Mubi Monday: Romantic Comedy (2019)

A visual essay on the rom-com from writer-director Elizabeth Sankey, Romantic Comedy is both a celebration and condemnation of the sub-genre that has been giving people unrealistic ideas for many decades now.

All of the big hitters are namechecked, with some being used repeatedly to show examples of the tropes that we've all become very familiar with, and a few titles that stray further from the beaten path are given their due within the last act, a section that shows how not ALL of these movies are made for middle-class white people, it just seems that way when those are the ones given the biggest push.

I love a good rom-com. I am comforted by the predictable story beats, the standard assembled cast, and the way most of them provide a happy ending. Yes, the happy ending is traditional, probably annoying for many, and very often quite unbelievable (there's the big gesture, or the big change, or a contrived situation to make the leads realise their true feelings for one another), but it's still effective in making me smile.

What I never used to consider, although it's easier to spot as an adult, is the way in which the romantic comedy has over the years influenced girls and women, in a negative and potentially damaging way. You can have the successful woman who cannot balance career and love, the professional woman with moments of clutziness, the "manic dream pixie girl", the girl who is cool because she acts like one of the guys, and many more examples.

And considering how these films have affected women over the years, from how they consider their eating habits to what they think they have to be looking to achieve as a life goal, it also leads to some consideration of how these films have also affected men. Rom-coms can often celebrate horribly toxic behaviour, excuse the worst kind of patronising attitude, and leave most of us trying to be more like John Cusack when, well, John Cusack often played men who were pretty childish assholes when it came to relationships.

My first thought as I enjoyed the pick 'n' mix approach to this sub-genre was that it reminded me of Beyond Clueless. This has a bit more to say than that film, mainly due to the rom-com being a slightly bigger umbrella and having a lengthier history throughout the many past decades of cinema, but it's interesting to see that Sankey also worked on that film, as a composer.

Overall, this is an incisive and interesting look at a type of film often dismissed as being of no real value. It has value, even if that value just lies within observing how it pushes certain values into the minds of its target demographic.

7/10