I love a romcom. I know, you're all shocked to your core and had me down as a horror fan, right? Well, sorry to disappoint you. My capacity to watch truly terrible romcoms is limitless.
In my defence, I do fly quite a bit. I'm not on a plane every week but I go through phases with my job and earlier this year I was flying every month. I'd love to say that I get on business class long-haul flights and make like a CEO, spreading papers around, tapping away on a laptop looking desperately important. But I'd be lying. No, I check out the inflight entertainment and work out how many fluffy romcoms I can squeeze in while sipping the champagne and think to myself that life is sweet. Just so you know, this is what everyone does. I've yet to witness anyone on a business class flight actually do any work. Then I get to my destination and there are so many opportunities to watch crap romcoms: in the hotel (always a given in the US that a romcom will be showing, I saw A Fish Called Wanda last time - not seen that for years, it was still funny) and there are evenings to fill and what is a girl to do? Go to the movies of course and that's how I saw Life As We Know It.
That's my excuse but really I don't need one. I love a romcom and will watch almost any of them, however bad, just so I can measure it against other romcoms. I didn't know this skill would be useful until now but here we are, my moment has come. It's time to talk about crap romcoms. The reigning queen of the romcom is Katherine Heigl and yes, I've seen most of her oeuvre so we'll start with her. I like Katherine because I am shallow enough to like pretty people and I think she is very, very pretty. There are not many movie stars I feel this way about, I consider most of them overrated in the looks department but I think Katherine is gorgeous and I like watching gorgeousness. Sue me.
First up is the aforementioned Life As We Know It.
The shame is that I paid to watch this. Premise is that our two heroes have a blind date set up by their respective best friends (who are a couple), it's a dreadful date and they hate each other. Cue a montage of them hating each other over about five years or so but being thrown together by said friends. Then, omg, friends DIE and they are left holding their baby. They move into the friends' house together and high jinks ensue as they work out how to look after a baby and of course, fall in luuuurve. A part of my soul died typing that. A romcom where two people die? We're not in Nora Ephron territory anymore. It's terrible, the still above gives you an idea of how bad it is. Added beauty is provided by Christina Hendricks (who plays the wife who dies so we don't get much of her). The guy in this is fairly hopeless. Teenager grade = 5/10.
27 Dresses is next.
This is better. It has a better cast, the guy in this (James Marsden) is also in The Notebook and he is conventionally handsome and a good romcom lead. He is great in this, quite sexy and nonchalant. The set up here is better than Life As We Know It. Girl is always the bridesmaid (the 27 dresses) and never the bride as she's hopelessly in love with her boss. Her horrible sister (played by one of the worst actresses ever let loose on screen, I can't be bothered to look her name up, she's awful) falls in love with the boss and manipulates him and yadda yadda. The best bit about this (as I said in my Elton John post) is the scene where our heroine gets drunk and sings Bennie and the Jets. I saw this on a plane and therefore may be remembering it better than it really is. Teenager grade: 6/10.
My final Katherine film (cos even I couldn't face The Ugly Truth) is Knocked Up.
This is genuinely a funny film. I saw it a while ago (yes, on a plane) and laughed quite a bit. It's probably not fair to call it a romcom as it's aimed much more at a male audience than your traditional romcom. I can't remember much about it except I'd watch it again. Surely a good sign? Teenager grade: 8/10.
A note on grading: I grade comparatively. If Some Like It Hot is 10/10 (which it obviously is as any fool knows) then that doesn't mean Knocked Up is only 2 points less good. It's not even in the same ball park and would get a 1 if we compared both films side by side but that way madness lies. So the grading is for crap romcoms, not good romcoms. This is a particular genre. All clear? Excellent.
Next up will be Jennifer Aniston. I do this so you don't have to.
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