The trouble with love is that when it comes your way, you really don’t have much of an option but to yield to it. The trouble with love stories in movies is that they make you believe that in the end, the grand gesture will win the heart of even the stuffiest of people, the heart of the woman/man you love will melt and you will going into the credits with all the optimism that you will live happily ever after. It’s too bad that in real life, the credits never roll and leave you in the happy go lucky moments of a relationship when you actually feel as though someone wants you and that this could be the end to you long drawn out and painful life of rejection and heartbreak.
There is, after all, nothing more terrifying than the prospect that when death comes to your door, you will face it without someone there for you. I’ve often pondered that for myself. I am a horrible, mean, pessimistic person and when it comes to love, I’ve been successful enough but mostly once the person gets to actually know me, I am just not good enough. How sad is that? To consider yourself not good enough for love. That when the chips were down and that special someone had a choice between fighting through the obstacle or cutting bait that they would run like a cheetah chasing a gazelle.
So to break myself of the pain and infinite torment of my own shattered love life, I throw myself into the magical world of cinema where things work out and for 1 and a half to two hours I can live in the love on the screen (be it television or movie) and maybe see for a moment a life not drowning in loneliness. Geez, this is a depressing blog entry but they say right what you know, so I am. My goal here is to lead into the best top 5 romantic comedies.
5. The Wedding Singer
Never really was a big Adam Sandler fan until this movie came out about a wedding singer who is left at the alter and has his life utterly ruined. Such a promising beginning leads him to helping wedding waitress Drew Barrymore plan her wedding as his life crashes around him. Not surprisingly, Adam begins to fall for the girl in question and then has to take the chance on her loving him back, which she does. The greatness of this movie is in the throwback to the eighties in which the hair was ridiculous and the women were slightly obsessed with shoulder pads or madonna. Drew’s character Julia is a everygirl who you can see falling for the simple Robbie Hart. Why she ever fell for her loud, rich, obnoxious fiance Glen is a question worth asking? Gratefully she does ask that question and falls for the correct guy. When a movie has a heart and makes you feel for and with the characters, it is perfect. Wedding Singer makes you feel Robbie’s pain and ultimately his redemption.
4. High Fidelity
John Cusack is pitch perfect as Rob Gordon, a man who is dumped by his girlfriend of many years and he begins to examine his life in love because of it. He goes back through the top five women who have broken his heart to figure out what it was about him that drove them away. He learns that sometimes it wasn’t even them, it was him who broke their hearts. This movie attempts to show a way back to love by self examination and reflection. Through the help of his friends who work with him at the record store Rob owns and allows the music of the movie to help tell the story. I cannot hear Stevie Wonder singing “I Believe When I Fall in Love” without picturing John Cusak sitting and working on the perfect mix tape to show the woman he loves how he feels. Again this movie makes you feel the character’s pain and puts you through the relationship ringer with him. Ultimately the love that Rob and Laura have for one another makes them come back together by the time the credits roll.
3. Stranger Than Fiction
This is a movie that tricks you into believing in love. You see it begins with Emma Thompson’s Karen Eiffel narrating the beginning of her next novel which happens to coincide with the real life of Will Ferrell’s Harold Crick, an auditor for the IRS. Sadly the novel ends in the death of Harold and the movie is the quest to change that fate. Somewhere in there, they sneak in a love story between Harold and one of the people he is auditing Ana Pascal played by the oddly attractive Maggie Gyllenthal. It starts as a contentious battle and slowly Harold finds himself being drawn back to the lovely Miss Pascal and makes his impending death all the more tragic. It is the first time that Will Ferrell stepped outside the comedy box and played a bland character who finds the joy in life as he is about to die. Falling in love, coming to terms with how he’s lived life, and attempting to stop Miss Eiffel from writing the last part to his life, Harold finally wakes up and lives life. It shows the transformative power of love to the life a chronic loser. It gives people like me a little hope that love is out there even when (to all viewing) it isn’t.
2. Music and Lyrics
Drew Barrymore makes her second appearance on the list as Sophie, a smart lyricist/writer who meets up with the other guy in a pop band from the eighties, Alex Fletcher (played and sung by Hugh Grant). Through the writing of a duet that will put Alex back on the map, the couple goes through the ins and outs of their own burgeoning love. The songs are surprisingly good and Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore have a realistic chemistry that makes the movie work on so many levels. I absolutely adore this movie. Every time I see the final concert scene, I can feel a tear welling up in my eyes and at times like this, the movie can give me a much needed smile that can make it easier to find my way back into sleep. Sometimes you need that more than you know and to have a movie inspire so much happiness and giddy love.
1. Love Actually
Hugh Grant is back in this ensemble cast about the idea that at any given time love actually is all around. The multiple stories allow the viewer to pick up the story they want. Hugh Grant is a new Prime Minister of England who is in love with the woman who brings him tea. Harry Potter’s Alan Rickman is a married man who is have not so innocent thoughts about his secretary Mia. Liam Neeson plays a widower who is attempting to raise his stepson and help the kid with his first love. Emma Thompson is Rickman’s wife who is dealing with the thought of her marriage falling apart. A man who is in love with his best friend’s wife, an Englishman who believes the only thing between him and love is the country he is in, two stand in's in an oddly graphic movie, a writer who falls for the woman cleaning his house despite neither of them speaking the same language, and an aging rock star who is trying to keep himself valid. I can’t explain the way this movie moves you and makes you feel. It is the most pure of any movie I’ve seen on the subject of love and in the end the movie gives the audience the belief that love is all around. It actually is, especially at the movies.
To Sum up...
Mr. Unhappy Sez : The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. It is my greatest wish, and my one true fear mixed in one. Love is actually not always available for people like me, except in the movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment