Contributed by Laura F.

Who doesn’t love a good romantic comedy?  Nobody with whom I would care to associate, certainly.  :>).  Hating good romantic comedies, from my perspective, would be like hating kittens or boy bands: the sign of a tragically soured outlook on life.

Of course, the key word is “good.”  Any team of idiots with multi-million dollar funding by a major studio can toss a film together, call it a romantic comedy, and unleash it on an unsuspecting public.  I have learned from bitter experience that although so-called romantic comedies abound, very few of them are either romantic or comic.

The reason for this sorry state of things, I believe, is the current terror of being connected with anything that anyone anywhere might label “s-e-n-t-i-m-e-n-t-a-l,” a word so feared and despised nowadays that I feel compelled to spell it rather than say it out loud.  Unfortunately, separating romantic love (supposedly the basis of romantic comedies) from anything that might strike anyone as “s-e-n-t-i-m-e-n-t-a-l” puts filmmakers in a bit of a quandary.  We all know that the couple who are destined to be together have to wait until the end of the film to actually get together.  If they were joined at the hip from the beginning, where would be the suspense?

With typical Hollywood genius, filmmakers are prone to solve this problem by having the destined couple HATE each other right up until that kiss (or equivalent) at the end.  Do you think I exaggerate?  I invite you to consider Ticket to Paradise, a movie I forced my poor family to watch last Christmas.  It had George Clooney!  It had Julia Roberts!  They played a divorced couple who unite in order to prevent what they believe will be a disastrous marriage for their daughter.  All this and the background of a tropical – well, paradise!  What could go wrong?

What could, and did, go wrong is that the script was far too convincing in showing the Clooney and Roberts characters as genuinely estranged from each other, genuinely angry at, and contemptuous of, each other.  Their sniping and sarcasm and quarrels were truly nasty.  Sorry, Hollywood, after witnessing scene after scene of two people who show every sign of deeply disliking each other, even the most rosily optimistic audience member will not believe in the completely last-minute freeze frame that is supposed to signal their reconciliation.

So much for the romance.  So, also, for the comedy.  Again, accept my apologies, Hollywood, but the current popularity of so-called “insult comedy” does not mean that every insult is automatically comic, let alone clever, let alone witty.  It is possible for a put-down to be funny, but it is a huge mistake to assume that every put-down is funny just because it is a put-down.

Does this mean that the art of the romantic comedy is completely dead?  No.  One charming example of the genre is Love Hard, a film whose title comes from the fact that the heroine’s favorite Christmas movie is Die Hard while the hero’s favorite Christmas movie is Love, Actually.  I won’t pretend that the film is perfect; its plot relies heavily on the heroine’s obtuseness in pursuing an outdoorsy hunk instead of recognizing what the audience sees instantly: that she and the bespectacled hero are made for each other.  If you watch this movie (and I hope you will), you will roll your eyes over her slowness.  The point remains, however, that the two of them are made for each other; their respect and affection for each other shine through their every scene together.  As a result, when the two finally come together, I felt like cheering.

Romantic?  Comic?  Yes, Love Hard proves a film can be both those things.  So, Hollywood, can we have more true romantic comedies, please?