Why Do So Many Romantic Comedies Suck?

Most rom-coms suck because they aren't either a). Romantic or b). Funny. I suppose studios crank them out because they're cheap to make and the default choice of female movie-goers who want an evening's entertainment without needing their brain.

It's interesting that you mention the "hating" in your last paragraph – I will admit to browsing a few gossip sites and knowing more about a "star" does sometimes put you off going to see their films. As much as I love David Fincher's work, for example, after Brad Pitt pimped out his young children to W magazine to promote Benjamin Button, I found I just couldn't stomach paying to see it.

Maybe because so many of them have Ben Stiller in them? Instead of talent, we have a rotating mechanical cycle of bodily functions and fluids jokes, and who couldn't find that sort of thing both romantic and funny, over and over and over again?.

While romcoms have been a staple for as long as there's been movies, great or even good ones have always been rare and often linked to some artful practitioner, like Preston Sturgess, Cary Grant or Irene Dunne. It's not a form that particularly grabs the most gifted directors, but when it does, it often demonstrates how hard it is to get right. Recall the strained dud "Always" from Spielberg. For a contrary and often overlooked example of a great director "slumming" and mastering it, go back to the original "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

What is needed, is a witty script, a pair of leads with chemistry and comic timing, and a director with a light and confident touch. Even if you could cherry pick cast and crew today, it would take some hard thinking to figure out who would fill the bill. So instead we have knock-offs, laden with bathroom humor, action hi-jinx and stars sleepwalking in step to the last release's box office. If you think about Hugh Grant, he was a deserving descendant of the form, but the scripts, direction and co-stars never materialized for long after "Four Weddings and Funeral". And even there, he was paired by that antebellum zombie, Andie MacDowell.

Closest we've come lately might just be "Ghost Town" with the brilliant (though hardly romantic-leadish) Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni (who could have put together a fine body of work in this field had there been the opportunity) and the under-rated and agreeably serviceable Greg Kinnear. But they couldn't quite bring themselves to allow Gervais and Leoni to touch, so a chance at more was missed. Even there, the engrafting of the "Sixth Sense" subplot was a necessary predicate to getting the film made (funny isn't enough).

I do think it no accident that the nearly chaste "Ghost Town" is more successful than most. One enormous advantage earlier romcoms had over recent flops was that the stars kept their clothes on, and had to confine their romantic demonstrations to a different, more vertical and elevated plane. It's a dirty little secret that, even today, there is a lot of sex going on all over the planet, every day, every hour, all the time, and comparatively less romantic love. We are inundated on our satellite receivers, desktops, laptops and cell-phones with displays of various degrees of graphic sex, yet the romcom still treats this generality as if it were some miraculous occurrence. Even within the subplots and supporting players, there is frequent fornication in today's movies, which only serves to undermine the impact of the Big Payoff. Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur, Ray Milland (you could look it up, he was the star of one of the great, largely forgotten, classics) managed to mostly keep their shirts on. It was not that people were so gullible, back then, to believe that most of Hollywood didn't sleep around and around, its that the emotional center of the best movies involved a more lasting and meaningful connection than the point where their bodies met (with apologies to Billy Bragg). In "Fool's Gold", last year's disposable romcom, Kate Hudson underscores the difference for the sake of cheap laughs, in her recurring lines about how Matthew McConaughey's loserdom is off-set by his prowess as a bed-artist, but in the end it cheapens the whole affair.

I'm no prude, but I recognize that the act among two consenting adults is not inherently hysterical or necessarily meaningful over the long haul, outside of the procreative context. To the extent there is humor, it is of the embarrassing kind, and there has been as much humility humor overkill in recent movies as there's been blood spilled in slasher flicks. It's a note that's becoming increasingly irritating, however mutely played.

"Four Weddings and a Funeral",

i think the reason is simply the actors either have no chemistry, nor can they fake it, the writing is bad, lines are corny. but the one of the big things i've noticed, i feel like the conclusion is very rushed in a normal romantic comedy, its like a blind turn, don't see it coming, it is just there. and the viewer sits there and says wow, this is it. i'm no expert, but forgetting sarah marshall, just happened, something like 10 things i hate about you, you saw the prom coming since near the beginning, thats why it helped, in romantic comedies, you gotta let people see the end coming, at least for me.

