KEEPING IT REAL...

Abstract

Some people refer to romantic comedies across all styles as being bright, exciting, hopeful, and uplifting given that the romantic comedies represent the ultimate victory of love prevailing all, but there's also many people that look at romantic comedies and roll their eyes, they call them cliché, boring or predictable. What makes critically acclaimed romantic comedies like Silver Linings playbook (2012), WALL-E (2008) and When Harry Met Sally (1989) so applauded versus a disapproved romantic comedy film? The answer is Realism, but not just any kind of realism... Romantic realism. Romantic realism is a phrase that I used to describe forms of media that portray love in a realistic manner. Rather than depict a two-dimensional, simple style of love, romantic realism aims to show the kind of love that people can relate to, the kind of love people see and hear in real life. In order to understand and break down my definition of romantic realism in romantic comedies I must present two categories, Communication Barriers & Embracing Love in its Variety. A common attribute to many critically acclaimed romantic comedies is their capability to depict romances that have communication barriers. Pretty much everyone has experienced a form of love, and anyone who has lived to tell the tale can tell you that there are a lot of times in which they struggled to tell their lover or crushes how they were feeling and even if they did communicate their feelings correctly there is never a guarantee that the other person will understand how you feel. The second aspect of romantic realism has to do more with the types of love we see depicted. Most Critically acclaimed romantic comedies respect romantic realism by embracing love in its total variety and I am not referring to superficial things like acting, costumes, makeup, and settings. I'm talking about the things that make romances unorthodox, the multiple variables that get introduced to a love story that take things from simple to complicated. Many if not all romantic comedy films that do not get acclaim fail to bring a sense of complexity and unorthodoxy to their love stories and it results in audiences not being able to relate. Because real life romance is not at all simple, there is no such thing as one size fits all when it comes to love so why should movies be an exception to that rule? Character issues and unique story aspects ultimately serve to emulate the borderline convoluted nature of real life and how people are never simple no matter how much you want them to be. Romantic realism is a key factor that almost all critics respond to when watching a romantic comedy and it proves time and time again to never fail to resonate with an audience if love is given a chance to be itself.