Heart Is Where the Home Is

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Bob loves Alice, his childhood sweetheart/girl he dated in High School/college classmate. Unfortunately, Alice is dating André, a suave, handsome, rich foreigner who has asked her to marry him and move far away from Bob. The audience roots for Bob, as he's both the underdog and the same nationality as they, the target audience. It is soon revealed that André is a jerk, or at the very least isn't as good a match for Alice as Bob is, and Alice unceremoniously dumps him in favor of Bob.

Problems arise when this trope is exported to André's home country, particularly if Bob is American. Eyes are rolled and people mutter about prejudice and how they hate their nationality being stereotyped as evil or jerky. This isn't an exclusively American trope, however, and has been done with different nationalities involved, or with Andre and Bob's roles reversed. It can also be given a Gender Flip with a woman trying to win a guy back from the arms of a foreign lady.

A form of Creator Provincialism portrayed as a Love Triangle. Related to Betty and Veronica; which lover is which is quite obvious. A subtrope of Wrong Guy First.

Examples of Heart Is Where the Home Is include:


Anime

  • Porco Rosso, where Gina (Italian) is being pursued by Curtis (American), who wants to take her away to be a movie star with him. However, she mostly seems amused by this; she's had a thing for the title character for years.

Film

  • Leap Year (2010) uses this trope. The heroine Anna goes to Ireland to propose to her New York City boyfriend Jeremy. By the end, this has become an inversion, when she moves to Ireland and married the Irish man she meets there
  • Made Of Honour (2008): Tom vs. Colin McMurray over Helen. Helen is Tom's best friend from college. He realizes he is in love with her only when she's on sabbatical in Scotland. Lo and behold, she returns to New York with Colin, a Scottish duke who wants to marry her. Colin isn't portrayed as a jerk (except when it comes to sharing cake) but he just turns out to be wrong for Helen.
  • Three Men And A Little Lady has a variation with Peter vs. Edward over Sylvia. The variation being that Sylvia is English too, but otherwise this trope is played in a very similar way. Peter being the American underdog and Edward being a horrible jerk who wants to send the titular Little Lady (Mary) Off to Boarding School.
  • Sweet Home Alabama does it with States instead of Nations. Alabama vs. New York (which, granted, are about as different as different countries to some people).
  • Inverted by Crocodile Dundee, which ends with American Sue Charlton choosing the Australian main character over her stateside boyfriend.
  • Run Fatboy Run makes the underdog and the girl he loves British, and the opponent a Jerky American. It was going to be set in Chicago so presumably it would have had this plot follow the more American underdog mold, but then Simon Pegg bought the script.
  • French Kiss has the audience initially rooting for American Meg Ryan to win back her Canadian fiancé from a French seductress. In an inversion however, as the film goes on the audience instead begin to root for her and French thief Kevin Kline to get together.
  • The Rescuers Down Under has Jake as the foreigner, but he's not exactly evil, and Miss Bianca herself is Hungarian.
  • A variant of this is done in the Jim Carrey vehicle Liar Liar, where the move is to Boston (the movie is set in California) and the reason behind Fletcher's despair is that his ex has custody of his son and he'll lose almost any chance of seeing him if they move across the country.
  • The English woman vs. the Indian woman competing for the Indian hero's affections in the Bollywood film Lagaan.

Literature

  • Older Than Radio: Quincy Morris (A Texan), Dr. Jack Seward (An Englishman), and Lord Arthur Holmwood (Another Englishman) fighting over Lucy Westenra (An Englishwoman) in Dracula. Holmwood wins, but then Lucy turns into a vampire.
    • And then, of course, on the more analytical level it's the whole team competing with Dracula (a grade-a Scary Foreigner) over their women.
  • The Ron-Hermione-Viktor Love Triangle in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Britain vs. Bulgaria). Viktor didn't end up being bad though, and still remained in contact with Hermione after the end of the story. (Word of God says Viktor attended her wedding, to Ron's chagrin.)
  • ~Emily's Quest~ follows this trajectory with Emily, who receives marriage a proposal from a samurai, (and this is Victorian-era Canada!) eventually finding love with her childhood sweetheart. Some fans object, finding Dean Priest to be Better Than Canon.

Live Action TV

  • A two girls over a guy example: Rachel vs. Emily over Ross in Friends. Emily is a Stuffy Brit who, sure enough, expects him to move to the United Kingdom with her. Official Partner Rachel is a laid-back, albeit rather ditzy, American gal.
    • Much earlier in the series, Ross vs. Páulo (Italian, I think) over Rachel. Páulo eventually tries it on with Phoebe and the whole gang turns against him, after several episodes of Ross looking mopey and bemoaning the situation to everyone else. He's understandably chirpier when Rachel dumps Páulo, but it kinda backfires when she tells him she's sworn off men for the foreseeable future.
  • Desperate Housewives did this with the whole Ian/Susan/Mike triangle.
  • Big vs. the Russian from Sex and the City.
  • Woody vs. Henri on Cheers.
  • Reversed, then played straight on How I Met Your Mother when Robin dumps strait-laced Ted to go to Argentina, brings back an Andre, then gets annoyed and dumps him, but not to go back to Ted.
  • Charlie/Zoe/Jean-Paul from The West Wing.

Theatre

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