Thoughts of a Random Gamer

I hate, HATE, romantic comedies. If you've seen one, you've seen them all. Don't get me wrong I like movies with a romantic theme like The Last of the Mohichans. What I don't like is watching the same movie more than once if it wasn't worth a watch the first time, though the title has changed and it has a different cast. Here's 11 things I hate about romantic comedies.

11. The formula. This is NOT formula 51. The romantic comedy formula is more likened to Crystal Clear Pepsi. It takes materials that are fairly well liked and received, dramas and comedies, and strips substance from them.

Every one you see goes, verbatim: guy/girl meets girl/guy, courtship containing some uneducated jokes ensues, a problem occurs that falsely and unsuccessfully leads the viewer to believe the guy/girl won't be able to be with the girl/guy, a mockery to surprise occurs that allows them to be together, and they live happily ever after. In a rare turn of events, they actually can't be together, but everybody is still magically okay with this. The real problem lies with you seeing it all coming like the climax of a porno, pun intended.

10. Julia Roberts. I can't watch well written and directed movies like Conspiracy Theory because her collagen injected lips take up the whole screen and wipe shit all over the spectacular performance Mel Gibson is delivering. Why do I hate Julia Roberts you ask?

She plays the same part in every movie. It's not the likable part that so many other actors and actresses play. It's the want-to-be-tough-but-always-comes-across-as-ridiculously-needy-and-vulnerable part. Also her forced laugh is comparable to the shrill of a banshee and spreads her lips like an abscessed rectum.

9. Hugh Grant. I can't think of a movie this man has been in that I find humorous or engaging in the slightest. He's British, which I guess is a point in his favor. There are tons of kick ass British actors. It's just a shame he feminizes the bad assery of men like Christian "Mother Loving" Bale, Ben Kingsley, and Ian McClellan. The latter is admittedly gay but he's nowhere near as gay as Hugh. I figure I've popped one too many pills when I see a babbling douche nail Elizabeth Hurley for 12 years.

8. They emphasize romance over comedy. There are a few exceptions to this. Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, and the Farrelly Brothers put romance in the backdrop of their comedies. You can't have an hour of pure raunchy comedy without a lesson learned, I'm pretty sure it's movie canon.

7. R Rated Disasters. Granted some of the R rated romantic comedies are actually funny (see number 8) but rest assured there is going to be a sequence where the male lead has graphic sex with a beastly woman or the female lead with a man who'd have to wax his back to be considered hairy. This particular sequence doesn't have to involve the aforementioned unattractive one night stand but it always takes cheap shots at people who are less than attractive for comedy sake. This is like going to a funeral and laughing every time somebody cries.

6. Feminizing the male lead. Movies like P.S. I Love You make me question the blatant heterosexuallity of men like Gerard Butler and Matthew McConaughey. Butler played King Leonidas in 300 and Hollywood turned around and released P.S. I Love You the following year. I know there was an ad wizard sitting in a meeting who chimed in with "We have to release 300 first, otherwise no real man will go and watch it after P.S. I Love You." I can sum up McConaughey's performance with two words "Kate Hudson." Don't see a movie that stars the both of them.

5. They're degrading to men physically. I can't quote the exact study but I remember hearing that women are likely to laugh at the sight of small shrivelled penises, "love muscles" to the rest of us. I can't cite the origin of this one either, but isn't it said that "it's not the size of the boat but the motion in the ocean?" This concept seems counter intuitve to me but falls in line with my current understanding of the female psyche. Watch a romantic comedy and there's going to be a joke about a guy having a small "staff of penetration."

4. Degrading to women mentally. This leads to a degradation of women physically when they date a good looking guy who they expect to treat them like queens, but end up beating the hell out of them for not doing the dishes by the time he gets home. All the while she's trying to convince herself that it was her fault for not doing the dishes and he only did it because he really loves her and will change someday after he stops sleeping with her best friend and regains his lost glory of being the captain of the football team. Resorting to bringing home flowers every night after work and crossing the hottest desert without water to buy her a box of tampons. Damn that was a tirade, but you get the point, right? Wait, I don't think there was one.

3. There's no room for character development. The heartthrob at the beginning is the heartthrob at the end. The jaded man-hater best friend at the beginning is still the jaded man-hater at the end. The archetype that might change is the womanizer/slut, because that's bad and they have to learn a lesson for this movie to be considered wholesome.

2. Unrealistic pieces of garbage. I'm not an everything-has-to-be-completely-realistic-or-I-don't-want-to-see-it kind of person. I like fantasy and science fiction because I know before I walk into the theater that my condescending disbelief has to be checked at the door. I figure that's the case with most movies I watch. My complaint with the lack of realism in romantic comedies is it doesn't reference the football team's worth of dick stuffed into the female lead before meeting the man of her dreams and being completely faithful. It also doesn't show the male lead picking up the perscription of antibiotics for the searing case of chlamydia he caught from a barfly a few weeks prior to meeting little miss sunshine. The opposite is also true.

Take Grease for instance. How and why the hell did Sandy turn into a leather clad cigarette smoking trollop just to please Danny? Doesn't that smell a lot like a divorce off camera a year after the car went airborne and flew away from the carnival?

1. Restraining orders. The actions taken by men to win the affection of women in these movies and subsequent lack of rejection is comparable to a serial killer in the making. I can just picture Jeffrey Dahmer breaking into a woman's house while she's at work, to spell her name in rose petals only to find it scared the hell out of her. Now he has to serve time in jail for breaking and entering and stay 300 yards away from her at all times. No wonder he turned gay and decided to eat people. That's maybe a little drastic and almost completely unrelated.

The meaning of the word "no" is completely lost in almost every romance movie. When a woman breaks up with a man, or vice versa, the relationship is over. It doesn't mean you destroy her/his wedding day with even the slightest expectation of winning her/his, or their family's, affections back. Also how many times have you seen a woman say no to sex in a romance movie then end up saying yes after being physically forced. At least Thelma and Louise got this one right.