Romantic comedy
The romantic comedy (direct translation of English romantic comedy , rom com for short ), actually love comedy , describes an internationally popular subgenre of film comedy and love film , in which romantic relationships and the associated dramatic entanglements and obstacles are the focus.
The narrative is less melodramatic and more cheerful and usually ends with a happy ending . Typical is the representation of the idealized concept of “true love”, in which the main characters get to know each other and find each other ( em @ il for you , 1998 or because there are you , 2001). Due to the tendency to be “light-footed, charming and cautiously humorous” presentation “without deeper irony or satirical bite”, the romantic comedy is often exposed to the accusation of shallow entertainment. Varieties of the genre include romantic screwball comedies such as The Night Before the Wedding (1940), in which a couple split up and remarried after a series of entanglements, or Woody Allen's film The Urban Neurotic (1977), in which the impossibility of Love is a theme.
Love comedies can already be found in works by Shakespeare , for example A Midsummer Night's Dream , What You Want or As You Like It , the plot elements are largely similar to this day. In early Hollywood cinema , Ernst Lubitsch is an important representative of romantic comedy, later also Billy Wilder , among other things with his film The 7th Year Itch (1955).
Successful films
Examples of successful films in the genre (selection, since 1988):
- 1988: The Prince from Zamunda (Coming to America)
- 1989: Harry and Sally (When Harry Met Sally ...)
- 1990: Pretty Woman
- 1993: Sleepless in Seattle (Sleepless in Seattle)
- 1994: Four Weddings and a Funeral (Four Weddings and a Funeral)
- 1997: It couldn't be better (As Good as It Gets)
- 1997: The Best Friend's Wedding (My Best Friend's Wedding)
- 1998: There's Something About Mary (There's Something About Mary)
- 1998: em @ il für dich (You've Got Mail)
- 1999: The Runaway Bride
- 1999: Notting Hill (Notting Hill)
- 2000: What women want (What Women Want)
- 2001: American Pie 2 (American Pie 2)
- 2002: My Big Fat Greek Wedding - Wedding in Greek (My Big Fat Greek Wedding)
- 2002: Sweet Home Alabama - Love in a Detour (Sweet Home Alabama)
- 2002: Santa Clause 2 - An even nicer mess (The Santa Clause 2)
- 2003: Actually ... love (Love Actually)
- 2003: American Pie - American Wedding
- 2005: Hitch - The Date Doctor (Hitch)
- 2007: The first time (Knocked Up)
- 2008: Sex and the City - The Movie (Sex and the City)
- 2008: Mamma Mia! (Mamma Mia!)
- 2009: Self is the Bride (The Proposal)
- 2009: If Love Was That Easy (It's Complicated)
- 2010: Sex and the City 2 (Sex and the City 2)
- 2011: My Invented Wife (Just Go with It)
- 2011: Crazy, Stupid, Love. (Crazy, Stupid, Love.)
- 2012: Think Like A Man (Think Like a Man)
- 2012: Silver Linings (Silver Linings Playbook)
literature
- Jörn Glasenapp , Claudia Lillge (Hrsg.): The film comedy of the present. Fink, Paderborn 2008.
- Tamar Jeffers McDonald: Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. Wallflower, London 2007.
- Celestino Deleyto: Between friends: love and friendship in contemporary Hollywood romantic comedy. In: Screen. 44, 2, 2003, pp. 167-182.
- Peter William Evans, Celestino Deleyto (Eds.): Terms of endearment: Hollywood romantic comedy of the 1980s and 1990s. Edinburgh Univ. Press, Edinburgh 1998.
- Wes D. Gehring: Romantic vs. screwball comedy: charting the difference. (= Studies in Film Genres. ). Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2002.
- James Harvey: Romantic comedy in Hollywood from Lubitsch to Sturges. Knopf, New York 1987. (New edition: Da Capo Press, New York 1998)
- Billy Mernit: Writing the romantic comedy: the art and craft of writing screenplays that sell. Harper Resource, New York 2000, pp. 32-51.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Ludger Kaczmarek, James zu Hüningen: Romantic Comedy. In: Hans. J. Wulff, Theo Bender (ed.): Lexicon of film terms.
- ^ Andreas Jahn-Sudmann: Romantic Comedy. In: Hans. J. Wulff, Theo Bender (ed.): Lexicon of film terms.
- ^ Romantic Comedy. In: Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Retrieved July 3, 2013.