The Romantic Comedy

The first chapter in McDonald's book Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre admits to the common (and often deserved) disregard for the romantic comedy, and helps as well, in that it defined it more clearly. Yet the greatest and most favorite movies of our time often include those elements--the development of a couple's relationship, the happy ending--so it isn't merely the genre itself that merits disdain.

The bashing of the "RomCom" will still be a favorite activity of mine... but I think it's not because it includes the factors that it does, but because of the same reason we would bash any other newer movie or piece of literature: the quality isn't there. A work must ascend beyond a repetition of what's been done, and have something more than a cookie-cutter script or a weak catharsis... what fellow student Geghard A. referenced as "assembly-line plots" (a line I wish I'd thought of).