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Romantic Comedy: Difference between revisions
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A [[Romantic Comedy]] can be roughly defined as a comedy where the primary dramatic tension comes from a simple question: will the protagonist or protagonists find love? (The answer, by the way, is almost invariably "yes".) Other plot elements play roles, sometimes big roles, but generally, the work focuses on the love lives of the main characters.
Most of these feature two, roughly equal protagonists, with one of them slightly more roughly equal than the other. That's not written in stone, of course; ''[[Love Actually]]'' featured numerous characters and plot lines.
How does the average [[Romantic Comedy]] unfold? The story will start with an unusually good-looking man or woman ([[Hollywood Homely|sometimes regarded as ugly]]) being dumped/divorced/widowed. His/her friends and family will urge him/her to find someone. They might even set the protagonist up on several dates. At some point, they will meet our unusually good-looking second protagonist (again, they may be "plain" in the movie's universe). Usually, this second character isn't an obvious match for the first; [[Manic Pixie Dream Girl|maybe she's wild and crazy and he's a CPA]]. Or he's rich and she's poor. [[Blatant Lies|There's a glorious rainbow of possibilities]]!
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** As is ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'' and several other Shakespeare plays.
** Indeed, [[Shakespeare]]'s own life got fictionalized for ''[[Shakespeare in Love]]''. Also, there's been a bunch of [[Recycled in Space]] variations on his romantic comedies in recent years:
*** ''[[
*** ''[[She's the Man]]'' (''[[Twelfth Night]]'')
*** Kenneth Branagh's version of ''[[Love's Labour's Lost|Loves Labours Lost]]'', which cross-breeds the original text with the songs and style of 1930s movie musicals.
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* ''[[The Wedding Singer]]'': One of Adam Sandler's more tolerable movies
* ''[[Wedding Wars]]''
* ''[[When Harry Met Sally...]]'' was far from the first [[Romantic Comedy]]; it was filmed in 1989. But it has wit and humor and a nice soul, and as such is generally regarded as the model for the genre. Plus, it features Meg Ryan before she paid a surgeon to take The Hammer of Hephaestus to her face, so that's nice. Billy Crystal was good in this, too.
* ''[[When in Rome (film)|When in Rome]]''
* ''[[While You Were Sleeping]]''
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