A sucker for romance

I admit it, I'm a sucker for romantic comedy films - date flicks. I seem to have an endless capacity to watch new ones. Maybe a 19th century Englishman travels to the future and courts a 20th century woman in an unusual way (Kate and Leopold). Maybe two people fall in e-love (You've Got Mail). A socialite falls for a pesky journalist (The Philadelphia Story) or a scientist (Bringing up Baby), or a movie star with a nebbish (Notting Hill). The combinations are indeed endless. But in basic story line they are generally the same. As the old Jewish man complained deploring the theater: "First he wants and she doesn't want. Then she wants and he doesn't want. Then they both want and boom! down comes the curtain". If the story is so predictable, then how could anyone watch all these? (OK, Phila. Story does take an unexpected twist.) Not everyone can, I have friends who find the genre tedious, but at least some of us can, or Hollywood wouldn't keep making them.

I believe the answer is that we do in fact care about the details, the sometimes infinitesimal differences between the situations in each of these films. Finding a mate is one of the most essential biological drives, and whether we already have one in our lives or not, it's serious business. We need all the help we can get to find one, or keep the one we have. Seeing others succeed gives us ideas for our own lives - maybe silly ones, but no idea is too silly for some consideration in this critical activity.

I love the series of short documentary style interviews of couples in When Harry Met Sally - particularly the elderly chinese guy who went to great lengths to check out his intended bride before their arranged wedding. And there's the couple in Annie Hall, who tell Woody's character: "I'm shallow and have nothing to say"..."And I'm the same"; they've found each other. I was hiking once in southern Utah with my then current girlfriend, two eastern intellectual types enjoying the outdoors. We happened to cross paths with another couple, two blonde athletic waspy types in spotless white tennis clothes. We went our separate ways, but my friend and I looked at each and burst into simultaneous laughter. It was so...congruous. So the next time I see ads for a film in which a molecular geneticist falls head over heels for an artist he happens to meet on a ferry ride across the arctic, I'll be there. Or at least I'll see it when it hits the video stores.