Romantic comedies are too good to end up as Christmas turkeys
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Version 0 of 1. As the winter onslaught of stollen, goose fat and sloe gin risks leaving you feeling like the Jabba the Hutt of your living room sofa, the television set fulfils an almost medical role at Christmas. Switch off your mulled brain, remain very still and be entertained by moving light. For children this is a holiday for toys and chocolate. For adults there is alcohol, love and regret. No finer genre exists to aid the digestion of turkey curry, day-old devils on horseback and half-price cava than the romantic comedy – but just as Christmases do not improve with age, the romantic comedy is also a vehicle that often feels like it has run its course. Watching a modern romcom is the closest most of us will get to being a celebrated chess grand master; you can stare at the board and be smug as you anticipate every move and twist. They get off on the wrong foot, but fall in love. They seem like opposites who'll never work out together, but fall in love. She's hopelessly single and will never find anyone, but then she does. Over the course of a long and pointless adventure they see the best in each other, and fall in love. Once Woody Allen would talk straight to camera and explain the absurdities of love with reference to imaginary chickens, or strangers in a Nora Ephron film would write to each other about bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils. The romantic comedy has become a bloated, cameo-laden vehicle in which 30 or so people find love with each other at lightning speed in the most painfully contrived circumstances. You might think that the limits of the genre are such that no other movies are possible, and that the romcom has just been played out. Many people thought the same about superhero movies until Christopher Nolan started making Batman films. Us hopeless romantics must hope that a Nolan-like writer/director shows current audiences a film that changes the rules of the game. It seemed for some time that the late Nora Ephron had successfully found a formula which worked, with masterpieces such as When Harry Met Sally… and Sleepless In Seattle. Those films, like Manhattan and Annie Hall before them, did much more than tell a funny, believable story that gave audiences hope: they had at their core a message that was about more than just dumb luck. You've Got Mail is a perfectly observed comedy about the internet and big business. When Harry Met Sally… is the unparalleled account of friendship turning to romance. No romantic comedy comes close to handling bereavement as deftly as Sleepless In Seattle. That notion of a film in which richly drawn, believable characters come together in a story that meshes comedy to a plot doesn't sound unobtainable, but few films manage it. Love Actually is so rapid that it is almost a montage of empty, treacle-thick moments: it is a raid on the Quality Street tin to Annie Hall's four-course meal. Four Weddings and a Funeral fulfils its own modest expectations, but it is still (to labour the analogy) just a decently made sandwich. In a season of love and cheer, the romantic comedy provides the perfect chance to smile and reflect upon those who matter most to us. For a nation that mercifully tends towards emotional reticence, it gives us a chance to come together (or sit alone) and think about the love we have for one another without actually talking about it. It is perhaps the perfect genre, but too often we are served the unoriginal leftovers of a tired idea. Comedy is in rude health, so we should worry that the decline of genuine romance is the culprit, or that they pay scriptwriters too much more to produce superhero vehicles. Perhaps contained within the very notion of romance is the idea that the old and traditional is superior to the new, just as modern Christmas songs are relentlessly terrible and are dwarfed by the shadow of Bing Crosby. Where once our ancestors might have gathered around a fire to hear from a travelling storyteller, the DVD has brought the stories that bring us comfort in the cold, dark winter months. The romcom celebrates love, gives hope to the lonely and reflected cheer to the merrily loved-up. While we wear out the classics, we need to hope that out there somewhere are writers furiously working away on scripts that pick up the torch dropped at Ephron's passing. Until then, Richard Curtis and Bill Nighy remain, like the Christmas turkey that never seems to be finished. <strong>Three films to put on while the chestnuts are roasting:</strong> • Woody Allen does a classy, musical Christmas in Paris: Everyone Says I Love You • Nora Ephron's finest work: When Harry Met Sally… • The best of the modern crop: Forgetting Sarah Marshall Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |