items tagged with Romantic Comedies

THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE

Reading the reviews for Alan Parker’s The Life of David Gale, you might assume that it’s the most staggeringly offensive cinematic release since Freddy Got Fingered. (Glenn Kenny of Premiere magazine and Roger Ebert gave the film a combined total of zero stars.) And upon realizing that the film in question boasts the considerable acting abilities of Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet, and Laura Linney, not to mention direction by two-time Oscar nominee Alan Parker, you’d have every right to wonder: Can the movie be that god-awful? The short answer is: No, it’s not. Parker’s film is bad, yes, but it’s bad in typical Hollywood fashion, especially for a paranoid thriller; the plot twists are ludicrous, the dialogue, especially when dealing directly with the film’s polemic over the death penalty, is clunky, and it’s so high on its do-gooder mentality that it comes off as vaguely embarrassing. But despite what you might have read, it’s not the work of Lucifer, merely the work of talented individuals acting uncharacteristically like hacks.

DAREDEVIL

Though he tries mighty hard, Ben Affleck isn’t quite able to ruin Daredevil, Mark Steven Johnson’s screen adaptation of the Marvel comic. Among comic-book fans, the news that Affleck would be portraying the tortured hero – an angry, despressed, and, oh yeah, blind lawyer who, when not losing cases in court, dons leather and kicks bad-guy ass – was met with a collective rolling of the eyes; a friend of mine, upon hearing about the casting, put it succinctly: “Oh great. It’s gonna suck."

THE HOURS

Stephen Daldry’s The Hours is so meticulously crafted, so assured in its conception, and so insistent on its themes and motifs that it’s bound to drive a lot of people bananas.

SWEET HOME ALABAMA

Just how much goodwill are audiences willing to extend to Reese Witherspoon? Quite a lot, actually, if their response to Sweet Home Alabama is any indication.

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING

In the first 20 minutes of the romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, there’s a scene so simple it feels revelatory. Our heroine, Toula (Nia Vardalos), is a 30-year-old waitress in a diner owned by her Greek-with-a-vengeance parents, and has always been, as she describes herself, “a frump” – plain, bespectacled, overweight, and sadly single.