Thursday, July 21, 2011

I am so incredibly sick of writing about rom-coms because there never seems to be anything in them that's fresh or new or original.  The only real pull in these two movies are the actors.  Josh Duhamel and Matthew Goode are gorgeous eye-candy, but beyond that these two movies are just the same-old story, told again and again and again with a different setting and a different set of secondary characters.  Still enjoyable, but boring to review.

We'll start with Life As We Know It.  Two people who seem completely wrong for each other are thrown together by fate, and after lots of embarrassing situations and eye-opening revelations, they fall in love.  Cue obstacle that tears them apart, both physically and emotionally-- his job opportunity.  But then they realize that they still love each other and have to be together, and in the end, they are reunited in a sweet, heartfelt moment and live happily ever after.  Sound familiar?  What makes Life As We Know It somewhat unique is the baby.  Not that babies have never been in rom-coms before, but they're usually the biological child of at least one of the main characters.  This time the baby is the daughter of friends, who die in a car crash and leave the baby's care to the two main characters.

Leap Year follows almost exactly the same formula.  Two people who seem completely wrong for each other are thrown together because the woman is chasing after another man and needs help getting to him.  After lots of embarrassing situations and eye-opening revelations, they fall in love with each other.  Before they can reveal this to one another, cue the obstacle that tears them apart, both physically and emotionally-- the other man.  But then she realizes that she still loves "Mr. Wrong" and that they have to be together, and in the end are reunited in a sweet, heartfelt moment and live happily ever after.  The originality in this movie?  Ireland and an Irish proposal custom.  That's pretty much the only thing in this movie that sets it apart from every other rom-com out there.

That still doesn't mean that I disliked the movies.  I did enjoy both of them, mostly due to the fact that people seem to love the idea of polar opposites falling in love.  It's in almost every movie because people want it to be true.  The geek wants to end up with the cheerleader; the timid wallflower wants the exciting bad boy to notice her.  That's why Hollywood will be churning out these same-old romantic comedies until the end of time, and why people will still go see them.  Leap YearBLife As We Know ItA-.

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