Romantic Comedies we like

[scoundrel]

Women sometimes think that we men are only interested in cars, war and gangster movies, tech stuff, gadgets and women's bodies. This is all absolutely true, but we men need to pull the wool over their eyes and convince them that we are caring, sensitive, and need to be held close in their arms, preferably with all those nuisance clothes out of the way...

This is a thread about liking those films which prove we are in touch with our feminine side. Any man capable of appreciating at least some of these films is clearly worthy of a woman's love? Well, probably not...

My first offering:
Pretty In Pink (1986)

I fess up. No matter how badly my credibility is wounded: I love this one.

It is a seminal Brat Pack movie and captures the spirit of its age extremely well, partly through the clever use of contemporary New Wave music well tailored to the action of the film. It is extremely observant of the linkage between class divisions and sexual politics.

The heroine, Andie Walsh, is played very capably by an 18 year old Molly Ringwald, and of course she looks like an 18 year old Molly Ringwald. This is good. She attends a High School where a lot of rich kids also go, but she herself is very impecunious: her father (Harry Dean Stanton) is long term unemployed, divorced and deeply unhappy for good reasons, and there is very little money in the house. The rich boys, especially James Spader in a very good performance as the odious creep Steff, have noticed both that Andie is quite a babe and that she is seriously poor: this is bad. She is socially slighted for not having the right clothes etc, but she is also desired, not for a serious relationship, but purely as a toy to be used and discarded, by James Spader in particular, whose boorish unpleasantness is sharpened and focused by his realisation that Andie emphatically resents his worthless sexual advances.

But there is another rich boy at school: Blane, played in a well nuanced performance by Andrew McCarthy. Blane is a bit of an enigma. Unlike the other rich kids, he is unfailingly courteous to Andie and to the other poor kids, just as long as they return the compliment and are polite to him. Andie loathes Steff not only for his creepy behaviour but also because he is physically repugnant to her. Now...Blane is not physically repugnant to her. No indeedy. But he is Steff's friend and is on good terms with the rest of the rich kids who Andie cordially detests. So when Blane starts to indicate that he would like to know her better, there are an awful lot of barriers to overcome, including the hostility and suspicion of her own small but loyal circle of poor kid friends, and the huge question: can he be trusted?

It's sort of Romeo and Juliet, but with a lot of modern twists, and it works very well. There are various misadventures: the first date in particular is a series of agonising social embarressments for both of them, but paradoxically the shared horror helps to make them friends as well as potential lovers. In order to get the girl, Blane has to pass the test of re-evaluating his own perceptions, in particular of Steff: the scene where he finally judges Steff correctly is a masterpiece of razor sharp observant and brutal wit. Blane himself must dare to be unpopular. Some rich friends will stay loyal and they are truly his friends.

On her side of the tracks, Andies owns friends are also tested, and especially her best male friend Duckie, who loves her and who she cannot love ''in that way'': jealousy is a really serious test of character and there are severe wobbles, but he crucially comes through for Andie on the key night of the senior prom. His reward is in this world: James Spader's shabbily treated spoiled rich girl girlfriend, (Kirsty Swanson, looking great) finally gets wise to the essential shittiness of his behaviour, casts him off, and is alone on the dance floor at the senior prom, looking for a boy who will treat her right...

This is a well written, well directed and beautifully performed character piece with all the conventional rom com boxes neatly ticked. Girls should like it and men can honestly enjoy it because, though there is no blood, there's an awful lot of covert warfare going on a la Jane Austen.

Its on TCM at 11pm tonight: If you can stay up. Otherwise record it: its not a waste of storage on your hard drive.

[kiwi]

When Harry Met sally



don't look @ me like that, folks! I like good movies, ok?

Kiwi

( scoundrel, you owe me a drink for this public confession, buddy!)

[scoundrel]

A good choice Kiwi. I particularly enjoyed the bit where Billy Crystal's male friends send up the girls and their love for weepy romantic films by crying over the various deaths of the protagonists in The Dirty Dozen. I dare not think what they would have posted on this thread...

