Since I wouldn't mind watching any movie with the likes of Patrick Dempsey, Gerard Butler, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Daniel Craig -- no matter what the storyline was -- I would have to agree with their statement. However, past the core marketing tactics of casting a good-looking, male lead, RomComs usually go beyond the boy meets girl phenomenon as we know it. McDonald defines the RomCom genre as "a romantic comedy is a film which has as its central narrative motor a quest for love, which portrays this quest in a light-hearted way and almost always to a successful conclusion" (9).
Examples of the traditional romantic comedy include You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, Dan in Real Life, and Enchanted. All of these films use the expected, Western, white, heterosexual pattern of love: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl. Although each movie's main character varies, in terms of sex, all four have a emphasis on portraying the universal imperfect mate and, accordingly, the perfect mate. In You've Got Mail, both Tom Hanks' and Meg Ryan's characters are paired with the "wrong" people at first, then realize that they want to be with each other. Same thing in Enchanted. Not only that, the director makes sure that, by the end of the movie, you are not only rooting for the two "made-for-each-other" characters to be together, you are determined to give the movie rotten tomatoes if it does not meet your expectations. This storyarch from Point A to Point B is the traditional way of defining and picking out romantic comedies.
On the other hand, I would consider a film like P.S. I Love You to be a non-traditional romantic comedy. In P.S. I Love You, Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler start out as an already-perfect couple. Despite their conflicts, they do not fail to show each other true affection and devotion in the first scene. Swank's life is altogether shaken when Butler's character suddenly dies of a brain tumor, and she is forced to figure out how to move on, if she should move on at all. I deem this film as a non-traditional romcom because of its movement and ending. Swank's character is motivated throughout the movie to do various things because of mysteriously placed cassette-tapes and notes from her dead husband -- later, we find out that her mother was in on the plan and he planned everything precisely, showing how well he really knew his wife. He tells her various tasks to complete, such as buy items, go to certain places, and even goes so far as to pre-plan a trip to Ireland with her best friends. Along the way, Swank meets Harry Connick, Jr., an employee of his mother's with Aspergers syndrome. Around the same time, she meets Jeffrey Dean Morgan, an old friend of Butler's, in Ireland -- they end up sleeping together one night before she returns to America. It appears that Swank is supposed to decide to move on and fall in love with Connick -- at least, despite the beginning of the film, this is what traditional romcom viewers would expect -- the film takes a turn and Swank does not end up with either man. The end of the movie shows her and her mother visiting Ireland and bumping into Morgan, but does not show them "happily ever after". Rather, you can safely assume that she is at least open to the idea of falling in love again, but more importantly, is finally moving on from Butler's death. In reality, P.S. I Love You serves more as an example to how humans each have different ways to mourn a loved one's death and falling in love again.
Besides the moral and ethical teachings that screenwriters want us to come away with these days, capitalism also plays a large part in the production of a romcom. As McDonald states, "...if we can accept that product placement in a film operates to sell more Coca-Cola and Nike products, why not also view the fantasy of romantic love as a product being no more subtly endorsed?" (15). Romcoms are not always so cut and dry, and there are countless movies that do not fit the typical description of a romcom as we are used to.
Berry, Jo, and Angie Errigo. Chick Flicks: Movies Women Love. London: Orion Books, 2004. Print.
McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. New York: Wallflower Press, 2007. Print.
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Respectively, the movie trailers for You've Got Mail, Enchanted, Dan in Real Life, and P.S. I Love You.
You've Got Mail trailer
Enchanted trailer
Dan In Real Life trailer
P.S. I Love You trailer
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