A recent addition to the genre, Le Week-end: The reader who pointed to Finding Mr. Right as evidence of a Chinese appreciation for romantic comedies responds to the critic who argued that culturally specific jokes don’t translate well: It’s not true. In Finding Mr. Right, the heroine is a fanatical fan of Sleepless in Seattle, a comedy by … Continue reading Who Killed The RomCom? Ctd
Readers join the thread: I am a former studio film executive. A romantic comedy is one of the most, if not the most, difficult script to write. When a good one comes along, and it happens very rarely, the studios go into a feeding frenzy. A good romantic comedy is cheap to make and its … Continue reading Who Killed The RomCom? Ctd
Megan Garber has her own theory about why the genre is struggling: [T]he truth is that romantic comedies are, as works of art and pieces of culture, terrible. They are usually some ungodly, unsexy combination of: stale, trite, silly, and formulaic. They are often offensively anti-feminist. The generous reading of all this is that recent films and their creators became … Continue reading Who Killed The RomCom? Ctd
Andrew Romano suggests the small screen is to blame: [N]ow that Hollywood has concluded that its only remaining competitive advantage is spectacle, it’s all but ceded the fairer sex to cable TV. The only demographic adrenalized enough to reliably show up for this weekend’s latest extravaganza is men aged 18-24, or so the thinking goes, and so the … Continue reading Who Killed The RomCom?