[DTravel]

Just Friends (2005) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433400/

Amy Smart and Anna Faris, a good story well done. Worth it just for the front yard Christmas decorations slaughter scene .

[haldane4]

Cross My Heart - pretty obscure offering with Martin Short and Annette O'Toole (who goes topless, yay).

Also a quick vote for Miracle Mile which starts out as a romantic 1st date style comedy and ends with a nuclear holocaust - sounds about right in my experience.

[penfold007]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

My first offering:
Pretty In Pink (1986)

Super film. John Hughes really had a knack for capturing what it felt like to be that old.

Originally Posted by scoundrel

there's an awful lot of covert warfare going on a la Jane Austen.

"covert warfare" is not a phrase I've ever heard used in connection with Jane Austen . I see where you're coming from with it though and can think of a few examples from her novels.


Can I offer another Hughes film, Some kind of wonderful. It's a very similar story to Pretty in pink but with a different ending that I empathised with a lot more. It also features what remains my favourite kiss in a film. And a great soundtrack.

Also, Clueless. Alicia Silverstone plays an Emma Woodhouse closer to the spirit of the novel than either Gwyneth Paltrow or Kate Beckinsale (but not as good as Doran Godwin. What Romala Garai makes of the role later this year I await with interest. Yes I am an Emma-geek ).

Finally Amelie. With subtitles and brilliant music from Yann Tiersen. Well it's sort of a romantic comedy which I think draws some of its inspiration from Malle's Zazie dans le Metro.

[Estreeter]

Originally Posted by kiwi

When Harry Met sally

don't look @ me like that, folks! I like good movies, ok?
Kiwi
( scoundrel, you owe me a drink for this public confession, buddy!)

I generally find them boring and have only watched them to keep a GF happy
But "When Harry Met Sally" was really good, and the other one I found good was "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" with Uma Thurman, Janeane Garofalo and Ben Chaplin

I've no idea why I like it

[eelcat]

Roxanne with Steve Martin and Darryl Hannah

And The Last American Virgin (I think that qualifies)

[Rfan]

@ Scondrel, I think its really nice that your displaying your feminine side.

American Pie? Probably not.

Me, Myself and Irene.

Jim Carrey and Renee Zellweger. A Farrelly bros. comedy.

Jim plays a state trooper, Charlie, who is super nice and gets taken advantage of all the time. His first wife cheats on him with the black dwarf limo driver that drives them home from the wedding. Eventually she elopes with the driver, leaving him with three sons. Charlie developes a bit of a personality disorder and the force gives him a holiday by escorting Irene (Renee Zellweger) to New York. Of course someone's out to get her and Charlie has to save her, or is it Charlie?

A terrific film with some memorable comic moments and lines. A definite must see.

Cheers.

[scoundrel]

Time for scoundrel to take a blowtorch to the remaining shattered fragments of his credibility.
You've Got Mail (1998)


First of all, I have a bit of a soft spot for Meg Ryan: she's cute and she can act. Tom Hanks first impressed me in Big: he has the valuable gift of knowing when to listen.

The two leads in this film work well together. It has a theme not inappropriate for VEF General News and Discussions: the protagonists are strangers to one another in life, in fact their businesses are in direct and rutheless competition, but each of them is very familiar with the other's inner life because they happily converse in the anonymous confessional of cyberspace. They even discuss their business problems, little suspecting that they are in a life and death Darwinian conflict in the real world.

The resolution of the conflict and the mutual unveiling and reconciliation of the two duellists is nicely handled and not rushed, or sanitised unduly. Big business wins out over small business but isn't too stupid to listen and learn, and doesn't blindly destroy the defeated opposition, instead co-opting what was best and most worthwhile in the approach of the vanquished into a format which will pay its way into the future, and giving employment to the employee from the small shop who could not move on to something else.

It is when she sees that Hanks is magnanimous in victory, and not at all the philistine that she took him for that Ryan starts to revisit his emails and realise that he is really the same man.

The film borrows heavily from the Ernst Lubisch classic The Shop Around The Corner (1940), indeed Meg Ryan's threatened independent book store is called The Shop Around The Corner, and it is none the worse for it.