They say romance is dead. And for some, it truly is. But let’s not bog ourselves down with the gruelling societal expectations of monogamy one places upon themselves, and instead settle down and watch a good old rom com. And when I say old, I mean stagnant.
Because let’s face it, romantic comedies are in dire need of a revamp. They’re all the same, guy-meets-girl and there’s always some inextricable reason as to why they can’t be together, like one of them being married to someone who, although appearing completely decent, suddenly becomes the Ultimate Dickhead ™ which of course completely justifies the destruction of one relationship and the blossoming of another. Throw in a wisecracking bestie and an upbeat pop soundtrack (and at least one shot of a picturesque Christmas landscape), and you’ve got yourself a rom com.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love sentimental crap like Notting Hill and Pretty in Pink. But wouldn’t it be amazing if we had some actual narrative diversity within this genre? If, like me, you too are sick of the same old lovey-dovey tropes, or, unlike me, you actually want to write a script that revolutionises the rom com genre (instead of passively grumbling about it in an article), here’s a few do’s and don’ts:
Do
- Explore non-heteronormative narratives ! And if you do, remember that this is a COMEDY – the genre doesn’t have to take us down a route of stigma, discrimination, or anything that abandons the comedic route of a heteronormative plot. Of course, you can explore these issues, but we need LAUGHTER as well.
- Try and venture out of the gentrified-North-London-‘oh bugger it’-upper-middle-class region. Of course, it’s okay to write those characters, but before Hugh Grant dusts off his foppish charm (I know Richard Curtis is getting a bit of a bashing here, but quite frankly he deserves it), don’t forget that the world is a big place. I’d love to see a romance take place in a supermarket in Milton Keynes, but currently there’s very little scope for that.
- Give the female characters some DEPTH. Writers within this film genre seem too afraid to explore the potential of their female characters, a la Katherine Heigl and Leslie Mann in Knocked Up. Women can be silly too, they don’t have to be perfectly ordinary.
Don’t
- Reduce foreign characters to sexual objects – Lucia Monez’s Aurelia in Love Actually, for example. What do we learn about Aurelia ? She’s Portuguese. She’s a maid. She has a pretty cool tattoo. What else ? It’s rather damning to see such a profound lack of characterisation for one plot in the same film that evokes such emotion in the famous Emma Thompson CD scene. While the emphasis on both Aurelia and Jamie’s (Colin Firth) difficulty in verbal communication is made clear, we are given no insight to Aurelia’s personality. So much could have been done with her character, but instead she was reduced to simply a ‘pretty foreigner’.
- Fall into the old trope of setting incredibly difficult challenges for the characters to overcome – looking at When Harry Met Sally, for example, the only problem faced by the titular characters is the inconveniences of their social lives, which is what makes the film so brilliant. Just because the stakes held against the characters aren’t astonishingly difficult to overcome or outlandish, doesn’t make them any less fun.
- Give every character an extreme personality, it’s boring. However, don’t make your characters perfectly square and boring. Give them flaws, it’s so much more interesting and human!