RomCom: Fairy Tale for Adults

Once upon a time, there were fairy tale stories.  Each story began with those famous four words.  For adults, childhood fairy tale stories have been replaced with the romantic comedy genre.  In studying the romantic comedy genre in film, there is a noticeably lack of depth and complexity in the characters, yet there is a certain charismatic intrigue about them as well.  Romantic comedy movies typically have a “boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back” concept.  Although simplistic, this particular genre has become a significant contributor to the gross profits currently being enjoyed by the success at the box office since the genre first appeared in the 1950’s.  Tamar McDonald defines romantic comedies “RomCom” as a sex comedy in her book “Romantic Comedy – Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre” as a sub-genre of the screwball comedy (38). 

According to McDonald, “the sex comedy pits women against men in an elemental battle of wits, in which the goal of both is sex” (38). This seem to be the overall general plot theory of most RomCom’s in today’s film industry.  Movies such as “The Proposal” and “While You Were Sleeping” starring Sandra Bullock, and “My Best Friend’s Wedding” or “Notting Hill” with Julia Roberts, display this type of plot.  Although the goal of “sex” is not directly implied in the screenplays, it is an underlying and unmentioned end-result that exists in the form of the word “love”.  In fact, in all of these films and many more, love is the ultimate goal for both parties; whether it is “true love” or just “true love right now”.  Using McDonald’s theory of the goal being sex, sex and love would be synonymous in RomCom’s. 

RomCom’s display an unrealistic view of love that is geared towards twenty-or-thirty-something-year-old's.  They are “fluff”; a true escape from the viewer’s own reality, a guaranteed two hour form of entertainment that, most likely, will end with a happy ending.  This escape provides the average person with hope, regardless of the lack of depth and complexity of the characters.  These films make the viewer feel good, plain and simple.  Most of today’s romantic comedy films exceed expectations allowing the audience to feel, if even for a moment, that they lived happily ever after.