Two RomComs I actually liked

  • 87110_bb.jpgI didn’t know that roman­tic come­dies were abbre­vi­ated Rom­Coms until a recent trip to the Net­flix com­ment area. And given that both of these — “Date Night” and “Let­ters to Juliet” — have been play­ing for weeks now, you might have to wait until Net­flix stocks them if you want a look. Both are worth the wait, and that seemed worth talk­ing about when I con­sider myself such a tough audi­ence.
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    Date Night — hap­pily ever after, after all

    Basic idea: A middle-aged cou­ple goes out to a fancy restau­rant, impul­sively takes some­one else’s reser­va­tion and winds up in more and more trou­ble because of it. Sounds like it could lead to one of those boil­er­plate merry-mixups films, and it almost did.

    Steve Car­rell and Tina Fey came to the res­cue, because both of them are just good at being funny (and I hate to admit that about Tina Fey, because like all Sarah Palin fans, I bear her a deep and abid­ing grudge for her SNL Palin impersonations).

    But good actors can only get you so far. The watch­a­bil­ity came from good writ­ing and a touch of sin­cer­ity these films usu­ally lack. Good to see that when Hol­ly­wood wants to make a movie about the plight of middle-class, middle-aged peo­ple, they occa­sion­ally fig­ure out to go find a cou­ple of them and find out what their plights — and their delights — actu­ally are. We don’t spend nearly as much time in panic and self-loathing as these guys think we do. We have our own vocab­u­lary, and our own run­ning gags. The ‘Date Night’ cou­ple impro­vises The Story of the din­ers around them in restau­rants. With Greg and I, we take turns chan­nel­ing What The Dog is Say­ing Now. It’s dumb, really. But it’s also usu­ally fun­nier to me than any­thing I see strangers do on-screen. So I’m glad that ‘Date Night’ took the time to show a lit­tle of that in between car chases and skit scenes. It was worth see­ing.
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    Let­ters to Juliet — eye– and heart-candy (and cook­ies for Grace!)

    letterstojuliet.jpgLet­ters to Juliet, on the other hand, is going for a dif­fer­ent mar­ket. When a great-looking city girl with a busy fiancee dis­cov­ers a 50-year-old love let­ter that was never sent and decides to prod the writer into hunt­ing down her ‘Romeo,’ you know you’re talk­ing chick flick. When that girl’s cru­sade results in her trav­el­ing around sunny, enchant­ing Tus­cany with the letter-writer and her pre­dictably hand­some and unat­tached grand­son, you may think you’re talk­ing trite chick flick.

    Maybe so, but ‘Let­ters to Juliet’ never quite seemed to veer into that. Again, the actors were a help — “Mamma Mia’s” radi­ant Amanda Seyfried, Christo­pher Egan as the appeal­ingly stuffy grand­son and Vanessa Red­grave as a late-blooming love-seeker. But again, writ­ing took it past the usual clichees. And lov­ing cam­era shots of Ital­ian food, scenery and peo­ple may have sealed the deal and made it a movie I’ll be want­ing to rent again, most likely when­ever I’ve got a decent bot­tle of wine in the house.

    In the spirit of full dis­clo­sure, though, I have to point out that my take on ‘Let­ters to Juliet’ might have been col­ored by the set­ting in which I saw it. We have a friend who works at the big local chain of the­aters in this area, and so we’ve got a free pass. That already makes us more will­ing to take a chance on the­ater expe­ri­ences we might not have messed with. But this the­ater hap­pens to be try­ing out some­thing called Cin­ema Suites, which allow you to go into a smaller the­ater equipped with indi­vid­ual red leather reclin­ers with drink hold­ers and — wait for it — a menu of appe­tiz­ers, burg­ers and desserts. So not only we were able to not only see this dreamy, roman­tic movie in leather reclin­ers for free, but owing to a con­fu­sion over how to charge for food, yours truly was able to have a very nice stranger bring her fresh, hot choco­late chip cook­ies and milk … also for free.

    I think I really should have been ashamed of myself. It’s been a cou­ple weeks and I haven’t been yet, but it still might hit me. Prob­a­bly it won’t hit nearly as hard as the impulse for Greg and I to go out on a date night of our own and grab a few more cook­ies and another decent movie or two.

    When they’re done right, both are irresistible.


    Related posts:

    1. Hollywood’s fear of controversy
    2. Muskrat love, sort of
    3. Bad movies, high prices … what’s wrong with this picture?
    4. Twenty good min­utes out of “King Kong”
    5. Beast and the Beauty

    May 31st, 2010 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • eliz­a­beth 05.31.2010

    :) both sound lovely! thanks for this!

  • Grace

    You’re most wel­come. It’s always fun to share a lit­tle enjoy­able fare.

    Speak­ing of which, I *love* your pho­tos of your Sun­day tea. We’ve got a young lady in our church who is prepar­ing for her first tea, and I can’t wait. (Have to fig­ure out my hat bud­get. :-) )

  • Mimi

    I’d like to see them too.
    I also didn’t know they were called “RomComs”

  • Grace

    BTW, just heard Fred­er­ica Mathewes-Green’s review-podcast of Let­ters to Juliet on Ancient Faith Radio, and she really didn’t like it much at all — thought it was bland and bor­ing. So … your mileage may vary, but happy view­ing anyway.

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