Jess hosts a roundtable discussion of romantic comedies: the good, the bad, and the just plan unwatchable. Is the genre more than just Katherine Heigl and Kate Hudson flicks? Does The Princess Bride count as a rom-com? Is the term ‘rom-com’ an insult? Jess, Rachel, Nick, James and Dylan attempt to answer all of these questions and more.
We’d also like to give a special shout-out to Clara of Just Chick Flicks, who was there and more than willing to participate in this discussion that was tailor-made for her and her site, but was unable to thanks to some technical issues.
Also on tap:
* Rants of the Week
* Trailer Talk: Bridesmaids
* Last LAMB Standing
If you’re interested, you too can be a LAMBcaster – we love new blood! For more information on the LAMBcast, check out the topic at the LAMB Forums. Music provided royalty-free by Kevin MacLeod’s Incompetech website. Big thanks to Kevin for providing this service. The LAMBcast loves feedback, too. Either here in the comments section or to blogcabins@yahoo.com or to our Facebook page. Also, we’re on iTunes, and would still love a review, even if it’s a bad one.
Thanks for listening!
Tags: Blog Cabins, Bridesmaids, Cinema Sights, Insight Into Entertainment, rachel's reel reviews, Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob
Great discussion of rom-coms. But The Princess Bride? Really? For me the structure of the genre is very dependent on the the humor arising from the pursuit of love. In PB, the leads are in love pretty much from the beginning. It’s more of an adventure movie with comedic elements. Or a comedy with adventure elements. It is a great movie, but not a rom-com.
On Rotten Tomatoes, I agree with everything Fletch said in his rebuttal. The only thing I’d add is I will use the site to a) seek out critics whose opinions track mine, and b) find and critique flaws in the movie. If a movie gets 87 percent, that means 13 percent didn’t think it was okay. Why not? Conversely, if a movie scores 20 percent, what did those 20 percent find appealing. Sometimes, the unpopular opinion is more useful to read in understanding a film and sites like RT make those reviews easy to find.
Pat
Aw shoot when I start commenting in here you guys stop reading the feedback on the show.
Interesting episode but the rom-com disussion was a bit repetitive.
Good work on James mic it sounded a lot better this time.
Great cast guys, had to keep stopping it and internally verbalizing my own responses!
A lot of the discussion applies quite broadly to genre flicks, or even genre stuff generally. I worked for a few years as a bookseller, and try looking for George Orwell or Aldous Huxley in the SF section – they aren’t there; because they’re high-brow ‘quality’ works they sit in general/litereary fiction even though they’re clearly pioneering and classic works of SF. The same with romcoms – if they’re highbrow enough, nobody thinks of them as romcoms.
By the way, I hate to drag things back to Shakespeare but he effectively invented the romantic comedy and most of the rules of the genre (including finishing with a symobolic or actual wedding) come from Stratford Billy. No coincidence that my favourite romcom of the last 15 years is a Shakespeare adaptation: Ten Things I Hate About You.
Sorry for the late reply…
@ 100 Years – You make a solid point about the leads being in love from the beginning of Princess Bride, but one could argue that the state of the love of the leads is not necessarily written in stone for rom-coms, or at least that it shouldn’t be. I agree that it’s more of an adventure film, but I would say that hard-and-fast rules of what makes a rom-com are doing the genre no favors.
Yeah, I do the same with RT, and I imagine it’s a popular thing to do (and why Armond White is famous). We can’t help it – if a film has a super high (or low) percentage, it’s just naturally more interesting to see what the opposing viewpoints are. I wish that weren’t true, but it is.
@ Multi Slut – (Oh so many ways to go with that name; BTW, you should become friends with my buddy Reel Whore…just sayin’)
Anyway – good call on the other genres. I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s so true. Classifications are so tricky in general. Is Star Wars action, sci-fi, adventure, or something else? Moreover, how will Cowboys and Aliens be classified?
@ Joel – Says you posted your comment on the 12th, but it only came through now. Ahh….Blogger.
Anyway, don’t fret. A) I really appreciate the comments (you, Multiplex Slut, and 100 Years of Movies have been bringing it as of late!), and B) the reading of the feedback might just return. I was just tired of not really having any to read.