#rom-coms

The chance 𝗞𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗲 gave 𝗧𝘂𝗰𝗸 🥹 I really like this scene from 𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝑴𝒆𝒂𝒏𝒔 𝑾𝒂𝒓 💖

𝗧𝗼𝗺 talked about rom-coms again in a 𝑴𝒐𝒃𝑳𝒂𝒏𝒅 interview a few months ago, and this is what he said! 👇🏻

“I don’t think I suit rom-coms. I don’t know. I just don’t think I do. But maybe if it was interesting and good fun, I’d be up for it. But I haven’t seen anything come across the desk yet where I’d go, “Oh, I’d love to do that.” So, we’ll wait, I’ll wait. It’s just as yet… Hasn’t happened yet.” 💓

I really want to see him in another romantic comedy, and for him to be the real star 😍

Someone please write a good rom-com that 𝗧𝗼𝗺 would love, and offer it to him 🙏🏻!

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La oportunidad que le dio 𝗞𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗲 a 𝗧𝘂𝗰𝗸 🥹 Me gusta mucho esta escena de 𝑬𝒔𝒕𝒐 𝒆𝒔 𝒍𝒂 𝑮𝒖𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒂 💖

¡𝗧𝗼𝗺 volvió a hablar sobre las comedias románticas en una entrevista por 𝑻𝒊𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒂 𝒅𝒆 𝑴𝒂𝒇𝒊𝒐𝒔𝒐𝒔 hace unos meses y esto fue lo que dijo! 👇🏻

“No creo que me vayan bien las comedias románticas. No lo sé. Simplemente no lo creo. Pero tal vez si fuera interesante y muy divertido, estaría dispuesto a hacerlo. Pero aún no he visto nada en el escritorio que me haga decir: “Oh, me encantaría hacer eso.” Entonces esperaremos, esperaré. Es solo que aún no ha ocurrido.” 💓

Tengo como muchas ganas de verlo en otra comedia romántica, y que él sea el verdadero protagonista 😍

¡Que alguien escriba una buena comedia romántica que le guste a 𝗧𝗼𝗺, y se lo ofrezca, por favor 🙏🏻!

The Lady Eve: Barbara Stanwyck cons Henry Fonda—twice, once for money and once for revenge (and love). It's the same dame!

It Happened One Night: Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert invent romance. She’s a runaway socialite, he’s a disillusioned journalist angling for a scoop, they’re trapped on the road together

His Girl Friday: Newspaper editor Cary Grant uses ex-wife & journalist Rosalind Russell’s ambition to win her back from Ralph Bellamy

Sullivan’s Travels: satirical showbiz industry send-up with pampered director Joel McCrea setting out on the tramp with ten cents to his name in order to experience real troubles. He can’t seem to escape Hollywood, though, especially once he runs across down-on-her-luck actress Veronica Lake.

Bringing Up Baby: Socialite Katharine Hepburn completely overwhelms and flusters paleontologist Cary Grant. The zaniest story ever told, where not one shred of sense is found among the characters

Ball of Fire: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs if Snow was a sheltered academic played by Gary Cooper and Prince Charming was a mobster’s moll/lounge singer named Sugarpuss O’Shea played by Barbara Stanwyck and the Dwarfs were a zany group of old men

The Philadelphia Story: Katharine Hepburn’s society wedding is crashed by reporter James Stewart and her ex-husband Cary Grant

The Awful Truth: Cary Grant and Irene Dunne suspect each other of infidelity and thwart one another’s attempts to move on while waiting for the divorce to finalize. 100x funnier than it sounds. Also, Cary Grant once again steals his own wife back from Ralph Bellamy

Holiday: Cary Grant falls for a woman while on holiday, proposes, finds out she’s an heiress, realizes she’s not who he thought she was, and genuinely connects with her free-spirited, bird-in-a-gilded-cage sister (Katharine Hepburn) instead

My Favorite Wife: Irene Dunne returns 7 years after being lost at sea—the same day husband Cary Grant has her legally declared dead and remarries (again…funnier than it sounds)

