THE ESSENTIAL PROBLEM OF A romantic comedy is simple: given that these two people should obviously be together, why aren’t they? If the reason is that they’re with other people, then those people must at once be likeable enough that you don’t think less of the main characters for being with them, but not so likeable that you’re upset when they are inevitably dumped.
In the 1930s, Hollywood solved this problem — and got around restrictions that prevented references to extra-marital sex — with the “comedy of remarriage”: the two people had been together, but had stupidly fallen out, and the film was about them realising this.
Modern cinema has given us instead the Perfectly Nice But Unexciting Boyfriend. Sleepless in Seattle makes a good attempt at this, but it’s…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2023