Romance movies, a genre no girl or guy wants to claim that they love, but if you look at their Netflix queue it would tell another story. I have grown up watching my fair share of romance movies, and it helped that my mom supplied her own personal VHS collection on the shelf, where my Mary Kate and Ashley tapes blending with a copy of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. I used to stare at the covers of the tapes and imagine what the movie would be about, what could the title Sleepless in Seattle mean and why can’t they sleep and at the time my curiosity made me try to recreate, as any eight year old would, with Barbies. When I was finally old enough to understand what love was and what those movies meant and why I fell in love with them. Now I am not talking about Hallmark movies, those are in a league of themselves, I am talking about the movies that every actor and actress start their career off doing. Movies such as Sixteen Candles, She’s all that and anything with Hugh Grant in it.
So it raises the question, what makes us so addicted to the eyes of Jake Ryan, what makes us swoon when Noah Calhoun picked up Allie on the dock in the pouring rain. This brings me to my first point on why we are hooked on these romance movies, well in my opinion. The love interests, no matter who they are they know exactly what to say and when to say it in order to get the protagonist to fall in love with them. I think that no matter who you are, what your views are on love are you can’t help but swoon and fall for every word that they say and want to have them say that exact thing to do. Plus it helps that they are very nice to look at, especially when they look as good as Jack Dawson.
Another thing that romance movies do that makes us want to watch them and rewatch them is that the protagonist is living their dream. So we think that since the semi dumb protagonist who stumbles around the whole movie not knowing what they are doing is living the dream. They are aspiring lawyers, journalists that defy their bosses with no consequences or girls that just up and leave their jobs and have enough money to still go out with their friends every night, while still managing to pay their rent. Yet when you look at them you see what you want to be in one way or another, juggling it all seeming like you are all put together while a young hot successful Hugh Grant sweeps you off your feet. Let’s be honest though, no matter how many times you try to be the cute careless type, it looks nothing like those movies.
There are all sorts of romance movies out there, there are the ones where they are just hooking up and then fall in love, or the ones where they grew up to love each other, or the stranger that seems to say all the right things. There are many more out there, and I could honestly make an article just listing them, but I think what hooks us is wondering how they are going to end up together. Is he going to run out in the pouring rain while she looks for her cat, will he wait for the Empire State Building or the infamous run through the airport. We all want to know what to tell our soulmate what we want if we ever try to run away from them, and seeing the different possibilities on how they can go about that.
The last reason is the simple fact, that while they make you cry and sad at some parts, there is always a happy ending, for the most part. In this day and age, we need something good, we need the predictable ending and we need the two dumb co-stars to stumble around the screen for an hour and a half only to end up with each other. We need to have these movies in to make even the crappiest days feel whole and pure. I know that they aren’t for everyone, but I will forever curl up in a ball with popcorn to watch the latest rendition of a Nicholas Sparks book on the screen.