us to two strangers on a train — high-contrast commuters on the 4:12 a.m. rapid transit ride from San Francisco Airport to Bay Point.
 
They are, as you’ll glean from the title, working on a crossword, which, along with the fact they’re both wearing wedding rings, is just about the only thing they have in common. If romantic comedy depended on an ability to finish the New York Times crossword, attraction would be in serious jeopardy in contemporary society.

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

“Midsummer” Broadway Resurrects Boy-Meets-Girl Romance

The new off-Broadway show “Midsummer (A Play With Songs)” proves that you can still get a lot of great mileage out of boy-meets-girl. Hollywood has cranked out so many awful romantic comedies in the past decade that it’s almost killed off the genre. This energetic Scottish import brings it back to life with humor and charm.

Written and directed by David Greig, “Midsummer” takes place in Edinburgh over the course of a weekend. That’s enough time for Helena (Cora Bissett) and Bob (Matthew Pidgeon) to get up to plenty of mischief.

She’s a lawyer with tired, sad eyes, and she’s getting fed up with being a bridesmaid. He’s nicknamed Medium Bob “on account of him having no apparent defining features” and runs illegal errands for a local tough guy.

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

Reality vs. Romantic Comedy

After we tucked our kids into bed last Sunday night, my wife and I finally found the time to watch a romantic comedy that I had recorded on our DVR sometime during the second Bush administration. I figured Bethany could use a change of pace after our TV had been tuned to football all weekend. That’s how I roll: always thinking of HER feelings.

During one of the movie’s steamier scenes, I glanced over at my beautiful bride and wiggled my eyebrows in that way that every woman on earth finds completely irresistible and of course, ultra-classy. Bethany responded with her signature eye roll that said, “Honey, I love you, but you’re no Justin Timberlake,” which caused me to question what J.T. has that I do not. Setting aside the obvious things such as money, talent, and six-pack abs, there were, I must admit, a few other subtle differences.

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

"This Means War" Failed to Please Vulture's Critics Poll

My ambivalence about worst-of lists is well documented. In short, almost no one applies the same formal and intellectual rigor to a worst-of list as they do to a best-of list. Serious critics spend weeks and months preparing their top tens; almost no one bothers to do the same with their bottom ten. Most critics -- this one included -- just pick the worst stuff they were assigned to cover over the course of a calendar year and call it a day.



But at least Vulture's Critics Poll sports the benefit of a large sample size. Sean Howe compiled 34 critics and publications' worst of 2012 lists, assigned one point to each movie mentioned (plus an additional point to each movie specifically named the absolute worst of the year) and came up with a master ranking that's about as comprehensive a look at last year's stinkers as you will ever see. The worst of the worst, according to Vulture's respondents: "This Means War," a romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy, and Chris Pine

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