The Palm Beach Story: Claudette Colbert tries to find a second husband to help fund her current husband’s (Joel McCrea) business endeavors—and pay for her divorce. Feat. Rudy Vallée as the most sopping wet, pathetic third wheel in history; he’s amazing

Libeled Lady: Spencer Tracy coerces his beleaguered fiancée Jean Harlow to marry his former workplace rival William Powell so they can trick Claudette Colbert into enacting the scandal their paper accused her of and avoid paying her $5M for libel. Hijinks ensue

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxxer: schoolgirl Shirley Temple falls hard for successful artist Cary Grant—and so does her older sister, Myrna Loy, a judge involved with ADA Rudy Vallée (playing a much drier but no less pathetic 3rd wheel than he is in The Palm Beach Story)

Vivacious Lady: stuffy academic James Stewart falls in love with nightclub singer Ginger Rogers at first sight and immediately marries her, then struggles with how to break the news to his parents. Contains maybe the 2nd best cat fight in cinema history (the first being in The Women)

My Man Godfrey: Spoiled socialite Carole Lombard finds “lost man” William Powell and her family hires him as their butler

Bachelor Mother: Ginger Rogers + David Niven + accidental baby acquisition and a lot of zany misunderstandings

The Major and the Minor: Ginger Rogers tries to pass as a 12yo and falls for Ray Milland’s army major while he is completely duped and avuncular. Never Been Kissed was a remake of this one but, while this lacks the emotional confrontation, I think it walks the line better with keeping the love interest from coming off as too much of a creep

The More the Merrier: Jean Arthur rents a room to Charles Coburn, who in turn rents half of it to Joel McCrea and tries to matchmake the two

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife: Claudette Colbert marries Gary Cooper in haste and repents in leisure when she finds out he’s been married seven times previously. She aims to make him just as miserable as the news makes her

Easy Living: a fur coat falling from the sky changes the trajectory of Jean Arthur’s luck when she’s both mistaken for a rich man’s mistress and also encounters said rich man’s son (Ray Milland) who is struggling to survive without his father’s money. Lots of slapstick

Like... Love, Rosie is remembered fondly not because the film spends its narrative asking the audience to choose "Team Alex" or "Team Greg," but because it's clear from the start that Rosie and Alex adore each other and it's just the circumstances of life that prevent them from being together

Further back then that, there's A Cinderella Story where the idea of a love triangle between Sam, Austin, and Shelby isn't ever entertained because Austin breaks up with Shelby after falling for Princeton Girl.

And straying away from the teen genre for a bit, you got 13 Going on 30 where Matt and Jenna reunite while he's engaged to Wendy. You could argue that maybe there's some love-triangle-esque tension because Matt has clearly fallen for Jenna again to some extent, but the film doesn't ride-or-die on who Matt picks and at the end he goes to the person he's actually engaged to (in the first timeline, at least.)

I just compare this to the second To All The Boys or Kissing Booth movie where it leans heavily on whether the female protagonist picks the first guy she fell for or the second guy who's objectively better, and she always picks the first guy.

On one hand, I know that I can only get so much out of dragging media that's no longer in my age demographic. But on the other, a part of me genuinely adores the rom-com genre and feels it's evolved long past Wrong Person, Wrong Time right into a mix of Love Triangle + First Guy Wins.

I feel like we might start to see a rom-com resurgence in the future, and most (if not all) of the great ones from the 2000s that have maintained their relevance and value had the same rating.

There are definitely a few R-rated ones that have held up over the decades (When Harry Met Sally from '89 comes to mind), but most just didn't.

For example, TSITP, people rave at the chemistry between the actors who play Conrad and Belly, while saying Jeremiah and Belly don't have any. Yet, a large portion of people who watch say they do have great chemistry.

