Boy meets girl, boy asks girl on a date, boy falls in love, and boy and girl get married.
This is supposed to be the typical love story, or at least it’s what we’re supposed to believe from movies. For decades, the cinematic screen has been filled with love stories that have captured the American mind and spirit.
Who can forget Woody Allen awkwardly winning over the straight-laced Diane Keaton in the 1977 romantic comedy “Annie Hall” or the millionaire falling in love with a call girl in Garry Marshall’s “Petty Woman”? The romantic love story used to be a staple of movie genres, where couples young and old could go a fall in love for the first time or all over again.
The decline of Hollywood’s romantic love stories and comedies is regrettable. Budget cutting, awful scripts and bad acting have left the movie-going audience disillusioned and cynical about what they see screen.
Last year, “Wanderlust” and “The Five-Year Engagement” failed at the box office, while the once-reigning queen of romance, Reese Witherspoon, saw her action/romantic comedy “This Means War” go down in flames, grossing just over $54 million dollars domestically — ten million less than its production budget.
For years, the movie industry has played fast and loose with the romance genre, putting out awful movies like “Friends with Benefits”, starring singer-turned-actor Justin Timberlake.
Recent years have also given us the ill-fated “All About Steve”, with Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper, and the idiotic, but appropriately named, “Fools Gold”, starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McCaughey. It is no wonder that audiences have grown wary about what Hollywood considers love.
Last year, the highest grossing romantic movie was Kevin Hart’s “Think Like a Man”, which grossed $91 million dollars. Yet, the film never truly broke out beyond its predominantly African-American target audience.
This year looks to be even worse. Valentine’s Day, usually a time to release many films centered on love, will premiere only two romantic films. One is “Safe Haven”, which is adapted from the Nicholas Sparks novel of the same, and one —“Beautiful Creatures” — is actually a teenage fantasy movie with a twisted “romantic” plot.
Although the trailer for “Beatifiul Creatures” looks dreadful, “Safe Haven”, starring Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough, looks promising, I am hopefully that it’s not a recycling of other Sparks film adaptions, with just a different cast.
Many top filmmakers and producers are baffled as to why these movies are getting the cold shoulder. Filmmakers blame studio chiefs, who blame audiences and stars. Directors and producers blame studios and audiences, and agents blame their clients.
But the blame should be on everyone. Almost a decade of bad movies coming out of Hollywood have humbled a once beloved genre. Movies like the “Bridges of Madison County”, “Sleepless in Seattle”, and more recently, “The Notebook”, drew massive audiences and made stars of once unknown actors. They brought tears and joy to many a viewer and made true love seem oh-so-possible, even if just for a few minutes.
This Valentine’s Day, many people will pull out DVDs or search Netflix to see the movies that made them fall in love with love, because no one is creating stories about the heart anymore. Romance and love stories still work; the sooner Hollywood realizes this, the better.
