Everyone enjoys a good love story, don’t they? They may not be the highest-grossing movies of all time (if James Cameron isn’t directing, that is), but romantic movies can elicit some strong emotional responses when done right. Watching passion overcome adversity, seeing two people connect on a profound level, witnessing a giant ship sinking in icy waters. The heartstrings tremble, they also seem to set up impossible romantic ideals for us mere mortals to live up to. With the potential relationship pitfalls that come from movie expectations, I got to thinking… are romantic movies really the best love stories? The Answer: Not at all. Most are actually pretty messed up. Before we can completely examine this question, let’s look at some of the most popular romantic movies. While I don’t always like to rely on box office returns to determine the quality of a film, it is definitely a measure of its success. BoxOfficeMojo.com breaks romantic movies into two main categories: Romantic Drama and Romantic Comedy. (Also note that most of the site’s box office data only goes back to 1980, so these lists are far from complete in terms of the history of cinema.) This is not an arbitrary distinction because romantic comedies have a very different structure, very different character arcs, and very different outcomes than romantic dramas. While rom-coms are far from realistic in their own right, they tend to be formulaic stories with meet-cutes and happy endings. Sure, guys may be annoyed with these standard chick […]
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