Why The
Rom-Com Is Almost Extinct
(By Ann Hornaday,
Washington Post, 20 June 2013)
The romantic
comedy is back. It took only 400 years. “Much Ado About Nothing,” Joss Whedon’s larky
adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play that opens Friday, transposes the
action from 17th-century Sicily to modern-day Santa Monica, where in Whedon’s
sprightly re-imagining, the verbally sparring Beatrice and Benedick fall in
love in the director’s own modern mission-style home, amid shots of tequila,
beeping iPhones and scads of political intrigue. But Shakespeare’s play — with its deceptions,
schemes, setbacks and ultimate victory of true love — also serves as a sobering
reminder of how romantically impoverished mainstream American cinema has
become. “Much Ado,” which for decades served as the classic template for
bickering couples such as Hepburn and Tracy, Day and Hudson and Ryan and Hanks,
has gradually devolved into “Nothing.” Ask hard-core romantic comedy fans for
the best recent example of a big-studio romantic comedy and they’re likely to
squint and strain before maybe mentioning “The
Proposal,” a creaking Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds vehicle from 2009.
Summertime
used to be a season in which audiences could take a break from their seasonal
diet of special-effects spectacles with a shiny, star-driven romantic comedy
starring America’s Sweetheart du Jour. But lately, that cinematic palate
cleanser has been mysteriously off the menu. Last year, the closest thing to a
summer rom-com hit was “Ted,” about a romance between a man and his . . . teddy
bear. This summer, we have equally
male-driven wish-fulfillment fantasies like “The Hangover Part III,” “This Is
the End” and “The Internship,” in which boy-girl stuff — if present at all — is
strictly an afterthought. (The sisters, too, are doing it for themselves: In
the beguiling comedy “Frances Ha,” the title character’s most ardent romance is
with her female best friend, her third-act triumph arriving when she moves into
her own apartment, alone.)
The reasons
for the current dearth of frothy, funny, sigh-inducing entertainment are what
an economist might call over-determined. For one thing, at a time when issues
like gay marriage, women’s role as (underpaid) breadwinners and the
morning-after pill are in ascendancy, old-fashioned stories that confect ways
to keep their heterosexual couples apart until a suitably dewy third act seem
hopelessly retrograde. Meg Ryan playfully scandalized audiences when she faked
an orgasm in “When Harry Met Sally”; today, production is ramping up for a
movie version of the steamily explicit bodice-heaver “Fifty Shades of Grey.” As
CIA deputy director — and former erotic bookstore owner — Avril
Haines once noted in a recently unearthed quote, “Erotica has become more
prevalent because people are trying to have sex without having sex.” Sex-free sex might be the ultimate symptom of
a millennial
generation that is hooking up, de-friending and otherwise avoiding
long-term commitment while it rides out a rocky and uncertain economy. It
wouldn’t be that surprising if, instead of using their discretionary income to
watch rich, attractive people engage in courtship rituals they themselves can’t
afford, young adults might instead seek refuge and reassurance in stories
predicated on same-sex friendship: Goodbye, “Annie Hall.” Hello, “Bridesmaids.”
If the
current absence of big-screen romance reflects trends at play in society at
large, it also reflects a broader realignment in Hollywood, where in a
desperate attempt to minimize risk and maximize profits, studios are throwing
everything overboard that isn’t based on a best-selling novel or game or comic
book. It bears noting that, just before Whedon made the charmingly lo-fi “Much
Ado About Nothing,” he wrapped production on the mega-budget Marvel Comics
extravaganza “The Avengers.” To further
hedge their bets, studios in recent years have cravenly sought to make movies
that appeal across all four demographic quadrants (young men and young women,
older men and older women). Like the “romaction”
genre that fuses relationships and car crashes (think “Date Night” and
“Knight and Day”), hard-R comedies like “The Hangover,” “Bad Teacher” and last
year’s “Ted” appeal both to young women and their male companions, a
“two-quadrant” win that made studio suits swoon.
But even
that brand of demographics-as-destiny thinking is being retooled as huge
new markets in China and beyond begin to show American movies in their
spanking-new multiplexes. With the international box office now accounting for
up to 70 percent of a film’s revenue, studios are looking for anything that
transcends language and cultural mores. In other words, more pow, bang, boom,
less kiss-kiss, blah-blah. Mike Tyson and a tiger — or Maya Rudolph relieving
herself in the middle of the street — speak volumes in any vernacular.
As the
veteran producer and Hollywood explainer Lynda Obst writes in her witty and
wise new primer “Sleepless
in Hollywood: Tales From the New Abnormal in the Movie Business”: “Humor is
local. People like their hilarious indigenous customs, built around their own
private jokes.” The emerging markets that Hollywood most covets might still
rely on the United States for big, expensive franchise pictures. But they’re
increasingly producing their own rom-coms. One of the most successful movies in
China this year has been Xue Xiaolu’s “Finding Mr. Right,” a
Ryan-and-Hanks-worthy tale of star-crossed romance set in — where else? —
Seattle.
Historically,
big stars like Ryan, Julia Roberts and Bullock have been able to overcome
cinematic localism. The question is whether the next generation is up to the
task. One unforeseen upshot of Hollywood’s Franchise Culture is that it’s not
minting the kind of actresses who can take up the girl-next-door mantle with
convincing ease or instant appeal. Emma Watson and Kristen Stewart both starred
in huge franchises (“Harry Potter” and “Twilight,” respectively). But neither
has the range, approachability or sunny sexiness to successfully pull off the
all-American rom-com heroine. Happily,
there are glorious exceptions that prove the rule: Jennifer Lawrence (“The
Hunger Games”) and Emma Stone (“The Amazing Spider-Man”) possess just the right
relatability, physical charm and acting chops to have the makings of ideal
romantic leads, and both have already acquitted themselves well within the
genre, in “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Crazy, Stupid, Love.”
And, like
the adult dramas that Franchise Culture has made virtually obsolete on the big
screen, the classic opposites-attract rom-com can still be found on television,
whether by way of Lena Dunham in “Girls,” Zooey Deschanel in “New Girl” or
Emily Mortimer and Jeff Daniels trading screwball barbs in “The Newsroom.” Meanwhile,
from the American sweethearts who remain, precious little is being heard, at
least this summer. Granted, Bullock does have a new movie coming out next week.
It’s an opposites-attract comedy, in which her Beatrice is a by-the-book FBI
agent who pursues an unlikely relationship with a rough-and-tumble city cop.
Sandy’s Benedick, it will surprise few to learn, will be played by Melissa
McCarthy.
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