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Best Romantic Comedies |
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James Clive Matthews is the author of two books of film criticism, a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and blog editor for the BBC's Pocket Films site. Here he picks five romantic comedy films every home should have. Click here for Best Romantic Comedies Overview.
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By the late 1930s, the new sound technology had been pretty much perfected, and Hollywood was getting to grips with the potential for a new kind of fast-talking, dialogue-heavy movie. The genre that made the best use of this was screwball comedy – and Bringing Up Baby remains its epitome.
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Yes, comedies are supposed to have happy endings – but you know from the start of Annie Hall that “Annie and I broke up”. It is the anatomy of a relationship from start to finish; the initial embarrassment and urge to impress, the comfort, the sex – then the arguments, jealousies, and affairs, the splintering and drifting apart.
This could equally well have been picked as a top political movie as a top romantic comedy – for it is rare that a film has so serious an impact in the real world. So serious were the times and so serious the message, few when it was made would have thought of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner as a comedy.
For half a century, this has been most children’s introduction to romantic comedies – even though most won’t realise it at the time. After all, when you’re the age of Lady and the Tramp’s target audience, members of the opposite sex are mostly thought to be the disgusting home of cooties or fleas, and to be avoided at all costs.
The early 1980s saw Hollywood so obsessed with trying to create big blockbusters in the wake of Star Wars that simple romance seemed to have fallen by the wayside. All that was changed by a decades-spanning tale of unlikely love in New York, as 1989's When Harry met Sally revitalised the genre for a whole new generation.