Is ‘Romcom’ still alive? Meg Ryan’s return to romantic comedy in the time of Grindr

The arrival of this movie and other events such as the premiere of the movies ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ (2018), ‘Lost City’ (2022), ‘Brothers’. More than friends’ (2022) and ‘Journey to Heaven’ (2022) or the amazing success of the movie netflix ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’ (2018), which has two sequels It makes one wonder whether we are facing a revival of the romantic comedy of the 80s and 90s, and if so, what do today’s ‘romantic comedies’ have to do with ‘When Harry Met Sally…’ or ‘My Best’s’? Wedding or friends? (1997)? Have they been updated? Where do they bloom?

2018: Attempted revival

According to internet and pop culture expert Ainhoa ​​Marzol, “Following the success of ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’, an attempt was made to revive the ‘romcom’ in 2018. That’s more or less what happens when streaming platforms start settling in and discover that a genre that hasn’t worked well on the big screen for years works well on the small screen. Moreover, At a budget level this is nonsense. When movie theaters are reserved for Marvel type blockbusters and everything else is pushed out of movie theaters Platforms saved the romantic comedy and gave us the option to watch it in its ideal setting: with a blanket and a bowl of ice cream”. Quim Casas, critic, programmer and teacher of this house, supports Marzol’s claims: “As intermediate production has disappeared, some film models have found their place on platforms. An analogy can be made to horror movies. Many of the most exciting offerings of this genre have come from platforms.”

A little context

To know whether these films carry the romantic comedy spirit of the 80s and 90s, it is important to understand what these films were like and why they defined an era. According to Casas, “romantic comedies have adapted very well The model of romantic comedies of the ’50s and ’60s, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, brings them up to date with the times. The famous orgasm sequence in ‘When Harry Met Sally…’ would have been impossible in the 50s. The other thing they knew how to do was find couples who fit into that line of work, like Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.”

Perhaps our memory of these films is shaped by nostalgia. There is a natural tendency to remember them. fresh, honest and gentle offerings like romantic comedies, free from the cynicism that even allows themselves to be cheesy. But critic, teacher and essayist Carlos Losilla is more skeptical: “In general, the romantic comedy of those years caught me a little off guard. It was hard for me to see Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal imitating Woody Allen and Diane Keaton while imitating Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. The romantic comedy of the 1930s had one advantage: It was not romantic in the most superficial sense of the word. Yes it was, but romance was born from something different, from daily contact, from friendship, from work. I saw too much editing, too much self-awareness in the movies of the 80s and 90s. Now I know that was the goal, but maybe it’s too late now. Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron were actually emulators of David Fincher and Paul Thomas Anderson from their first films: An American cinema born from the reflection of previous American cinema”.

Nostalgia and update

So where does the current romantic comedy come from? Does it operate within the parameters of nostalgia? Do you think about gender? Are you making an effort to adapt to the present day? Marzol makes this distinction: “There are two types of romantic comedies; romcomianas ‘unapologetically’ They follow patterns that have been repeated for years, without any changes, in the purest Hallmark style. without being ashamed of themselves. There are also those who try to dress like it’s something new. There are probably those who enjoy the first ones with a certain irony, but I think there are also viewers who take them completely seriously. The success of ‘A Christmas Prince’ (2017) on Netflix was too great for people to enjoy it ironically.”

Regarding this second genre of romantic comedy trying to adapt to the times, it is interesting to determine whether this is a superficial update or whether it takes into account, for example, issues of gender representation (and representation in general). ) or reflects what romantic relationships are really like today. “Most of them are, but usually just in a cosmetic way. I think ‘Fire Island’ (2022) is an adaptation of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ on an island in New York where gay men go to party. On the ‘Fire Island’ of one-night stands, Grindr and many shirtless men, There is little of the ultra-puritan society that Jane Austen describes. But they still limit themselves to taking the skeleton of a working story and putting a new shell on top of it. After all, there is an effective formula and you have to follow it for your film to work, no matter how much you include women who don’t need men or the issues and nuances in LGBTQ+ communities are very different from those in conservative heterosexual communities. environments,” argues Marzol.

Quantitative rebirth

Ainhoa ​​Marzol counts ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’, ‘How to Get Rid of Your Boss’ (2018), ‘Palm Springs’ (2020), ‘The Lost City’ and ‘The Road to the Rye’ among the most exciting romantic comedies of recent years ‘ (2023). However, although there are interesting offerings (I would personally add ‘Season of Happiness’ from 2020), everything seems to point to: This rebirth of the romantic comedy is more quantitative than qualitative. Losilla and Casas agree on the same number when asked if the genre has truly hit a high point since the romantic comedy of the ’80s and ’90s was consumed: Judd Apatow.

“I love the comedies of the 2000s, they feel to me like a significant renewal, a reversal of what was happening in the genre at the end of the century. ‘Shame on Me’ seems to me to be a great romantic comedy of our time. Just when romance seems lost forever, Apatow resurrects it from the remnants it left behind, the bad taste in the adolescent, teenage mouth. It’s as if Antoine Doinel and the Free Cinema boys went full hooligan and rediscovered romance from there,” Losilla argues.

Highlighting ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ (Paul Feig, 2011), produced by Apatow, Casas also focuses on these comedies and explains that they should not be understood as revivals of comedies from the 80s and 90s: “’My Best Friend’ ‘The Wedding’ and the films in general that Apatow directed and produced at the time suggested a different model. If this was a rebirth, it was a different rebirth. They were able to connect on a structural level to other genres of romantic comedies, such as those from the 50s and 60s, but suggested very new things, such as the way female characters were designed.