“Romantic comedies” also known as “rom-coms” are an immensely popular genre of movies and television. Some of the most famous rom-coms include When Harry Met Sally, Clueless, 13 Going on 30, and Bros.
There are many different types of rom-coms that have been produced. Some of the most popular include Christmas, opposites-attract, and fantasy rom-coms. Christmas rom-coms are definitely the most popular of rom-coms.
Many of these Christmas rom-coms have very silly titles, they are painfully generic and formulaic, and have unrealistic characters or plots. These movies should stop being made because of all these reasons.
To begin, the titles of these movies are often overly dramatic to try and catch the attention of people passing by. One of these movies is Ladies of the ’80s: A Divas Christmas. This movie is about five stars from the 1980’s reuniting to film the last Christmas episode of their longtime running soap opera.
Another title is Catfish Christmas which is a movie about a woman who goes home to start dating someone online, just to find out it isn’t who she thinks it is.
Christmas rom-coms, just like other rom-coms, have become very generic. They often follow one of two outlines. They either start off with a main character having something bad happen to them, they run into another person. They brush it off, only to find out they actually love that person, so they run around trying to find them. They eventually succeed and they live happily ever after.
Or, tragedy strikes, the main character meets someone new and they fall in love instantly. They fight and separate. They eventually, either through divine powers or a third person, join back together and live happily ever after. The movie No Sleep ‘Til Christmas is an example of this.
These types of movies also have unrealistic characters and plots. In one film, Holiday in Handcuffs, the main character loses her job and her boyfriend dumps her. She feels like a failure but wants to show her family that she is still successful. So, she abducts a random guy off the streets and forces him to be her boyfriend. Do you know what happens at the end of this movie? They fall in love.
In another film, No Sleep ‘Til Christmas, the main character is engaged but has trouble falling asleep. In order to fall asleep, she tries going out for a drive. She ends up hitting a bartender and has to take him to the hospital. She stays with him and realizes that she can sleep when he is near. Every night she sneaks out of the house to meet the bartender, which makes her husband suspicious. They almost get married, but the bartender ruins it by saying that he loves the main character. She leaves her fiancé and marries the bartender.
Why are people so interested in movies like this? Well according to David Karney from UCLA, “love stories are universal.” Everyone can relate to tragedy because we all experience emotion. We love characters that we can relate to, even if they have attributes that are unrealistic.
These films should stop being made because of their bad titles, generic themes, and unrealistic characters or plots. You can help bring an end to these bad movies by boycotting the companies that make them, including Hallmark, Lifetime, etc.