Same goes for HSMTMTS, you see fans and articles from other tv reviewers rave about the chemistry between Josh and Sofia while playing Ricky and Gina. But, you also have a large portion who feel like they don't have any chemistry or that Mack and Gina had more chemistry in lesser scenes. I had read some articles from other reviewers before the season aired to the public that loved Portwell but admitted that the chemistry between Ricky and Gina was undeniable. Other neutral ones said that the chemistry between the two was organic.

I know over the years creators and writers have come out and admitted that certain actors chemistry changed the plans for the their show (ex. Dawson's Creek with Joey and Pacey), causing them to go in a completely new direction.

Do you think all of this is just a simple answer as we're humans who have different opinions, with chemistry between actors being subjective, or do ship preference and bias come into play? Do you struggle with this being a tv reviewer, trying not to be biased based on your own personal preferences?

PS - I have read your articles over the seasons of HSMTMS and know you liked Ricky and Nini as well as Gina and EJ. So, because I know for sure that you watch the show, I also wondered what your thoughts were on Ricky and Gina's chemistry this season and overall. Did you feel like they had a lot of chemistry? Some? Not as much as others?

I appreciate if you do answer as I tend to ramble once I start writing, sorry about that lol

Sorry it's taken me a bit to answer this ask. I've been watching football all weekend, so I've been pretty absent from social media — unless I was posting about football.

But no apologies are necessary for the long ask. I appreciate your passion and the time it took to write this out. I'll answer it by each paragraph, so I don't miss anything.

Chemistry is interesting because it is often objective, but we often can't help but be subjective. Sometimes, if you prefer one relationship over another, you may see more chemistry between those actors than the ones that make up the other pairing. However, for the most part, I see chemistry as objective. People either have it or they don't — and with rom-coms that can make or break it all.

For instance, Your Place or Mine. I don't think Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon have all that much romantic chemistry, but I think Reese Witherspoon and Luke Wilson DO in Legally Blonde.

As for The Summer I Turned Pretty, I think all three actors are great. Genuinely. They all have chemistry. But a different kind of chemistry because every dynamic is built on different characters. At this point in Season 2, Belly and Conrad have a different chemistry than in Season 1. That fire still crackles between them, but Conrad is trying to fan the flame to keep it burning, but Belly is moving on because she doesn't know how Conrad feels.

Whereas with Jeremiah, he's only starting to open himself up to Belly again. That hesitance to letting her back in and Belly starting to see Jere differently than in Season 1 informs the actors' chemistry.

But if someone is so adamant about Belly/Conrad or Belly/Jeremiah being superior that they don't even entertain the idea of the other relationship or try to understand where the characters are coming from, then there may be some resistance to seeing the chemistry between the actors.

For HSMTMTS, I think the same remains true — mostly.

Joshua Bassett and Sofia Wylie DO have chemistry. That's part of what made Ricky and Gina's connection jump off the screen all the way back in 2019 in Season 1. Personally, I don't think Mack and Gina had romantic chemistry. They could've, but the show shut that down pretty quickly when Gina met Mack and he was quite rude. From then, they became good friends and that's all I got from them.

Bringing Portwell into it, Sofia Wylie and Matt Cornett also have great chemistry. But their chemistry is different than Wylie and Bassett's. And that's okay! That's what I like! That's what makes the dynamics different and more exciting to watch!

I, too, have read and listened to writers discuss how actors' chemistry can change plans and inform story, and I think that's just smart. It's smart to write towards an actor's strengths when you can.

So, yes, I do think everyone will always have different opinions about chemistry because there is such a passion and loyalty to romantic relationships. And sometimes that dedication makes it hard to see beyond it and look at the bigger picture.

As a critic and an aspiring TV writer, I try to be as subjective as possible. I have my preferences as a viewer, as anyone does. But when I'm reviewing a show or analyzing a theme in a feature, I try to be as subjective as possible and understand where all characters are coming from at all sides. I tried my best to do that in my HSMTMTS Season 4 review and my analysis of TSITP's love triangle after the first three episodes. I'll link those below in case you, or anyone else who may read this, wants to read them.

And thank you for reading my articles! That means A LOT.