@Esoth: A man after my own heart! I've been watching classic Hollywood romantic comedies nigh exclusively for the past 18 months–from the well-knowns to the long-forgotten–and even the B-movie screwballs have more pizzaz, romance and comedy than todays.

I also second your note that romantic comedy today equals flatulence jokes and other forms of crude humor, and most importantly, the fact that the leads had to establish EMOTIONAL rapport rather than physical (aka sex) rapport. Many film historians call the screwball comedy a "sex comedy without the sex" since the genre was born from the Hays Production Code enforced by 1934. Not to say they didn't have sex back in the day, but the shortcut to "love" today is having the protagonists fall into bed. That sure isn't love to me (witness the drama and heartbreaks on most reality TV shows where people attracted to one another hook up and one or both get hurt when sex is the sole basis of the "relationship."). The most irritating aspect is that we have to preface our desire for more wit and less sex in movies with "I'm no prude."–when the heck did wanting a funny, sexy (sexy doesn't equal sex!), witty, sparkling romantic comedy a la "Easy Living," or "Midnight," or "Breakfast for Two"?

If you think about the great romcoms of the past, the confluence of brilliant comic writing, comic timing with pin-up quality stars was as rare in Hollywood as it is in life. As often as I've seen Irene Dunne, Myna Loy, or Carole Lombard on the screen, I have no real sense of what they'd look like in the buff. Lombard lived too briefly to play well into her thirties, but often, the stars were of an undetermined age in the films, so there wasn't this awful striving to look just beyond the age of consent. But there was plenty of face, personality and spirit to make up for it. Even the male leads were rarely physical specimens. For every Cary Grant or Clark Gable, there was a Jimmy Stewart, William Powell, even Fred McMurray. Tom Hanks is in this non-hunk mold, as is John Cusack. George Clooney and Hugh Grant are latter day Grants and Gables. Brad Pitt could be, too, because he can act and he can be funny, but has never found the right material. To return to "Fools Gold", if it were made in the 30's or 40's, Matthew McConaughey would've been playing the Randolph Scott role in "My Favorite Wife", in support of a modern day romantic lead.

It's not that all of the early romcom stars were devoid of sex. Many of the great women of the form, like Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Harlow were able to throw off plenty of sparks, but it was understated, and in service of both the romance and the comedy. It's probably no accident that the great fashion models make dreadful actors. The earlier stars who could act and who ran to a comically tuned internal clock, often with "offbeat" good looks at best, turned out not only to be funnier, but more real on the screen, giving the romantic payoff surprising depth and resonance.

I think of the form as having its Genesis in the silent era, with Keaton, Chaplin and Loyd, and then the golden era of "screwball comedies", which eventually gave way in the post-war (WWII) era to the last days of Tracey and Hepburn, with Doris Day and Rock Hudson, Jack Lemmon, Shirley McClaine, keeping at least the image (hardly the quality) alive. And then came the new American cinema of the 70's, when the form was sidetracked as antiquated and corny. But it survived in odd spots, showed up in Woody Allen movies, behind and beneath his neurosis and biting wit. And like Westerns, it never died off completely.

"Crossing Delancey", "When Harry Met Sally", "Sleepless in Seattle", "Working Girl". None of these would make the Big Room Hall of Fame, but they were honest efforts, largely faithfully to the form, and none of them cast matched pairs possessing physical perfection. And beneath the avalanche of suds, a wonderful reprise in "Terms of Endearment" and it was no accident that McClaine and Nicholson, two out-sized personalities and talents, were able to revive the thing when they were well past their physical primes. The romantic heart of "Hannah and Her Sisters" is the relationship between Woody Allen and Dianne Wiest, two of the lesser lookers in the cast. Barbara Hershey went on to disastrously transform her physical appearance, as did Melanie Griffith (from "Working Girl"), because the state of films today elevates youth and physical attributes over talent and humor.